Recollection of three incidents... one triggering the next :)

(1) - Better change to IT industry sir...

I had to rush to attend a talk. I crossed the road and wave at a couple of auto rickshaws before this auto driver stops. He seemed to know the particular auditorium and I hopped into it. The auto snaked it way through the Bangalore city traffic encountering traffic signals every now and then. In one such long red-signal, the driver started talking to me.

Are you basically from Karnataka sir?
- nopes, not really. I am from Tamil Nadu.
Oh, then you speak better kannada...good.
- actually I have lived here for close to five years.
hmmm, so what do you work on sir?
- well, I am an engineer, working on electronics.
oh, is it. My son also got into Bharat Electronics and will be into software. Why dont you also try to change into IT sir?
- why so?
If you are ten years experienced in SW, you can earn little less than a lakh rupees per month. You cannot be in any other industry
- hmmm yes, you are true, but I like it.
Its not what you like sir, its which work gets you the max money.
- ok sir, I will try.

I get down and pay the fare. Walking back from the auditorium after the talk, I was pondering on what the auto driver was telling couple of hours ago, that I remembered my communicator chat conversations with a freshman @ HCL and he was in fact asking me some difficult questions

(2) Pay, Onsite, Offers...

That I am into this electronics HW field now, what should I learn on?
- Its mostly applying what you have studied in college, you have to go understand the higher perspective on the go...
Oh, fine fine, can you suggest me any books?
- Read the 'High Speed - Black Magic' book. (In fact many of us have kept the book down after reading few pages).
Tell me which field in better - HW, Firmware or software applications?
- In terms of ?
In terms of pay, onsite and of course job opportunities.
- All are good.
You are in this field for six years, how much do you earn?
(I close the communicator chat - In fact my father asked me this only once in all this six years)

(3) Return paths can be anyway,

My hands feel the thick engravings of a fresh one-hundred rupee note. With a ruffling sound, I take the note from my wallet and paid my dinner bill. Smiling at Gandhi back, I was forced to recollect this young man with a smiling face whom I interviewed. It was my first experience of interviewing people for electronics HW job. The whole day, I was meeting people mostly from the power electronics background, a field that I had no hands-on experience. I was literally tired after 3-4 hours of this. Lastly came this resume came and came this guy. He was one year elder to me working in Bangalore for a French company. He was good in explaining the projects. Good.
Then came the time when I saw some specific eda tool in his resume which he claimed he knew. Probing a little in I figured out he has not worked in the tool at all...ok fine, he might have been good in analysing the results. So one final question on high-speed current return path and the reply left me completely aghast. I felt like kicking that guy. Politely I had to reject this candidate.

By first incident, I was surprised by the extent of brainwashing that IT has done to the society. By the second incident, I felt how much our system of education has trained people to focus on money alone. The third incident I felt how much our IT and education system combined has left people totally waste.

We all want to earn a better living and never yearn for one !!!

Litter - they are no good until you reduce their usage!

Plastics... these interlinked molecules have explored places which even normal man would not. We can achieve that inch-by-inch coverage of land as plastics do, but require exhaustive patience. Travelling by rail in India will give you an insight on how plastics has influenced our daily lives. More than that it throws light on the amount of litter we generate due to sheer ignorance.

Intercity train from Bangalore starts early morning and does one round-trip to Coimbatore in a day. Approximately it travels 400 kms, carrying more than 1000 people. This generates say litter of 1000 paper plate equivalent in a day. In the same line we have some more than two dozen trips every day. 24*1000 ~ 25k paper plates. Considering 10cm radius plates, it will take the plates to cover the entire stretch of surface area in three years.

Though paper degrades compared to plastics, it takes years. Also the paper plates have typical coating which again makes it non-degradable. So much of litter, and so much ignorant we are that we might one day be consumed by floods. Poor water, if we do not leave it drain fast into the earth, where will that go?

Reuse, reduce and recycle (we must first discard properly, segregate and then recycle!!!)
This herculean task can be accomplished only by the power of our minds and not just by yet another govt. policy