Yelläks /ˈyæl•eks/

“The Hindu” on 27/05/2011: A Steve Ballmer’s photo is shown in an article captioned: “Microsoft bets big on cloud computing” along with a photo. But it seems that the printing press a little bit of a surplus of red color making Mr. Ballmer’s face look like either a tomato or as if he stayed in the sun for too long. However disproving that the printing press had to much red is another article with a photo of Ratko Mladic (“‘Butcher’ Ratko Mladic arrested”) who had normal skin color, on the same page. Both imaged were scanned with the same settings.

So Mr. Ballmer, commonly known for his crazy appearances at conferences (have a look at the YouTube videos below), could have really had the red face due to high blood pressure after a choleric attack.

1. Steve Ballmer going crazy
2. Steve Ballmer – Developers
3. Ballmer sells windows1.0

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"The Hindu" from 27/04/2011, front page: While nations still remember and mourn for the victims of the catastrophe in Chernobyl decades ago, the article just next to it announces the construction of a nuclear power plant in Jaitapur. Believe in advanced technology and its disastrous effects, if something goes wrong, can rarely be seen so close to each other.

Links to the articles:

1. Chernobyl remembered
2. Green signal to Jaitapur nuclear project

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A minister and other VIPs got trapped in a lift ("The Hindu" from 14/04/2011), after it went nonstop through all desired stations and came to a halt in the basement. People desperate to free the trapped VIPs tried all kind of ideas. One idea was to use a hammer to open the doors. Ever tried to open sliding doors with brutal force directed towards them orthogonally (what else can you do with a hammer)? I mean, it will work, if you managed to bend them so much that the doors jump out of the guiding rails on top and bottom. Maybe this also works only, if you are lucky and the doors do not get jammed. Something small and long such as a screwdriver that fits into the gap between both sliding doors, might have been a better solution.

While the doors got manhandled, the VIPs were supplied oxygen from a pipe lowered from an upper floor. Question: How did those people open that door and how did the pipe find its way into the cabin? As far as I know, every lift has an exit in the ceiling of the cabin. So why not exit the lift through that opening? But I might be wrong here.

If the lift was not malfunctioning, it had a capacity to carry a load of 1360kg (or 20 persons) at maximum. Assuming that there will be some safety margin, it can carry 1500kg for sure and will not even operate, if the load sensor indicates a heavier load. Second assumption: Usually the physique of Indian males is much thinner and a little bit shorter than e.g. Westerners, who have usually a more sturdy body structure. Hence getting the lift overloaded with only 17 persons seems to be close to impossible. The VIPs appear to equal the political weights with their physical ones. One thing might be learned from that lesson: Next time, please take the stairs. It is a very good exercise.

(Disclaimer: This post contains many unqualified statements such as the trap door in the lift cabin and the assumptions of the load. Like the original article in the newspaper, this post is considered to be sarcastic.)

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Bangalore -> Pondicherry

I started my solo ride in the night from Thursday to Friday at around 4:30am after a restless and sleepless night. The morning was fresh and cool and soon Bangalore was far behind while traveling on NH-7 towards Hosur. To avoid the heat and the sun of the uncovered NH-7, I left it and turned right towards Rayakottai and on the same road further south east up to Harur, where I had breakfast. So far the roads were in a very good condition and the intensity of traffic was less. After Harur, the road is not descending anymore and every little hill can be felt in the already exhausted legs. The sun burnt merciless and even the shadow of the dried up trees at the side of the road was not refreshing. Water consumption was very high and despite the fact, that I carried around 3.5 liters with me (when the bottles were fully refilled), it lasted only for approximately 50km, before the bottles went empty.
After reaching SH-6 I took a right through a small unpaved road for 5km after which the condition of the road became very good again. Following the unnamed river coming from the Sathanur Reservoir ensured no major climbs or downhills anymore. It became dark and the highway to and from Villupuram became very busy. Many times people on bikes road along with me trying to talk in Tamil. Usually I replied with “Enakke Tamil teriadu.” (I do not know Tamil. There might be a misspelling here, sorry for that). That was typically answered with the usual way, in which a question is formed in Tamil: adding a long aaaaaaa at the end of the just said sentence, such as: “Ohooo, Tamil teriadaaaaaa?” In any case, it was obvious, what they meant: Where are you going or where you are coming from? To cover both cases, I pointed forward saying “Pondicherry” and then pointed backwards with the thumb saying “Bangalore”. – “Bangalorraaaaaaaaaaaaa??? Ayyyyoooooo”.

In Pondicherry I had my last break due to a really bad cramp in both legs, front and back. No cycling and no walking anymore. Fortunately it went away after around 5 minutes in which I stood there at the side of the highway like a statue unable to move. Finally after 348.67km and after 18 hours and 46 minutes of riding (including breaks), I reached Pondicherry University and was warmly welcomed by my friends eagerly waiting for hours for me to arrive.

Pondicherry -> Bangalore

This time, I thought, yes, this time I am smart and beat the heat of the plain of Pondicherry by starting after sunset. Due to some emotional circumstances, I started rather late at around 9pm on Monday, but I wanted to cover as many kilometers as possible during the night. I also wanted to know, how it feels, when the shadows of the shrubs and trees zoom by in the darkness and through what problems the guys went during the Bangalore Brevets. It was disastrous. First of all I always overestimated the speed I am traveling: I assumed speeds of around 25 to 30kph which were in fact barely touching 20kph. The boards announcing the distances to Bangalore started at around 278km. After a felt hour of hard riding the next board announced, how much to go: 270km. I could not believe it. All the effort for a meager 8km. The thought crossed my mind: If I can only cover so much distance in that time with that effort, how will I manage the next 270km?

Nevertheless NH-66 to Tindivanam is very new and in an excellent condition. There are two NH-66 to Tindivanam: One is going through the villages (the old one), and the other one (which I took) bypasses all the speed breakers etc. In Tindivanam I continued on NH-66 towards Krishnagiri. But this portion of the highway is the worst I have ever seen. The whole night turned out to be one single pothole evading and dodging exercise. I decided that I take the bus from Thiruvannamalai or take a lodge. Just before I reached the town, I had an urgent call from Mother Nature. One advice: Do not eat chicken, egg noodles, etc the evening before, even if your friends just meant to help you. Punishment follows, guaranteed. Fortunately I got an additional bottle of water with me, so after successful unloading I felt quite refreshed and entered Thiruvannamalai. It seems that this town is a temple town and some sort of festival was approaching. So either lodges were filled, the receptionist did not answer my calls at something like 3:30AM in the morning, or the charges were quite high. In addition, no bus left that town into my direction. The buses only entered Thiruvannamalai from all sides. However since I still felt quite lighter (due to the unloading mentioned earlier ), I continued the dodging exercise till sunrise. In Chengam I hit my lowest point in my motivation graph so far. I was simply done. Done with everything, cycling, walking, done with the whole world.

I did not expect a bus leaving to Bangalore from Chengam, but some friendly cyclist going to driving school in the morning pointed me out into the right direction of the bus stop and fortunately for me, a bus was about to leave to Krishnagiri. YEAH! I though, you are my savior. The helpful villagers lifted my cycle onto the roof of the bus and tied it with a 15cm long rope (see photo below) onto the carrier. I sank in one of the seats and waited for the lift off, which came almost instantly. PATSCHAK! Pothole! My cycle on top made a loud banging noise when it hit on the roof again. The speeding driver used all his force to horn people, lorries and other obstacles (like potholes, which did not move, so the bus took them anyway) out of the way, while I sat inside observing the windows closely and expecting a large shadow flying by at any moment, followed by a crashing sound when my cycle hit the ground.

After arriving in Krishnagiri, I expected nothing to find, when I climbed up onto the roof of the bus. But the cycle was still there. Somewhere on the way, the short rope teared off and the cycle was sliding back and forth with the movement of the bus. So it had some scratches on the handlebar, but no major damage. For the whole trip in the bus (around 100km) I paid Rs.22 for the ticket and Rs.20 for the luggage. It was worth it.

I had breakfast in Krishnagiri and that charged my confidence again. With the impression that Hosur is only 50km away and Bangalore another 50km after that (roughly), I started my journey again. This time, no shade on NH-7 and somebody forgot to tell me that Krishnagiri is 411m above mean-sea-level, but Hosur is 750m. The sun got its big artillery canons out and happily roasted and toasted the poor, little, struggling and lonely cyclist down on earth. The climbs between Krishnagiri and Hosur are pure torture, even without the headwinds and despite the good road conditions. So far I do not know, if I like or dislike the headwinds. On one side they hampered my enthusiasm to move forward, on the other side they were cooling a lot. Riding in sticky air is probably more uncomfortable. Anyhow it is always like this: Whatever you do not have at a particular moment, you want the most. E.g. in the night, you want light to see the potholes, but during day, you complain about the heat.

[Show as slideshow]

Again the discussion started in my head: You must be crazy, take the bus. And I promised myself, in Hosur I will. But after reaching Hosur only a few kilometers need to be mastered, so I continued despite the fact that slowly the chain ran out of oil and started to make the famous grinding sound. So next time, if I go on such long trips, I will take a tiny little vessel with me containing oil. As a alternative, you can also go to some parked 2-wheelers at the side and flick some drops of oil out of their engine. But this idea I had just now.

I left NH-7 in Attibele and went towards Sarjapur. Then I continued on Sarjapur Road towards Outer Ring Road. As some people are aware, there is a big sports store on the very same road and I could not resist and went shopping for a while. Sweaty, stinky, dirty and salty all over the place. At least everybody could see that I am not a pseudo sport activist doing 30 mins walk a day and searching for a pair of shoes in the range of Rs.5000 to show off. Anyway I did not buy anything (apart from a refreshing lemon juice).

I continued on ORR to avoid the well known Bangalorean traffic, in which vehicles are more parked than moved and with a dry chain I reached IISc at around 5:15PM and 255.89km (excluding the distance covered by bus which was 80.73km). On Tuesday itself and after taking bath, I walked around like a penguin. My legs were stiff and my butt paining. So I decided to go to bed at 6pm. Surprisingly next morning I did not feel any side effects from the cycle tour.

Some things that I learned during the trip:

1. Take a rope with you. It should be around 3m long. First this will help to load and unload the cycle to the roof carrier of a bus, since you can hurl it up like a crane. Secondly you can secure the cycle properly.
2. Even if you have panniers, do not fill them up, just because you have the space. Remember, every gram you load, you have to carry along.
3. Eat well, but do it healthy. Avoid oily stuff in the night before.
4. Do not ride alone. Especially at night. It is not because of safety, it is because the trip in the night becomes so much longer and very boring and frustrating.
5. There is probably more points, but I will rediscover them next time

Distance of the tour: 348.67km (Bangalore to Pondicherry) + 336.62km (Pondicherry to Bangalore) = 685.29km

GPX files

• Bangalore to Pondicherry
• Pondicherry to Bangalore

The yellow section represents the part of the journey where I “cheated” (that I covered by bus). In the GPX download above I merged the separated sections into one single file, so that you can follow that route easily.

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It is interesting to see that in India many people do not even have access to clean and unpolluted drinking water. The wells in Bangalore used to be in the newspaper due to the delivery of contaminated water that people drank and as a result fell sick. Members of the Indian Institute of Science are truly privileged: They do not even drink water from one of the best sources available in Bangalore (Kaveri River), but also bath in it.

In general it seems that B-Mess boarders do not have nor heard about these problems at all. In fact no matter the season, B-Mess is so well supplied with the valuable wet liquid that taps are regularly left open by senseless students who are too lazy to close the tap after use. This photo has not been set up. It was like this, when I entered the wash room of B-Mess after taking pictures during the Notebook Drive. I never observed this kind of behavior in other messes. It seems that some people are so proud to study and solve problems in their highly scientific field that they forget that there is a world outside their four walls facing real life problems right now. The suffering of ordinary people outside is the price for our luxury. So we are privileged in what again?

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FIFA World Cup 2006 in Germany. At that time something happened that could not have been imagined: The Germans were proud of being German. A wave of euphoria and support for the German soccer team rolls through the country. A proud nation attaches small German plastic flags to the car windows which continue to decorate the sides of the highways after being ripped of while traveling at high speed. Though costing millions of Euro to make the German taxpayer feeling some patriotism and to achieve some positive thinking in the usual pessimistic seen world, no campaign (such as “Du bist Deutschland” – “You are Germany”) achieved, what a simple 22-players-running-after-a-ball game did.

German Patriotism is a difficult game to play. Not only the unforgettable and unforgivable crimes committed against humanity in the German history, but also a confrontation with Hitler and the national socialism reminds me as German about the debt that we still owe the world. Being German means to be ashamed at the same time. In the end Germany lost the world cup and after a few weeks the wave become a weak memory about old times. Back to normality means that conversations going like

Indian: “From where are you?”
Me: “I am from Germany.”
Indian: “Ah, Germany, nice country. Nice cars and …. Hitler”.

leave behind an uneasy feeling. Since school we learn that the years between 1933 and 1945 is the worst chapter in time period ever happened. Hitler and his closest followers become an impersonated evil. Achievements like the invention of radar, rocket technology (V-2), or jet engines or Hitler’s ability to reach, unite and fascinate millions of people (for whatever cause) fall silently below the table/syllabus and hence out of sight.

Patriotism in India is different. No cricket match like the ICC CWC last week, is played without enthusiastic fans waving the Indian flag shouting “India, India” in unison. Saying something negative about India to an Indian is often taken as a personal insult. Indians love their country. Many go abroad for studies and work, but most of them return having a feeling that they owe something to their home country. And that is definitely one thing the Germans who have everything what they can think of, should learn.

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Yesterday emotions could not be controlled anymore. The Indian cricket team won the world championship. Actually the team won the championship 3 times in the last 2 weeks: Once versus Australia in the quarter-finals, another one against Pakistan in the semifinals and now against Sri Lanka in the last and final match. The latter matches were screened in a fully packed Gymkhana Main Hall of IISc to witness the event when the Tiger fought against the Lion.

And that is the sound of India becoming world champion: ICC CWC India WorldChampion (Ogg file).

[Show as slideshow]

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There is a saying: “Never trust any statistics which you is not forged by yourself”. Unfortunately this is not known to an author who published an article in “The Hindu” newspaper captioned “Alcohol consumption starts at the age of 18” today. As usual the consumption of alcohol and its side effects (read: results of consumption of unhealthy quantities of alcohol) is discussed again in great detail as many times before. However this time the author wants to show, how deteriorated the situation actually is by citing from several studies.

From the article (first sentence): “Nearly 30 to 35 per cent of adult men and five per cent of women are regular consumers of alcohol in India.” Let’s do a little bit math, shall we? Based on the latest census (which coincidentally got published today as well), there are 1.210.193.422 people in India of which 623.724.248 are males and 586.469.174 are females. If I am polite towards the cited study, I will take only 30% of the males and 5% of the females, which are 187.117.274 and 29.323.458 respectively. So in the end around 215 million citizens of India drink alcohol regularly.

Somewhere later in the article: “It quoted the data from the International Wine and Spirits Record and said the sale of alcohol litre cases went up from 72,000 in 2000 to 200 million in 2009.” If I make an assumption greatly in favor of the author and the study, the sale of alcohol liter cases/bottles doubled between 2009 and 2011. That means, you have to distribute 400 million liters among 215 million people. So everybody gets a little bit less than 2 one liter bottles for a whole year (assuming there are only regular drinkers here). I think, many have crossed that limit already long time ago and hence abstinence must be strictly maintained till the end of this year.

That raises another question: How many bottles are sold which have a capacity less than 1 liter? Many Vodka, Rum and wine bottles come in 750ml bottles. In fact the question is: What liquor is sold in 1 liter bottles at all? So these numbers do not tell anything. It would have been more informative to get to know, how many liters of hard and soft liquor is sold and not how many bottles.

Another issue: What means “regular consumers of alcohol”? If somebody drinks once in a year on 1st of January, is it regular? If the same guy drinks randomly one day, then has 2 days break, drinks again, has 5 days break, drinks again, has 3 days break and so on is this irregular?

Finally in the text there is only one sentence that honors the huge title given to the article and here it is: “The earliest age at which alcohol is consumed has changed significantly – from 28 years in 1980 to 18 years in 2010″. To figure out the reasons for that statement would have meant some investigation work that is apparently missing here. Instead the results of hazardous drinking is elaborated in great detail.

I am hoping that the author finds this blog entry. If I want to read that kind of articles, I would have ordered Deccan Herald or the Bangalore Mirror. But to let the quality of your article sink even lower, here is one tip: Please check out, how much alcohol contains anti-cough sirup. Then the time, in which somebody gets in touch with alcohol is at the age of an infant. How does this look? I am hoping that this is dramatic enough.

“The Hindu” was a lot better some time ago. Nowadays it is filled with commercials which are so big that there is no space left for text on the front, first, last, second last page and not to forget, some pages in between. What a waste of resources to advertise Eco friendly cars.

I think to digest the newspaper, I need something to drink now. Cheers!

PS: If the reader finds any sarcasm in this article, you are hereby unconditionally allowed to keep it.

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