Bus-ing helps! Proof is good :)

http://bangalorebuzz.blogspot.com/2010/02/pollution-levels-dropped-on-bus-day.html

And thats just a few folks who tried the bus on the day. If each one of us makes a bit of an effort to 'get used' to busing/cycling/walking just a little more, think of the awesome positive impact that can have on our city, our air, our health, our lives! 

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Rubbish!

This is very very critical information - please do watch the full video.

 

We often worry about plastics, and sometimes about garbage strewn visibly. But the whole picture is so scary. And even scarier is our lack of action on this, and the attitude of "oh but I've paid my taxes" and "out of sight, out of mind" that seems to define our approach.

Shall we set a few personal goals ? And maybe derive a few apartment/community level ones from the same ?

• Start with the most important of them all - segregate. Yeah for starters "it'll all get mixed later" is true, but keep doing it anyway.
• Lets send out as little organic waste in the bins as we can. Compost at home ?
• Reduce the "throw the trash out" frequency to a third of what it is ? Given that 60-70% is organic, this should be doable!
• Get into the recycling food chain. I'm gonna try and find out resources on this and update, for Bangalore.
• As communities, explore biogas options ? What are those usable for ?

I do think larger and larger hordes of us having become "consumers" is a self-destruct mode as far the planet and species is concerned. Personally, we'll try and bring some changes to our lives, at the least. The composting and lowered trash-disposal happen to a certain extent already, but probably not as aggressively as should be given our responsibility as citizens of our city and planet.

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"Alternative for waterproofing?"

I was asked that question by @flipkartdotcom in response to the feedback I gave them once I got my first set of books ordered there delivered - in really good shape and within the promised time, I must add.

Question : how do we solve this plastic-derived-convenience issue ? Undeniably, the books might suffer a bit if there were no plastic wrapping (tho, of course, one wrapper for both might have used at least a little lesser). Its a question of probabilities, but the cost we, as a society, are willing to pay in our quest to be 100% on service, on convenience, etc, is not really being counted economically. Obviously, I do not expect Flipkart, a fledgling startup, to start charging consumers an additional fee for plastic wrapping - they've got to stay competitive - but somewhere, our 'needs' consumers themselves need to be redefined, and policymakers need to ensure some of these:

• The usage of plastics in packing, shipping etc, must come at a cost thats reflective of its entire lifecycle, and the indirect costs in terms of landfills, health issues, loss of agricultural land, etc, so that

• alternatives are explored
• the need is pondered upon real hard on a case by case basis. A Bangalore delivery, in winter, by courier, wrapped in a very sturdy and "minor splash resistant" cardboard box, when the forecast indicates no rain - will probably not qualify if the cost barrier is not kept artificially low like it currently is.

The industry that introduces plastic, or any other material into the consumption cycle, MUST be made responsible to ensure they provide a collection mechanism for suchlike, as well. All tetrapack manufacturers, for instance, MUST be made to buy back a certain percentage of aluminum that is recycled from older packaging. 

The sad truth is that our dependence on plastics has gone up phenomenally - so much so that we cannot even see alternatives, or alternative paths, for many of our day to day needs. Its like a smoker who's lungs are beginning to give up, yet cannot give up on the habit. As a species, we're so screwed if we keep going down this path.

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What I need on Facebook

Facebook is up to 400 million users. Thats almost 6.7% of the world population! Awesome. 

What does it mean to me ? 

On the plus side, I've "reconnected" with a whole lot of folks from my past life. school, college, hometown - they're all in there. I've also connected with a lot many new connections that I forge through cycling, or other activity I participate in these days.

Amongst these, I get to know on an ongoing basis who's working in what part of the world, and who's had kids, and partied last night, and even the political, social views of many of these folks. Sometimes, I feel like an inadvertent voyeur!

Too broad a social landscape ? Too much info ? Some of these are context specific contacts, and while I do share some interests with them, I do not need to know every little detail in their lives, their friendships, their views on everything! In fact, with many there's little beyond the "Add as friend", and apart from having access to their inboxes, or walls, etc, there's little else by way of friendship or any sort of relationship. The context's too weak, and too distant, and its a farce, really. 

I certainly am interested in a smaller, tighter circle of friends, and have been actively thinking I need to keep my 'active social circle' much smaller, and more meaningful. Sure, I do interact with the larger set of people on specific interests, and it would be great to tap into their collective knowledge and wisdom on a need-basis - but without the full duplex intrusiveness of every little update from each others lives, social circles, etc. I might be old fashioned, but Facebook is not how my social life - at least the meaningful part of it - really operates. This was NOT that much of a problem when the number of connections was smaller, but the amount of fluff has grown manifold since. And turning a request down has since become some sort of a social faux pas.

There's opportunity for a different layer atop Facebook - which is reducing to some sort of a storage and archival medium for one's entire social graph - personal, hobby-derived, official, formal, etc as well as the activity on it - that helps consume the data from this store in a more meaningful, natural way. Either Facebook could add features to enable this (they were kinda forced to handle the Twitter deluge using the "Live Feed" vs "News Feed" split)  or a 3rd party app/site will spring up sooner or later to do this. The noise in there is getting a little too much, and I've been wondering if it really matters whether I'm "on Facebook" or not. 

Those who really need to find me or talk to me, will, anyhow. The rest is often just noise/PR.

Posted via web from workFront

Bangalore's Bus Day Tomorrow

Its Bus Day in Bangalore tomorrow and everyone's encouraged to keep off private transport for a day. Even a fraction of the 35+ Lakh private vehicles staying at home will make a huge difference! Pretty awesome.

However, I have one fear. Often, these well intentioned one off events do little for the cause, and in fact might have the opposite effect. The bus services have grown manifold - indeed their growth has far outstripped the growth in population. Yet there are geographical, time-sensitive stresses on the system. Now imagine that going up by, say, even 15% on a single day because of a 'mobilization' like this. The newbies who dare to try it out tomorrow might be put off buses - wrongly so - for a long long time to come. 

Hopefully, BMTC would've factored in the increased traffic to a certain extent, and (I say this only pragmatically) hopefully not too many will hop on all at once. The shift does need to happen, but more persistently, gradually, and permanently.

Posted via email from bangalorekaapi

Spelling It Out

Voila, NOT viola : see, there!

Trial, NOT trail : trying something out kinds

Lose, NOT loose : the former makes you sad, the latter hides the girth

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Interdependence

In the city, we depend on so many people, systems, organizations to just get on with life. Yet we pretend we have complete independence, and giving or taking help is usually after much thought, calculation and consideration. We cannot grow our own food, we cannot manage our own waste, we cannot get our own water, and more and more, we cannot even cook a decent percentage of our meals. We've invented this thing called 'currency' and ideas of 'fair value' and transact in it, often hiding the dependence, and the interactions without which the currency or the value we associate with the transaction are pretty useless. 

Out there in the village, and I suspect even in smaller towns to some extent, people still manage more of their lives directly. Yet the dependence is more 'out in the open', acknowledged, and included in social interactions. There's less of the 'I don't need anyone' and 'let me not inconvenience anyone'. 

Strange.

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A few minutes at a bus stop

I stood at the stop near the HSR BDA complex, on the Outer Ring Road, today.

Since I had time, and nobody to speak with, thoughts crossed my head, and I saw many things. Amongst them -

• Damn, soooo many one-person cars. Drivers with the owner do not count.
• That ONE Volvo has as many people as the 40 cars I can see occupying road space from here till wherever!
• Who threw these bus tickets/cigarette packets/wrappers around ? Do we have the slightest right to crib about governance ?
• All this road work is so we can have more people drive in cars alone, and then start needing more road space ? Dumb.
• Bangalore still has lovely weather.
• The traffic and construction dust is killing it though.
• Thank God for the many who take the buses. Esp those who could've otherwise been in cars.
• Hmm, no 'choice' cyclists in the 20 minutes I've been here. Still a tiny minority, obviously. Or they take a better route!
• Why does everyone honk so much when it has absolutely no impact! Frustration, I guess.

Anyhow...

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How to plan your finances sessions

I'm no finance whiz, and definitely not an investment-geek.

But I think I have figured out how to plan finances long term, and make money work for you as opposed to working for money. Long term goals, the true meaning of risk vs return, why your huge salary hardly leaves you with any liquidity, etc etc.

I did a quick run-through for a pal, and my brother recently. And so far, it seems to be helping clear the clouds. 

So here's the deal - if you think you need help, and are ready to share - in strict confidence - your numbers, I'll give you 3 hours of my time at 1500/- and coffee and help you make some sense of it. Its not too much cash, and I'm hardly trying to make a career out of this, but I would like you to take this session really seriously, and only if you want to shake things up a bit.

The advice will NOT be about the exact financial instruments you should or should not invest in - cause (a) there's professionals for that sort of a thing and (b) there's legal requirements to be able to do that. It WILL be about how you look at your goals, vs income, vs cash flows, vs savings plans, etc. It'll be about planning life from "here" to 85, or so. 

Who should even consider this ? You're probably not "already there" financially, still need to meet a plenty of goals and could even have some liabilities, and might have given financial structuring a shot or two without really having a good solid grip on things. Over this session, hopefully that'll improve. At the end of it, you should have a layman's spreadsheet that helps you plan, understand and track the finances, including upsides and downsides, etc. It'll help you make better choices without financial imprudence, or, otoh, needless tight-fistedness!

This is crazy, but since I thought of it yesterday, I thought I must offer it. Let me know if you think it might help. If its just 1500/- down the drain, think of it as a bad movie + lousy dinner date :D

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