Red Tape: Getting a police clearance certificate

I realized that I should have started this as a series when I first moved to India but I didn't think of it until recently. There are many "gotcha's" associated with getting any government work done in India which result in this "Damn. Now I know what to do next time" feeling. However, many tasks (e.g. getting a Marriage Certificate) are such that one rarely needs to do them more than once.
So I figured I'd put down at least one such experience in writing for the benefit of others.
Please update this information by leaving a comment

What: Getting police certificates from the regional passport office, and the local police station in Bangalore.

Why: In my case, it was to apply for a visa.

Est. Time: 1 week (at minimum), 3-4 weeks normal time.

In order to expedite, you'll need a letter explaining why. If it's for business purposes, it should be on company letterhead. If for personal purposes (as in my case) make sure that you can explain the reason in one sentence, and that the letter is written in formal style.

For pretty much every step, you'll need a recent photo. Keep a stack of them and a glue stick with you at all times.

Summary of Events

1. You submit all the applications
   
2. The request for passport clearance is forwarded from the passport office to the commisioner's office to the local police station.
   
3. The police clearance request is forwarded from the commisioner's office to the local police station.
   
4. The local police check your records and residence and get a statement from your neighbors.
   
5. The applications travel back along the same route they came
   
6. You pick them up at their respective starting points
   

Hopefully this will help you waste less time in the process.

Step x where x < 4: Get familiar with the local police station

Since both requests will finally come to the local police station, you should go there at some point before completing step 5, and get to know the person who'll do the verification. Explain your urgency, and ask him for any documents that he'll need so that, once the requests get to him, he can complete his end of things ASAP. In my case this guy was really nice and did all he could to help me get things done quickly.

Step 1: Money

Passport Office

Accepts Cash

Commisioner's Office

The commisioner's office requires that you first go to the State Bank of Mysore, Treasury Branch and remit Rs. 200 to account number 005500103004. You'll need to specify "for PCC" and supply your name and address as you'll want listed on the certificate.
You don't have to do this in person; I was able to send my driver to take care of this. However, I didn't know that it needed a name and address and he just guessed the spellings of both, so he had to do it again, this time with a PostIt with my name and address written on it.
Time:My driver said that there was a line for this as well, and it took about three hours.

Step 2: Forms

Passport Office

• Form 2
  
• Personal Particulars Form in duplicate (pages 10-13) and index card (page 3) from the passport application form
  
• Passport (make sure you make copies of the important pages and visas in your passport first, because they'll hold onto your passport once you submit the application).
  

Commisioner's Office

The forms required at the commisioner's office are not available online. You may be able to ask someone to get them for you though I'm not sure. That process is optmized for wasting your time.
Show up at the office called "Single Window" at the commisioner's office. There is an 'enquiry desk' at the front which supplies you with forms and information. If the guy there is in a good mood, you may be able to get a blank form from him up front. If you're having someone take care of the bank stuff for you, they can try getting you that form at the same time.
Time: Should take about 10-20 minutes depending on the size of the line.

Step 3: Submit the applications

Passport Office

Show up at the passport office a little before 8am. The counter only opens at 9:45, but the line starts at 7:45 or 8:00am.
What to bring:

• Proof of address
  
• Forms with photo
  
• Cash (About Rs. 300 I think)
  

You'll stand in line where they'll check your paperwork and give you a token number. Then you wait for your number to be called at which point they'll take your money and passport and give you a receipt. Make copies of this ASAP.
Time: If you get in line before 8am, you could be done as early as 10:30am.

Commisioner's Office

Show up in the morning around 10 or 11am; you should be able to head there right after going to the passport office. You'll need:

• Proof of address
  
• Form with photo
  
• Receipt from the bank
  

Even if there's a big crowd when you enter, that's either people waiting in line to pick up the stupid form and figure out the process, or foreigners on long term stays registering their presence. Just go to the line in front of the window that says 'police verification' (number four, I think).
After submitting the application, you'll get a receipt. Make copies for safe keeping.
Time: About 10-20 minutes.

Step 4: Check for the request from the passport office

At the commisioner's office, there is a big room at the front (facing Infantry Road) where you can go to check on the status of a verification. It should take a day or three for the request to get from the passport office to the commisioner's office; I wasn't able to figure out how to speed this process up.
When you walk in, you'll be confused; there are windows up front, but no lines leading up to the window. Sitting in front of the window will not result in someone coming to help you. The right thing to do is to observe for a few minutes and find someone who looks like they work there (you'll know by the fact that they keep coming and going from behind the restricted area).
Catch a hold of one of them and ask them to check on the status of the passport verification. Give them the original receipt and they'll go back into a room somewhere and search through their files to tell you if they've gotten the request.
Once they've gotten the request, move on to the next step.
Time:About 20 minutes each time you decide to go there and check.

Step 5: Expediting the process

The requests for verification could sit around for a while in the commisioner's office and we want to avoid that. Once you find out that the passport request has been received, find out if the police certificate request (that you submitted at the commisioner's office has been forwarded to the local police station or not). If it hasn't, then you'll need to complete the following steps for both requests:

1. Go wait in line outside the DCP (Deputy Commisioner of Police), Intelligence's office along with your urgency letter and receipts for the requests and request him to let you take the requests 'by hand' to the local police station. He'll sign on the two receipts. His office is in a different building in the Commisioner's Office compound.
   
2. Wait in line outside the ACP (Assistant Commisioner of Police)'s office and ask him to . This is inside the big room when you find out about status. It's on the right when you go in. Hopefully he'll grant your request by signing on the receipts as well.
   
3. The ACP should instruct someone to go and prepare a sealed envelope containing both requests.

Time:About 45-60 minutes to get both signatures.

Step 6: Local Verification

This may vary. The cop dictated two long statements to me which I had to sign. Both were along the lines of "I am such-and-such person living at this address. I require police clearance / passport verification for the purposes of blah. I've provided the following documents as proof of residence. I request you to please provide the verification".
The cop came to my building and got a sworn statement from the building manager as well. Two huge packets consisting of the requests, along with address proof and statements were then signed by the head of the local police station (I forget his official title). Finally, they needed to stick my pictures in two registers, which I had to sign.
Thanks to an urgency letter, the responses were given back to me in an envelope and I was able to take this, by hand, back to the commisioner's office.
Time: Because I'd done a lot of ground work (i.e. been there many times), the actual physical verification took about an hour. I'd reserve about half a day to write the statements, provide address proof, and to get the appropriate statements and signatures.

Step 7:One down, one to go!

With the forms completed by the local police station, I was able to go back to the commisioner's office and submit them there. Again, just catch hold of someone and request to speak to the guy in charge of police verifications. If he's sweet, he might agree to complete the process that day itself.

Passport Verification

Just submitting the forms is not enough, you need to request that you are assigned a GR number. This should ensure that it is available for pickup from the passport office the next day.

Commisioner's Verification

The receipt for your verification would have listed a pickup date 3 weeks in the future. In order to pick it up before this date, you'll need to get signatures again from the DCP of Intelligence and ACP. Show them the urgency letter and hope that they approve your request. If they do, you should be able to take this back to the Single Window and get one your police certificate. Woohoo! One down, one to go!
Time:About half a day. Once you submit the local police reports, you should wait there to make sure you get the GR nubmer.

Step 8: Expediting the Passport Verification

Show up at the passport office a little before 11am with

• your receipt
  
• a personal statement of urgency
  
• some proof of urgency (e.g. a company letter) and, of course,
  
• one more photo.

In the front of the Bangalore office, two guards jealously guard the entrance to the "Tatkal" (expedited) area. Show them your proof of urgency and they'll let you in. Go up one floor and a security guard will give you yet another form, and direct you to stand/sit in a line.
When you get to the window, someone will check your paperwork and ask you to meet the Assitant Commisioner. You'll be shuffled along to another line outside his office. Explain your circumstances to him, and he may approve that you be provided your passport the same day or the next day.
Time: If you get there just before 11am, you should be done by about 12:30pm.

Step 9: All done!

On the day you're meant to receive your passport back, you show up at the passport office between 4 and 6pm. Show your receipt, and the guards will let you go back up to the same Tatkal hall. Do not bother standing in line.
They have this funky process whereby they call out 15 names or so over the PA system. Those 15 people are expected to go to the counter and pick up their passports (they'll call out the names again in the same order). If you don't show up, they'll try calling your name again in a little while.
While this may entice you to show up at 5:30pm, I'd recommend going a little earlier just in case (remember; they strive to waste as much of your time as possible, and may come up with some even less efficient system by the time you read this).


And that's it! After many man hours of effort, repeated visits to the passport office, the commisioner's office, and your local police station; you would have gotten your certificates!

Appendix A: Address Proof

I have had serious problems with address proof in India. My landlady provides a phone and gas connection, and the electricity bill is in her name. The following documents are NOT considered valid address proof:

• Phone bills from private companies
  
• Your lease
  
• Credit Card bills
  
• Bank statements from a non government bank

Finally, I was able to use my tax "Saral" (a stamped piece of paper saying that you've filed taxes) as proof of address.
I recommend getting a gas or govt. phone line in your name even if for no other reason than to provide address proof.

Appendex B: Bribery

I'm the worst person to comment on this, as I don't really know how to offer someone a bribe. I'm also not at all comfortable with it.
There were certain steps in this process where the people concerned, after completing my job in a somewhat timely manner, asked for money. I paid. There were other cases where there was no request for money but I had been helped. I asked to make sure the person would not be offended, and paid. I paid more in the second case because I felt that the person had been sincere and I think honesty is rarely rewarded in India. It was ironic and possibly defeated the purpose to reward honesty with what could be construed as a bribe.

done!

Though I can't believe it myself, today is my very last day at the Amazon office in Bangalore. I came here in October 2004.

The last few months have been somewhat crazy; I've been out of the office a lot for personal (family) reasons. So leaving today seems even more sudden.

But I'm quite excited. Tomorrow afternoon I'm catching a flight to Goa. We are going with Romain/Elise and Sanjay/Ashima; Vikas/Pooja join us on Friday morning, and Praveen joins us on Saturday morning. We're going to South Goa (Pallolem beach) where I haven't been before; I'm looking forward to the usual fish curry and rice, as well as some motorcycling. We'll hang out there over the weekend and then head over to Belgaum and Sangli/Miraz to hang with some family.

After that, things are somewhat unclear. If nothing more spectacular comes my way by middle/end of February(hint, hint!), I'm currently set to take up a really cool position back at Amazon Seattle starting March 1st. That leaves me with most of February to wrap up here as well as do some sightseeing.

That is so far unplanned; we're considering visiting some friends in SE Asia, or spending time seeing areas like the Northeast of India, or Rajasthan.

Obviously, both of us have mixed emotions about going back. We're excited and looking forward to it, but at the same time we've spent the past month (and will probably spend the next month) constantly pointing out things that we'll miss about India.

In terms of stuff we're taking back, we've picked up (and will pick up more) a bunch of small knick-knacks; some art work, and some really cool furniture. Oh, and of course, two heads full of wonderful memories.

Happy New Year

I'm a little late with the New Year wishes but since this is my first post of the new year, I figured it's legit.

It's eid today; I was trying to catch an autorik to go somewhere today and went out on the main road to find throngs of muslims blocking the main road. They had their prayer mats laid down and were kneeling and prostrating as prayers were chanted over a loudspeaker. It was an awesome sight. S is going out to take a look, and will hopefully catch something on video that I can upload.

Last week we went to Chennai for the day. We had a few hours to kill in the afternoon and were trying to figure out what to do. Someone suggested the museum so I reluctantly agreed, figuring that we'd just stop by for a while and move on to the beach. I'm glad we went. It was the best Rs 15. I've spent in a long time! The buildings themselves were grand and very picturesque. The exhibits were also fascinating - they had lots of bronzes and stone carvings from various periods in India history.

S and I didn't do much for New Years. We were in Pune at the time. On the 30th, we went out with my sister and brother-in-law to this cool little lounge called 'Kiva' that plays very upbeat 70s/80s music that just makes you want to move. We got pretty drunk there. On the 31st I was sick, and everyone was a little exhausted so we just hung out at home and chatted and watched some TV. S baked a cake which got ready at midnight, so we ate that and drank some dessert wine.

That's all. We're planning on leaving India in a few months, which brings with it quite a mix of emotions; excited to move on, but sad to leave behind lots of great memories. These days I'm busy trying to wrap things up at work and at home. S has been given a license to go nuts shopping since there're so many little gifts and such that we want to take with us.

passionate about your customers

Joel has a great article on how he sped up the process of shipping dvds. Joel is a prolific writer on software development, and runs a software company. Which is why I was surprised that he put three days of effort into building a kickass mailing system instead of getting some other company to do it.

Why he did that is explained here

sloppy, yahoo!

ugh. yahoo! buys del.icio.us, and now I get this<:
I'm disappointed. They should have error handlers that prevent detailed errors like this being shown to users.

System error
error:   Can't call method "prepare" on an undefined value at /www/del.icio.us/comp/user/get line 13.
context:   
...   
9:   my $usedb = 'master';
10:   my $ret;
11:   
12:   if (!$auth_user) { $usedb = 'user' }
13:   if (!exists ($db->{$usedb})) { $usedb = 'master' }
14:   $user_name_q->{$usedb} = $db->{$usedb}->prepare('select * from users where user_name = ?');
15:   my $query = $user_name_q->{$usedb};
16:   $query->execute(lc($user_name));
17:   
...   
code stack:   /www/del.icio.us/comp/user/get:13
/www/del.icio.us/comp/settings/antisocial:52
/www/del.icio.us/site/settings/dhandler:9
/www/del.icio.us/site/autohandler:110
raw error



Can't call method "prepare" on an undefined value at /www/del.icio.us/comp/user/get line 13.


Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 131
HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "prepare" on an undefined value at /www/del.icio.us/comp/user/get line 13.^J') called at /www/del.icio.us/comp/user/get line 13
HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__('dbh', 'DBI::db=HASH(0x1b66b20)', 'user_name', 'hbhanoo') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 134
HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x1d03aa0)', 'dbh', 'DBI::db=HASH(0x1b66b20)', 'user_name', 'hbhanoo') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1069
eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1068
HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, 'dbh', 'DBI::db=HASH(0x1b66b20)', 'user_name', 'hbhanoo') called at /www/del.icio.us/comp/settings/antisocial line 52
HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__('cookies', 'HASH(0x2fcb2b0)', 'tagview', 'list', 'browser', 'ff', 'bundleview', 'show', 'auth_user', 'hbhanoo', 'dbh', 'DBI::db=HASH(0x1b66b20)', 'tagsort', 'alpha', 'items', 10) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 134
HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x37d1ba0)', 'cookies', 'HASH(0x2fcb2b0)', 'tagview', 'list', 'browser', 'ff', 'bundleview', 'show', 'auth_user', 'hbhanoo', 'dbh', 'DBI::db=HASH(0x1b66b20)', 'tagsort', 'alpha', 'items', 10) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1074
eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1068
HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, 'cookies', 'HASH(0x2fcb2b0)', 'tagview', 'list', 'browser', 'ff', 'bundleview', 'show', 'auth_user', 'hbhanoo', 'dbh', 'DBI::db=HASH(0x1b66b20)', 'tagsort', 'alpha', 'items', 10) called at /www/del.icio.us/site/settings/dhandler line 9
HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__('dbh', 'DBI::db=HASH(0x1b66b20)', 'auth_user', 'hbhanoo', 'items', 10, 'tagview', 'list', 'tagsort', 'alpha', 'bundleview', 'show', 'cookies', 'HASH(0x2fcb2b0)', 'browser', 'ff') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 134
HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x21c9ab0)', 'dbh', 'DBI::db=HASH(0x1b66b20)', 'auth_user', 'hbhanoo', 'items', 10, 'tagview', 'list', 'tagsort', 'alpha', 'bundleview', 'show', 'cookies', 'HASH(0x2fcb2b0)', 'browser', 'ff') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1074
eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1068
HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, 'dbh', 'DBI::db=HASH(0x1b66b20)', 'auth_user', 'hbhanoo', 'items', 10, 'tagview', 'list', 'tagsort', 'alpha', 'bundleview', 'show', 'cookies', 'HASH(0x2fcb2b0)', 'browser', 'ff') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 760
HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x2fc7ed0)', 'dbh', 'DBI::db=HASH(0x1b66b20)', 'auth_user', 'hbhanoo', 'items', 10, 'tagview', 'list', 'tagsort', 'alpha', 'bundleview', 'show', 'cookies', 'HASH(0x2fcb2b0)', 'browser', 'ff') called at /www/del.icio.us/site/autohandler line 110
HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 134
HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x1b04180)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1069
eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1068
HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 338
eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 338
eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 297
HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x2fc7ed0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 134
eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 134
HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x2fc7ed0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 793
HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x1ac5e90)', 'Apache=SCALAR(0x27ced60)') called at (eval 43) line 8
HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache=SCALAR(0x27ced60)') called at /dev/null line 0
eval {...} at /dev/null line 0

Update: Also, auto-complete for tags (when posting a new link) seems to not be working anymore. What happened to the kickass del.icio.us site that we know and love?

VOIP

So I signed up for this service called SkypeIn - offered by skype. I now have a US number where you can call me and my laptop will ring in India. Contact me for the phone number.
PS: remember that I'm still in India; don't call me in the middle of the night! Check here before calling me.

origami

check out this podcast about origami. If you don't have 15 minutes to listen to it, check out this site and click on the 'science' section. It's amazing! I didn't know there was so much depth to origami.

fc goodness

just catching up on a few months worth of fc posts:

From The Value of Rough Seas

In life, it's the rough patches that build your strength and character. They test you. They make you dig deeper, think harder, and risk more. Use them to your advantage. Don't play the victim. Get up and get creative. It's what you do when the going gets tough that defines you.

In a separate post, they recommended Clapton's GuitarClick on the 'look inside the book' link to read a few pages from it.
From OXO's Favorite Mistakes

"Everybody talks about their successes, but the failures, the mistakes, are the most interesting things," says Alex Lee, OXO's president. "Our wrong assumptions lead to the best learning."

From Dr. Brilliant Vs. the Devil of Ambition

That is why Brilliant has devoted his life to understanding that one simple, puzzling mantra: "Live your life without ambition. But live as those who are ambitious." Do that, and you discover the discipline of living an authentic life -- and of living hard, as if each day counts. That said, there is no mistaking that Brilliant is, well, weird. He is maybe three statistical variations from the norm, which he also fully accepts.

Dublin, Helsinki, Montreal, Sydney, and Vancouver are listed as FC's global fast cities.

weddings!

The last couple of weeks have been hectic.
Last weekend, a bunch of us took a Friday night bus to Goa, to throw a bachelor party for Vikas. It wasn't too crazy but we did spend the entire weekend relaxing, getting massages, drinking (banana milkshake mixed with Old Monk dark rum was the unofficial beverage sponsor) and eating (goan spicy sausage, prawn-curry-and-rice, prawn-stuffed-papad).

This past Friday afternoon, S and I flew to Kolkotta to attend Naveen's wedding. We went out for dinner and drinks with some of his highschool friends on Friday night, and followed it with an evening of gambling. I don't gamble on principle, but it looked like a lot of fun and I was pretty tempted to join in. Instead I sat back and enjoyed the Black Label that Sahel graciously provided. On Saturday we ate, did a superfast city tour (the Victorial Memorial is breathtaking; S ate some Mishti Dahi, Roshogollas, and Sondesh), came back and ate again, and then got ready for the evening reception (yes, they had a reception before their wedding). The reception was at an amazing location next to some body of water. They had fireworks, candles floating on the water, unimaginable amounts of food (I guess the latest thing in Indian weddings is to have a bunch of food stalls where you can get different types of food; they had everything from mediterranian and domino's pizza, to north indian and chaat).

On Sunday morning, we took a flight to Delhi and hung out at my parents place in Gurgaon. Monday morning we went to the US Embassy to take care of some business and then drove to Chandigarh for Vikas's wedding.

I missed out on all of the heavy pre-wedding drinking with Vikas (they were up till 6am on Monday morning) but the wedding was awesome. Both Vikas and Pooja looked fantastic. My wife, though, will soon be publishing a treatise on Why Punjabi Weddings Should Not Be Late at Night. The actual wedding ceremony started at about 2am (outdoors) and it was frikkin cold. Luckily, I was wearing a set of heavy wool robes that I picked up in Ladakh earlier this year so I was nice and toasty.

On Tuesday we drove back to Delhi and almost missed our flight back to Bangalore (they had closed check-ins but I had been able to call ahead so they had blocked seats for us). I was extremely stressed out.

Now I'm back and should really get cracking on all of the piled up work.

usability

This article from a list apart talks about website usability and how design choices have a serious impact on site performance.

One of the things that I love (and amazes me) about amazon is that they have a really cool framework that allows you to test any design changes to the site. Almost all design changes go through this 'weblab' process which calculates the statistical impact of a certain change on various things (purchases, add-to-carts, etc. - I don't know the actual set of metrics we track).

Design is a wierd and sometimes counterintuitive thing. I couldn't guess which was the most usable site out of the three listed in the article above. I think the discipline of constantly collecting and analyzing metrics goes a long way.

news

news in india is not perfect; my wife often complains about the newspapers carrying mostly local news and only a page of international news. That said, the other media (magazines, tv) have pretty good coverage of international events.

I was having a conversation last week where I mentioned to a friend that, while I can't find much to complain about living in the US, the one thing that infuriates me is the subconscious messages that tell you that the world ends at the US borders (often accompanied by a very 'holier than thou' attitude towards the rest of the world). I'm not eloquent or observant enough to put my finger on exactly what it is that causes that, or even to be able to enumerate the ways in which it manifests itself. But the feeling was undeniable while I was there.

Although living in Bangalore is not always pleasant (dirt, dust, pollution - all the things I promised never to complain about if I moved to India) what I love about being in India is the feeling of being part of a world that is much larger, and much more diverse than the US of A.

On a different note, check out Toxic truths from the Iraqi battlefront.

artificial artificial intelligence

Amazon Web Services released a beta version of mechanical turk last week. see here for a description of the term.

What does Turk have to do with Web Services? Mechturk is a framework that allows people to get paid for tasks that humans are much better at than computers (e.g. image recognition). But it allows applications to submit those tasks. So the tables are suddenly turned and we have this apocolyptic scenario where applications submit tasks, and you have a bunch of humans plugged into a system, doing jobs for the applications. How whack is that?

Without hyperboling, it actually takes outsourcing to the next level. It may change the economics of research; at least for a short while. Why bother putting millions of dollars of research into something like image classification when you can outsource it on a massive scale to people all around the world for a fraction of the cost?

I think a lot of economists, philosophers, computer scientists, criminals, and sociologists are going to have a fun time thinking/talking/writing about mech turk.

Stallone

On the way to work today my cab driver, in slightly broken english/hindi said something about "fistblood, rumble,film?" After some clarification it turns out that he was asking me if I'd seen any of the Rambo movies. According to him my face looks like Stallone's. Funny.

update According to imdb, him and I do share the same birthday, though he's 32 years older than me.

ps: in hindsight, maybe Stallone's great acting and stellar portrayal of the I hate being in 'nam and I'm gonna kick your ass look and my I hate going to work and I'm gonna kick your ass look have something in common. ;)

go start a company

... but first, listen to this podcast, Paul Graham speaking at OSCON 2005.

Oh and also go watch The Corporation.

And then go create something.

pent up thoughts

some pent up thoughts from not having blogged in a while...

The other day my wife was complaining about how I'm too skinny. And it got me thinking. For my entire life, I've had relatives make comments like "hey - you've lost weight since we last saw you!", "you should eat more!", and "you're all skin and bones!"

I have tried retorting with the very logical "You say that everytime. If it really were true, I'd be non-existant by now." but that usually just gets brushed off and is followed by some oily snack being thrust in my face.

Anyways, it got me thinking how ridiculously biased society is. No one meets an overweight relative and makes comments like "hey - you've put on so much weight since we met!", or "you should really cut back on your food", or "you're all lard!". Why is it acceptable to publicly make fun of skinniness but not of fatness?

:) I'm not all that bothered by it, but I think the next time someone says I look skinny, I'm going to tell them that they look like an elephant.

On a totally unrelated note. Today I went to play tennis and this guy was just getting off the court from practicing; he was just picking up a basket worth of balls and putting them into his bag. After he was done, he went back to the court, bent over and touched it with both hands, lingered there for a few moments, straightened up, and touched his hands to his heart and then his forehead. The gesture was so pregnant with reverence and sincerity, that I was moved and disoriented afterwards. It wasn't a quick, ritualistic, obligatory movement; but slow, deliberate, and sincere.

On the one hand, gestures like these are so built into Indian culture (a similar gesture is used as an apology for accidentally touching someone with your feet) that most of the time they are done in a very obligatory-type manner (quick, unthinking, instinctive). On the other hand, the idea of revering your 'craft' (sort of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"-like) is just built into most people.

Two examples of that: Almost every driver (chauffer) I have seen will fold their hands in prayer for a few seconds before starting the car for the first time in the day. Second, the other day there was a festival during which people gave the instruments of their craft a day of rest, and worshipped them. I know of a few IT companies where all the servers were shut down in the morning, coconuts broken and prayers and sweets offered before they could be brought back up in the afternoon.

the depths of your heart.

I've been a fan of Trevor Romain's blog for a while. It's a good daily dose of feedgoodness.

Among other things, it (his blog) gave me the inspiration to attempt to start drawing. Yesterday I was just feeling an alltime low at work so I left early to go home. My wife was feeling the same way so we went out to Gangarams (a stationary + book store in Bangalore) and bought a notebook, pencil, and some pens. Then we went and hung out at Infinitea - a chic tea store on Cunningham road. I drew a few pictures, and she got started on a story she's been meaning to write.

I remember when I was a kid, my mom would learn various art forms (oil and water painting, sculpting, sketching) from a teacher (Anna Aunty). A bunch of ladies would get together at our house and paint and gossip under Anna Aunty's guidance. Well one time I decided that I wanted to try as well. I was so distraught at the outcome that I decided that I couldn't draw.

My abilities haven't changed much but, after reading Trevor's blog, I've realized that it's okay to not draw masterpieces as long as they reflect the depths of your heart.

At the beginning of next year, I want to take some time off work and head up North to the Himalayas and learn to kayak, as well spend a week or so at one of the numerous ashrams. Thoughts of being in the mountains again and battling a gushing river have been going through my head for the past week (uh. sorry. tilt your head 90 degrees to the left):



I'm hosting this picture on our media - I'm surprised they don't have a way of scaling down images - so sorry if it takes a while to download.

star traffic police

On Saturday we were driving around the Commercial Street area in Bangalore. At the busy intersection right near Commercial Street was a traffic policeman (wonder of wonders) dressed in a smart blue uniform. He was stopping traffic for pedestrians, stopping vehicale who were trying to cut red lights, and generally doing a fantastic and whole-hearted job.

We thought he must've been a private cop hired by the commercial street shopkeepers to keep order in the area. But low and behold, he was actually a Karnataka state cop. I felt pretty proud and gave him a big smile and wave. I wish I could remember the name I read on his badge. Whoever you are; keep it up.

On a side note; if the Bangalore Police allowed volunteers to do traffic police duty, I would gladly volunteer my time for that. I go berserk when people break traffic rules. The worst part is that they look at me like I'm a freak for doing things like stopping at red lights. grr

time to move on

I've fallen in love with the following lyrics from Tom Petty's "Time to Move On":

It's time to move on, time to get going
What lies ahead I have no way of knowing
But under my feet, baby, grass is growing
It's time to move on, it' s time to get going

It's such a chill song, and it's whispering intimately to my heart right now.

six dumbest ideas in computer security

The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security has some great stuff. (link from osnews)

fc goodness

from Digital Competition

Communication is a big part of making deals. One minute, I could be talking to three guys with pimples in a garage; the next, I could be speaking with the CEO of Deutsche Telekom. The most important thing is to get rid of all your prejudices. You have to open your mind. It doesn't matter if the people you're talking to are 22 years old or 57 years old. It doesn't matter what their color is, what their gender is, what language they speak, how big their company is, or even if they were a success before. The playing field today is a lot more level than ever before.

In Hollywood, you're expected to be intuitive. In the entertainment industry, you have people who have intuition and people who imitate. Nobody there analyzes. But for the most part, in our society, if you know and you don't know why you know, then obviously whatever you know doesn't matter -- which is stupid. If you have been right about things for 20 years, then you should be able to say, "I don't know why I know, but I know." If I'm hiring people, I don't want to know how they know, I just want to know that they have a good record of being right.

Interesting. Good intuitive decisions being applause, but when the bad intuition costs you money, I'm sure things hit the fan.

if you try to keep everything in your company under your own control, then your company has built its own coffin: It's limited by itself in every direction. If you think of your company as a box, then there should be only one side to the box. The rest of the box should be open.

From GM Has a New Model for Change

inside virtually all big companies -- is that you spend most of your time with people who are exactly like you. To counter this insularity, Ochalek, 43, lobbied to get his team out into the real world. Members of APEx went to work inside various car dealerships and visited with companies in different industries. They stopped attending auto shows and started going to Internet conferences, consumer-electronics trade shows, and toy fairs.