Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

November 11, 2024

Some Tips to make your travels more fun and convenient

Filed under: My Thoughts,Travel/Trips — Suramya @ 9:41 PM

Someone shared some tips in one of the Travel groups on what to do when traveling outside India and I didn’t agree with some of them so decided to make my own post on things you should do and not do when traveling. This is based on my personal experience and way of traveling and not everyone will agree with everything I say here just as I didn’t agree with everything in the post that inspired this one. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments or via email.

Research the destination before you go

Sounds pretty obvious when you say it, but not everyone does it. When you research the destination beforehand you know what are the places to see, things to do, things not to do etc. It will also give you a good idea of local customs that you should be aware of. Things that are normal in one country might be the most offensive thing in another.

Forex/Money Conversion

I have found that if you are traveling to a country that is relatively less popular with tourists, it is cheaper to go to the country and then withdraw cash over there using the ATM instead of getting it converted in your home country. I have stopped converting money at home for the past 3-4 years and it does save money.

You do need to ensure that you have enabled international transactions & withdrawals on your Debit card. In addition, try to ensure you are using an ATM that is in a reputed place like a bank or hotel lobby or busy street etc instead of one that is in a shady shop somewhere. This is to avoid having your card copied/cloned. The following link has good advise on how to spot ATM skimmers. I have never found one in the wild but enough people have that I follow this checklist when I go to withdraw cash.

Another point to remember is that the bank (and potentially the ATM) might charge transaction fees so instead of making multiple small withdrawals do a single large withdrawal. That way you don’t end up paying too much in transaction fees.

Language

If the language spoken by majority of folks in your destination is not English then it is a good idea to learn basic phrases in the local language, especially please and thank you. We usually ask a local on how to say Thank you and they are happy to help with the pronunciation. You will see a remarkable difference in people when they see that you are trying to communicate in their language. Google Translate does work in a pinch but sometimes the translations can be a bit off. 🙂 Translate also works with images so you can take a photo of text or a menu and get it translated like that. This is pretty much what we did in Hong Kong & Macao as a lot of places didn’t have English menus. If you are in places like China, Vietnam etc then you might want to get a local guide that speaks English as That can save you some time and effort.

Keep in mind that if you can’t speak the local language don’t look down on the locals for not speaking English.

Food

One of the best parts of traveling is to explore the local food. Sometimes I do feel bad that I can’t explore the food as much as Jani does because I am a vegetarian. But that doesn’t mean I don’t try the local vegetarian options. You will not get the same food that you get at home as the dishes are as per the local palate. If you insist on getting the exact same taste and dishes as what you get at home you will be miserable and so will the folks traveling with you.

Things that are common at home might not be where you are traveling to. For example, in a recent trip I heard about one of the girls who had a screaming fit at a waiter because they didn’t make her ‘Filter coffee’ correctly. She literally yelled at them asking “How can you not know how to make filter coffee?”. My question to her if I was a local would have been do you know how to make egg coffee, because for them that is something everyone should know how to make. You are a guest in their place, you need to adjust to their way of doing things instead of expecting them to adjust to your way.

Another thing to remember is that the local version of a particular food might just be drastically different than what you are used to. When I was in Vietnam I ordered a margarita pizza. What I got was a square of bread (about 8 inches wide) with cheese slices (yes, like what you put on sandwiches) on it. Then a whole tomato was cut into four thick slices with a slice put in each quadrant of the ‘pizza’. It tasted ok but was definitely not what I expected. 🙂 Chinese food that you get in India tastes nothing like the actual Chinese food in China.

Some people recommend that you should carry food with you and I know people who will cook stuff like Puri & Aaloo for a week long trip and just eat that. Another person I know told me that they were in Boston for an year and survived on just French fries. I asked them that Boston has enough Indian restaurants and Vegetarian options so why not eat there and I was told that the food didn’t taste like food at home. So far I have traveled to all 7 continents but never felt like I should have carried food with me.

Transit

Use the local public transit when possible, especially Subway and Trams as they are a lot cheaper than Uber or Taxi’s. If you have to take a cab use the local app (if available) such as Grab in South East Asia instead of Uber.

Explore places other than the Tourist hotspots

Every location has places that are must see, for example Eiffel Tower in Paris, Qutub Minar in Delhi, Mysore Palace in Mysore etc. You should definitely visit these locations because they are famous for a reason. However, once you see the tourist traps explore other places which might not be that well known. By that I mean check out the local market instead of the mall and instead of the world famous beach check out the beach where locals hang out.

This is where the research you did before the trip will help. Another way to find off-beat places is to ask the locals (Hotel Staff, Local Tour companies etc) for advice on must see places. We (me and Jani) always do this and while we were in Hampi we ended up visiting a 3000 year old Megalithic site that hardly anyone knew about. This way you will see places that will blow your mind and are not super crowded. Obviously you need to ensure your safety before going off to someplace in the middle of nowhere, so take a judgement call before going anywhere.

Some folks prefer to have a fully planned itinerary for a trip with everything pre-booked but personally I prefer to have more flexibility. When we visited Sri Lanka we had booked hotel for only the first night, we had a list of places we wanted to cover but diverted quite a lot to cover other places that were recommended to us. Each evening we would get on Tripadvisor and search for places to stay within an hour of where we were and would book a place when we found something we liked. It did help that we were a group of 6 guys instead of a group of 6 girls.

Respect the local culture

This is a must as you are a guest in their country/town so please don’t act like idiots. I understand that you might want to get the perfect photo for Instagram but that doesn’t mean you can climb into restricted places, create a nuisance or block paths. Especially don’t insult local religious structures or deface property. There was a case few years ago where a tourist in Bhutan decided to climb the one of the Stupa’s for a photoshoot on top of it. (The stupas at Dochula are built in the memory of Bhutanese soldiers who died) and it became an international incident where the guys passport was confiscated and he got jailed. There are thousands more such examples and it is embarrassing when folks do this kind of nonsense.

Don’t make fun of local eating habits or way of life. Remember you are a guest there and they have no obligation to you. I once traveled with someone from Canada who kept complaining about having to climb steps to visit the temples. He said something to the effect of “Don’t Indians know how to put an Escalator and why can’t you Indians put escalators in these places so we don’t have to climb stairs.” (It was stated in a lot more obnoxious way) Had to tell him that the whole point of having the temple at the top was so that the devotees had to put in effort to pray, which is an integral part of the Hindu faith.

Travel Light

You should travel as lightly as possible, that way you don’t have to worry about how to carry your luggage. Jani and Me usually just take a backpack each (Unless I need to have formal clothes for meetings etc in which case I carry a suitcase), that way it is easy to carry and it leaves your hands free for other things. My rule of thumb is that in a pinch you should be able to carry all your luggage yourself.

Once we stayed at a home stay where the only way to get there was by a small path and we all had to carry our own luggage. Me and Jani didn’t have an issue because we both had backpacks but another person in the group had this massive suitcase that they couldn’t carry down. In the end a few of the others in the group had to carry it down (and then back up when returning). It was not fun for anyone.

Maps

Save offline copies of Goggle Maps on your phone so you don’t get stuck when you don’t have a signal.

Don’t worry about taking the perfect picture and just enjoy the moment

When traveling I have seen folks getting stressed about taking the perfect picture that they can post online to show folks how much fun they are having. They end up stressed out and miss out on all the fun and the beauty of the location. I have been guilty of that as well. When we visited Andaman & Nicobar a long time ago, we had just gotten a Camcorder (This was back in 1998) and instead of enjoying the spectacular views I spent most of the time looking at things through the viewfinder. One specific example I remember is when we were on a glass bottom boat and the entire time I was on the camcorder, since the internal display was black and white I didn’t even see any of the colorful fishes in the see. For me it was all black and white.

In my opinion, actually having fun is more important than showing others that you are having fun.

Well this is all now now, I am sure I will remember more tips once I publish this post and if I have enough additional topics I will create a follow up post.

– Suramya

November 10, 2024

Blocking content when ad block enabled expectation vs reality

Filed under: My Thoughts — Suramya @ 3:20 AM

If your site shows me a message like the screenshot below when I visit a site then I am not going to disable my ad blocker like you imagined I would do, I will just close the site and use another site.

Content blocked. Please turn off your ad blocker
Content blocked. Please turn off your ad blocker

Please stop this nonsense because no one likes this kind of stuff.

– Suramya

November 9, 2024

There is a reason folks tell others that they are a Vegetarian/Vegan

Filed under: My Thoughts — Suramya @ 1:09 PM

One of the constant jokes that I see on the internet is that Vegans/vegetarians will insist on telling everyone that they are vegans even if no one asks them. Like this one:

Me waiting patiently to slip in the fact that I'm vegan into a conversation
Me waiting patiently to slip in the fact that I’m vegan into a conversation

Having been vegetarian for 44 years, I don’t think I walked up to anyone just to tell the that I was a vegetarian or brought it up in a conversation for no reason and I have not seen anyone else do it either.

It does come up when you are discussing food items or planning where to go for a meal. Telling people at that time is required when planning a meal because you want to make sure that there are vegetarian options available wherever you are going because if you don’t then you can end up in a situation like I did where my team took me out for lunch to celebrate a major release and we ended up going to a steakhouse because this was in Kansas and everyone else in the team loved steaks. Luckily they had veg options available but that’s not always the case. So in those cases telling people that you are a vegetarian has nothing to do with bragging but more towards ensuring they take that into account as well when choosing a restaurant. The same would be the case when someone has a severe allergy to something. A friend of mine is allergic to eggs so we all ensure that he doesn’t end up consuming something with egg in it. It is just basic courtesy and friendship to do that.

However there are some people who take it as a personal affront that a person doesn’t eat meat. There was a post a little while ago where this girl was proudly telling that her brother fed a cheeseburger (beef burger with cheese) to his vegan girl telling her that it was vegan and she said that it was the best one she had. This not correct, it is a serious breach of trust and a jackass thing to do. People can be vegans/vegetarians for various reasons such as religion, medical or personal choice. But it doesn’t matter because it is their choice (the same thing applies the other way round as well) and you can’t feed them meat because you disagree with them. What did guy did is inexcusable.

Jani is what she calls a pure non-veg eater but she has never tried to feed me meat without me knowing just like my friends don’t do it either. They do at times make fun of me and I do the same to them which is a healthy relationship. I remember once I went to Tarini’s place and she was cooking fish so I asked her ‘what about me?’ and she pointed me to the flowerpots on the window sill next to her and told me “You are a vegetarian na… so go eat those plants.”

Well this is all for now. Will post more later.

– Suramya

November 8, 2024

Please be patient with me, I’m from the 1900’s

Filed under: Humor — Suramya @ 12:05 PM

I need to get this shirt for myself: 🙂


Please be patient with me, I’m from the 1900’s

– Suramya

November 7, 2024

Artificial Intelligence is not a reason to stop using your natural Intelligence

Filed under: Artificial Intelligence,My Thoughts,Tech Related — Suramya @ 6:59 PM

The more I see posts about some of the proposed use cases for AI the more I feel that some people just don’t want to use their brains and want to outsource all thinking to the ‘AI’. The latest example that triggered this post is screenshoted & Quoted below:

See BlockQuote Below the Image

Though malloc is a very useful function in c, it is not without its problems. The biggest is that it can be confusing for some to decide how much memory to allocate, needing complicated statements with sizeof . To solve this I propose a new alternative to malloc that utilizes the power of modern developments in Al, mallocPlusAI . The usage is simple.

int* x = (int*)mallocPlusAI(“Enough memory to store up to 5 integers”);

mallocPlusAI takes in a character array which is forwarded to a ChatGPT instance alongside an initial prompt “You are a memory allocator for a computer, and you need to tell me how many. bytes of memory I would need to accomplish a certain task. Make sure to give your response as only a whole number of bytes, do not provide any other text. Here is what I request: “

So instead of doing something like the following

5 * sizeof(int) + allocation overhead

Because apparently it is too hard to type 5 * sizeof() * Allocation Overhead, we will call an external API which brings the following downsides:

  • Which has a cost associated with it
  • Adds another layer of complexity & dependency to your application
  • Each ChatGPT query consumes an estimated 2.9 Wh of electricity, nearly ten times more than a standard Google search
  • Opens an avenue for attack where the remote prompt can be modified by a malicious actor to return incorrect values of size potentially causing the application to crash or leak data

Can someone please explain to me why you would use something like this instead of spending 2 mins thinking about what size of memory to assign?

– Suramya

November 6, 2024

Diwali 2024

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 8:45 PM

Diwali is one of the biggest festivals in India, it symbolizes the spiritual victory of Dharma over Adharma, light over darkness, good over evil, and knowledge over ignorance. This year interestingly it fell on Oct 31st when Halloween is celebrated in a lot of the western countries, which made it an interesting day since that is the day when it is said that the barrier between the unseen world (spirit world) & our world is the thinnest and when the darkness is the strongest. Plus it was a bit jarring to see kids in Halloween costumes in the middle of Diwali pictures 🙂

We always go to Delhi whenever possible for Diwali as that is the one festival we celebrate at home with parents. In fact in the past 43 years I have only celebrated it 8 times without going to parents place and that was when I was in the US and it was not feasible to fly home for it as it was in the middle of the semester plus ridiculously expensive as well. I flew to Delhi with Mom on 26th so that I could spend some time with dad. I usually take 2 days off for Diwali and did the same this year as well. Luckily for us the day after Diwali was a Karnataka state holiday so I ended up getting 3 days off (plus 2 days for the weekend), I did WFH for the remaining two days.

Nothing beats spending time with family, but the Delhi pollution is painful. Before folks start blaming the Diwali crackers please note that I arrived in Delhi a week before Diwali and the air quality was so bad that I had the air purifier running 24×7 in my room and was taking Allegra every day for my allergies. But it is easier to blame cracker bursting instead of actually solving the root cause of the problem.

Due to work commitments Jani flew in on the 30th late night, her flight arrived on time but her luggage took over 1 1/2 hours to arrive. Apparently they sent it to the wrong terminal and it took a while to figure out what happened before they could sort things out. Once the luggage arrived we went back home and compared to Bangalore it is an amazing experience to drive a car in Delhi/Noida. The roads are wide and well maintained, due to this even when a car breaks down there is enough space for the others to continue on the way. Compare this to Bangalore where a lot of the roads are barely 1 1/2 times the width of a car so in case of a breakdown you are stuck there for the foreseeable future and that doesn’t even take into consideration the constant flooding of the roads here.


Diwali Havan

Once we reached home, we woke up dad so that we could give all the stuff Jani had got for them (and for me 🙂 ) which was quite fun. The next day we all woke up early (for me anyways) so that we could do the Havan to bless the house and all of humanity with health, wealth and happiness. An interesting aspect of Hinduism is that there is no one right way to do things, so different communities and even families have their own rituals for Diwali. For us it is an Havan in the morning and then Lakshmi puja in the evening. After the Havan since the house was filled with smoke (more than outside) we all sat in the garden and just relaxed for a few hours enjoying time spent with each other.


Jani filling the Diya’s with Oil while Dad relaxes by watching TV


Lighting the first Diya

In the evening we all got ready before dark so that we could do Lakshmi Puja. I have written about why we worship Lakshmi on the day instead of worshiping Lord Rama as Diwali started as a celebration for Lord Rama returning to Ayodhya after 14 years of Vanvas (Forest living) after defeating Ravan who was the demon king of Lanka and symbolized darkness so I am not going to repeat it again here but I do encourage you to go and read about it (scroll down to the bottom of the post).


Pic of the lit Diyas


Lakshmi Puja

The Lakshmi puja does require a bit of prep work, to fill all the Diya’s with oil and arrange them in proper order. Once that is done the Diya’s are lit and we do a short prayer before taking the lit Diya’s and putting them all around the house and outside. The idea is to light the entire house and avoid any dark rooms/areas.


Family photo outside the house with the decoration and lighting


Family photo in front of the house


Obligatory pic with the Frogs 🙂

This year because Jani likes bursting crackers (Even I do, but am severely allergic to the smoke) we got crackers (fireworks) and I burst crackers on Diwali after over 25 years. We hadn’t gotten much but still spent a good hour interacting with the neighbours and having a lot of fun. After we got done with bursting them me and Jani took a drive around the sector to admire the amazing decorations and lighting that folks had put up for Diwali. After that we called it a day and went back home to crash for the night.


Jani Bursting fireworks


Jani Bursting fireworks


Me bursting fireworks after 25 years


Love this pic because of the composition

The remaining days after Diwali I basically just chilled at home, not going anywhere and spending time with family.

In all it was a fun trip and I look forward to doing it again next year.

– Suramya

October 24, 2024

India’s Renewable Energy Capacity Hits 200 GW accounting for 46.3% of total power generation

Filed under: Emerging Tech,My Thoughts — Suramya @ 11:19 PM

India has been pushing heavily in the renewable Energy field to make itself less reliable on Oil and other fossil fuel imports. Earlier this month we hit 200 GW Milestone and renewable energy now accounts for 46.3% of total power generation in India.

This is awesome news and something we should be proud of. My parent’s place in Delhi is running on Solar (well everything except the AC’s are on Solar) and my cousin’s farm and hour is almost 100% on solar now as are most of the houses in their village. The same is the case in a lot of villages in India especially in UP (others as well but I have not seen them all personally). A lot of the street lights etc now run on solar as well and there was an ongoing project to use the excess power generated by the panels put on the highways to power the villages on route as well.

The top 4 States Driving India’s Renewable Energy Capacity are as follows:

  • Rajasthan 29.98 GW
  • Gujarat 29.52 GW
  • Tamil Nadu 23.70 GW
  • Karnataka 22.37 GW

UP is not there in the top 4 yet as they started a bit late but there is an extensive push there for solar and I know other states are also exploring Solar, wind and other renewable energy sources as well. In addtion The Government of India has introduced various measures and initiatives to promote and accelerate renewable energy capacity nationwide, aiming for an ambitious target of 500 GW of installed capacity from non-fossil sources by 2030.

Source: NDTV: India’s Renewable Energy Capacity Hits 200 GW Milestone, Accounts For 46.3% Of Total Power

– Suramya

October 23, 2024

Auto adjusting Desalination system that works with renewable power

Filed under: Emerging Tech,My Thoughts,Science Related — Suramya @ 10:41 AM

Having drinking water is a problem in a lot of places on Earth due to various reasons. One of the solutions for this is to extract drinking water out of sea water/salty water. Unfortunately, the traditional methods of doing this require a lot of power and that causes other issues. Plus, that means that we can’t setup the desalination plants in locations where they are most needed as these locations don’t usually have reliable power either. One solution is to use renewable energy such as Solar to power these plants but the traditional setups expect constant power levels which isn’t always possible due to weather conditions.

Around a 100 years ago we developed reverse osmosis and electrodialysis, which are two membrane-based desalination technologies. Reverse osmosis requires a lot of pre-treatment and thus not sustainable everywhere, which is why MIT researchers led by Jonathan Bessette decided to go with electrodialysis instead.

What makes their approach really interesting is that their setup runs on renewable energy (Solar Power) and automatically adjusts the quantity of water being processed depending on the weather conditions instead of expecting constant power levels. So if it was a sunny day with clear skies then the setup would process more water, and if it was cloudy the quantity being processed would reduce automatically.

The two most important parameters in electrodialysis desalination are the flow rate of the water and the power you apply to the electrodes. To make the process efficient, you need to match those two. The advantage of electrodialysis is that it can operate at different power levels. When you have more available power, you can just pump more water through the system. When you have less power, you can slow the system down by reducing the water flow rate. You’ll produce less freshwater, but you won’t break anything this way.

Bessette’s team simplified the control down to two feedback loops. The first outer loop was tracking the power coming from the solar panels. On a sunny day, when the panels generated plenty of power, it fed more water into the system; when there was less power, it fed less water. The second inner loop tracked flow rate. When the flow rate was high, it applied more power to the electrodes; when it was low, it applied less power. The trick was to apply maximum available power while avoiding splitting the water into hydrogen and oxygen.

The prototype unit they setup was the size of a shipping container and over the 6 months trial period it desalinated around 5,000 liters of water per day—enough for a community of roughly 2,000 people. The team is now working on productionalizing the solution and selling it commercially.

Their work was published in Nature: Direct-drive photovoltaic electrodialysis via flow-commanded current control, earlier this month.

Looking forward to people building on top of this effort and having such units available for purchase.

Source: Mastodon: https://mstdn.social/@kevinrns/113341185649409458

October 22, 2024

Tech is not a replacement for human contact

Filed under: Artificial Intelligence,My Thoughts,Tech Related — Suramya @ 6:35 PM

The more I read about the kind of products these so call ‘AI Founders’ are coming up, the more I feel that they all need some serious therapy. The latest example of this is intouch.family which is an AI powered chatbot that calls your elderly parents so you don’t have to. I mean seriously? The official description is:

InTouch is a subscription service for seniors which regularly calls and keeps company to your parent, evaluates their well-being and alerts you if assistance is needed.

I get that we are all busy and it sometimes gets hard to call people and keep in touch, but anyone who thinks that AI is a replacement for the human touch especially in keeping up relationships needs to get their head examined.

I am quite bad at remembering birthdays and anniversaries except for close family and friends. When I was in college I thought that it would be nice if I could automate wishing folks Happy Birthday without having to actually wish them myself. So I wrote a program where I fed in all the birthday’s and the idea was that at a random time during the day it would email them a message wishing them. I even had a lot of enhancements planned, like use the ‘Poet’ program (it generated poems, based on certain criteria) and add it as part of the message to make it more personal. Spent a few days creating the program and it worked perfectly.

I was about to start using it and then realized that the whole point of wishing folks on their birthday was to keep in touch with them, not discharge an obligation. Especially if you have not talked to someone for a while, wishing them allows you to initiate a conversation. So I ended up changing the software to email me a reminder (This is in the days before Google Calendar and other reliable online calendars) so that I could call/email/text the person wishing them.

The whole idea behind technology is to make human contact easier, not to replace human contact. Telegrams allowed us to send urgent news quickly, then came phones that allowed us to talk to people who were far away, then we had VoIP/Voice Calls that allowed you to call without massive bills. Then came video calls such as zoom/Whatsapp etc that allow you to see the person you are talking to as well as hear them. In the near future we will have VR calls where you will feel that you are in the same room as the other person.

Unfortunately, most of the ‘AI’ services we see are being created/marketed as a replacement for human contact instead of as an aid to it. For example, instead of making friends to talk to, someone has created a AI ‘friends bot’ that you can share stuff with. (can’t find the link right now) Another genius created a whole social network that contains only AI bots that respond to your posts and create content.

I know making new friends can be scary at times but you need to find out what works for you. The stereotypical nerd who is anti-social is not something you want to aim for because that is absolute nonsense. You need to work with others if you want to succeed in life. If you are on the spectrum it can be harder for you to make friends but you need to see what works for you. One of my close friends is like that and we stay in touch over chat and emails as I know that they prefer non-verbal communications. With others I call or email or meet face to face. At one point a lot of my existing friends became busy with life (Got married/had kids etc) and I had to go out and make new friends so I started hiking and joined groups where we would go out for weekend trips or hikes. Ended up making new friends and actually met my wife in one of these trips. (Which was awesome!) I also have a lot of online friends that I have never met face to face (but I hope to when I can) and we email/message each other all the time.

Tech is awesome but nothing beats the human touch. Use Tech to enable/improve your connections/interactions but don’t make it a replacement for them.

– Suramya

September 29, 2024

BBMP Prohibits driving on road during rainy season instead of fixing the water logging

Filed under: Humor,My Thoughts — Suramya @ 11:37 AM

I guess actually fixing the problems with the drainage that cause the roads in Bangalore to get flooded would have been too much work for BBMP, so instead of fixing the root issue they prohibit driving on the road during rainy season (which is half the year in Bangalore).

Caution Driving on this road is prohibited during the rainy season
Caution Driving on this road is prohibited during the rainy season

This sign is on the Wind Tunnel road, posted recently.

– Suramya

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