A Rupee for petroleum

Lately the financial newspapers and blogs have started carrying loads of hu ha about petroleum and currencies ... should crude be traded in Euros ? ... should it be priced in Dollars ? ... does it really matter? ... who keeps his forex reserves where? ... who's weaving a basket for his currency? ... the issues are every where ... so I have come up with this novel suggestion

It would be good fun if, instead of running after dollar, pound, yer and euros, the persian gulf countries moved on to the Indian Rupee ... moving to the rupee wouldn't be such a strange thing for the sheiks ... they are already familiar with it ... in the olden times the Indian Rupee was in wide circulation in the gulf ... things went to such an extent that RBI had to issue special notes, popularly called gulf rupee, for the region ...

The gulf rupee was similar to the indian rupee except the fact that it was in different colours and the serial numbers included an extra "Z". Here's how the 1, 5,10 and 100 gulf rupee notes looked like (pics taken from Qatar Central Bank site)

Gaining weight - Fat a fat

There used to be a time when I could eat anything ... and not worry about my weight ... infact watching weight was the kind of stuff that girls did ... Those were such lovely days, I could eat to my hearts content with blissful abandon ... Mithais, chocolates, ice-creams, kingfishers .. triple helpings of everything ... sub chalta tha ... sub khoon maaf they

All that has changed now ... I am putting on weight on regular food ... don't know why ... its sort of scary ... i am already 85 kgs with a 40 inch paunch ... is this the onset of middleagedness ????

Block out

A new strategy to break out of the writer's block has just chamkooed to me.
Write short posts .. which don't require too much of thinking or typing.

Clear Scan

- The results are out ...

Which results ??? - Well the results of PET Scan done 3 months after treatment

What were they trying to find out ??? - If there are any signs of cancer cells left in my body

What did they find ??? - Nothing ... it was a Clear Scan

What does it mean ??? - Means that the treatment seems to have worked, the cancerous cells are gone, the residual mass of dead tissue is gone ... and cancer has not returned in the last 3 months

Wow seems good ... so you off the hook ??? - Sort of ... will have to send the report to my doctor and he will decide if this is "remission" ... Then will have to get a few quarterly PET scans done ... to see if the disease is relapsing

So you live life QSQT ??? - Yes I will ... but who doesn't

What are the chances now ??? - Pretty good ... If the cancer does not return in the next year or two there are good chances that it never will

Situation seems good ... you held up will ... Good Show :-) - Thank you

Graceless on TV

Yesterday I spent a lot of time watching TV ... there was the T20 final and lots of bed time latter because I was tired after not eating the whole day (had a PET scan ... which required me to come empty stomach ... so hadn't eaten anything after previous night's dinner ... and since AIIMS is a "sarkaari" hospital, the scan scheduled for10 in morning actually took place at 4 in the evening ... leaving me hungry for longer than I could take)

So I was watching the TV and was stuck by total lack of grace from 2 people ... First was the Pakistani Captain ... he first thanked and then apologized to all the Muslims in the world ... I wondered why? He looked silly cause obviously all Muslims in the world had not supported his team ... infact we can do some calculations and find out his support levels ...

Here we go -

Reasonable assumptions
A> Muslims in India will support India (their own country)
B> Muslims in Bangladesh will not support Pakistan team (Bongs fought Pakis for their independence)
C> Muslims in non-cricket playing countries (like Indonesia) will not be interested in cricket and will support no one.

Now Numbers
World Muslim Population - 1500 million
Muslims in Cricket playing nations - 451 million
Muslims in Pakistan - 158 million
Muslims in India - 150 million
Muslims in Bangladesh - 135 million

Scenarios

Best Scenario for Pak Captain - All cricket interested Muslims except Indians and Bangladeshis support him (166 Million, slightly unlikely as there is no reason for all Kenyan, South African, Britisher etc etc Muslims to support Pakistan)
This translates int0 11.1% of world Muslim support and 36.8% of cricket interested Muslim support

Worst Scenario for Pak Captain - Only Pakistani Muslims support him (158 million, very likely)
This translates into 10.5% of World Muslim Support and 35% of cricket interested Muslim support

Bottom-line is that only 1 in 10 Muslims of the world would have supported him. Even in the cricket playing world only about one third Muslims would have supported him. He made a fool of himself by claiming global Muslim support. Two of my friends have written on this very topic. Samcho in his post Twenty20 and Siddhartha in his post ICC World Twenty20, Religion and myth-busting.

Now on to the second person who lacked grace ... it was Columbia University's President Lee Bollinger.... He invited Iran's president Ahmadinejad to his University and then went on to pile insults on him ... I am no fan of Ahmadinejad ... but I sincerely feel that if one invites a guest one should treat the guest in a civilized manner (if you hate someone to the limit of insulting - don't invite him in the first place) ... BBC showed the most insulting part of Bollinger's speech live ... makes me wonder if (and how much of) Ahmadinejad's speech was shown uncensored (I went to sleep after hearing Bollinger's part) ...

Reminds me of more crude behavior that I pointed out in my earlier post Saddam dead - Winners in West-Asia rejoice ... I don't expect the world to be free of crudeness ... infact crudeness adds spice to the world ... but I did expect the Presidents of a big university to be slightly better mannered

Thats all for this post ... will prolly write something when my PET Scan report comes out tomorrow.

Delayed Plan, Round Trips and a Marriage

Those who have read the earlier post know about my mission-remission plan. In the plan I wanted to wait for normal blood counts before training to first regain and then maintain stamina.

Like all good plans mission-remission slipped from the very beginning - My blood counts refused to hit normal levels - which meant that the plan stood delayed ...

But all was not bad... there was a silver lining ... etc etc ... blood counts actually got stuck after creeping near 90% of normal values ... Being a Mechanical engineer I could easily declare the blood counts as normal ...You see its very characteristic of Mech engineers ... we don't shy away from happily rounding off pi as 3 and the value of acceleration due to gravity 'g' as 10 ... for the illiterate - pi is actually 22/7 which comes out to be around 3.14... 'g' varies from location to location but conventional students like to believe that it is 9.8 m/secsquared ... Mech engineers can do all the approximations because we pad up our final results with a "factor of safety" ... which means that when calculations require a part to be 1 inch thick, the mechanical engineer can safely ask for a 2 or 3 inch thick part :-)) ... Sadly I don't have a "factor of safety" so the optimistic approximation may not work.

Anyways, I could not let technical glitches from spoiling my plan ... Normal blood counts would have signalled that my body could take the load of shaping up ... now I planned to bypass the counts and test my endurance directly ... So I took two adventure trips (must agree that the trips were not solely for testing my load-bearing capacity ... after months of staying at home I was dying to go out and meet people) ...

First trip was more challenging ... it involved driving on Delhi-Agra-Gwalior-Jhansi-Satna route in two days ... Gwalior-Jhansi strech had to be covered after sunset (poor planning by me) on a path which had non-existant roads (poor planning by UP and MP governments) ... the challenges didn't end with the drive ... there was more -> Satna- Allahabad travel, stay with the in-laws, Allahabad-luckhnow-Delhi by various combinations of train and bus ... Bottom line is I endured the trip without too much trouble ...

Second trip was within a week -> I went to Mumbai to attend my friend Andy's wedding. It was a typical Tam affair ... the detailed story is on the IIMB Class of 2004 blog. This one was two days flyin-flyout kind of a trip . Was good fun ... but took some time to recover from it ... slept throughout the day for 2-3 days ...

Anyways ... so that was how I was whiling away my time ... after all I have the licence for doing Haraamkhori ... though I guess the licence will expire soon ...

I have my PET Scan on 24th Sept ... The scan will tell if the treatment (chemotherapy and radiation) has succeeded so far ... an all-clear in the PET means I would be back to normal life (though I will have to take care of my body ... stay in shape and get regularly checked-up to see if the cancer has relapsed) ... In case PET shows that the cancer lingers on, then I will hold my Haraamkhori licence and may have to get on to a second-line of treatment (which is slightly tougher than the first line treatment ... with less optimistic results) ...

So the coming week is a week of uncertainties ... which is nothing unusual for me ... I can continue making full use of my Haraamkhori licence-

Ajgar karey naa chaakri
Panchi karey naa kaam
Das maluka kahi gaye
subkey daata raam

CBC 4000 and climbing

Most of my friends have been tracking my progress (against blood cancer) thru this blog.... there was a time when I made frequent postings ... in those days; no one felt the need to mail or call to find out about my health ... lately I have been getting a lot of calls and mails from my pals - all wondering if am doing OK ... I guess a personal health update is overdue

So here's the latest -

I have completed the first-line of treatment ... this means I have undergone R-MACOP-B chemo therapy and have also taken radiation (40 Gy which were distributed over 20 sittings) ... If this first-line treatment succeeds ( I hope it will) then I will not need any further treatment and will go on to live a (hopefully satisfying) long life :-)

When the radiation got over (in late June) I came back to Delhi have been resting at home for the past 1.5 months ... in this time I have slowly evolved and brought into action my Mission-Remission ... Mission-Remission is a three staged program for getting my life back
here's how it goes -

1. Let blood counts mount
Chemo and radiation had slowed down the production of White Blood Cells (WBCs also called Leukocytes) in my body ... a normal man has WBC count ranging from 4000-11000, mine had come down to 2400. The first thing that needed to be done was the wait for the blood counts to come back to the normal range. I rested at home, ate good food, got blood counts analyzed twice a week ... all in anticipation of normal blood counts ... My counts first rose to 3000 level ... stayed there for a while and then slowly started improving .... I reduced the frequency of getting counts done to once a week ... Last Monday the blood counts touched 4000 ... if the figure goes further up in next Monday's blood counts I would declare myself to be officially back to normal blood counts.

2. Get back in shape
To give you an idea ... I was 5 kgs over my ideal-body-weight when I was diagnosed with cancer ... the treatment put me on steroids and I gained a further 5 kgs .... so now I am 10 kgs overweight ... before I got the disease I could work 10 kg dumbbells with ease ... now I have trouble doing 3 kgs ... earlier I could go on a morning walk of 6 km and come back feeling refreshed ... now I get totally drained out in a 3-4 km walk .... Clearly I need to shed weight and build up my strength and stamina
I have given this 3 months time ... starting next week (when I will declare the blood counts to be officially normal) ... aim is reduction of weight by atleast 10 kgs (from 81 kgs today), reduction in waist ( from 38 inch today, to below 32 inch) and regaining stamina (back to comfortable 6 km walks) ... in the process I might also get back my strength (with other things in place it will come automatically)
During this time I also aim to get a job for myself ... What kind of a job? ... I don't know ... I am a man of many talents (some would say "well hidden", but I ignore them :-) ... and since I am a very fast learner ... I can potentially do many things (no point being modest these days :-) ... I have to make up my mind ... there are unconventional options like teaching or taking up a job in one of the NGOs ... but my guess is I would get back to rigmarole of corporate life ... any suggestions on this are most welcome ... please feel free to shoot out possible career options and openings at baawara@gmail.com

3. Keep on the good work
Once life gets back to normal ... I intend to keep it that way ... I probably will need to be more careful with my health than most blokes ... but hey staying fit cannot be that bad a choice ... I think making little challenges for myself will help ... first challenge ... completing Delhi Half-Marathon in 2008 :-)

I told you so

About a year back I wrote a protest post on this blog.
It was called Live-in, Wives, Legislation and Jail

At that time I thought that the "Domestic Violence Act" was unfair (I still do) . It (apart from its many other shortcomings) assumed that men were guilty and therefore must be punished by (pre-conviction) prison sentences imposed by their wives.

My argument, that the DV law is flawed, has been backed by this news article (to see the video click on "watch video"). The article says that the DV law is being misused- even Supreme Court thinks that the law was badly drafted.

A basic question ... Does a law become good just because it has been passed by an elected parliament ??? ... looking at the biased domestic violence law the answer seems to be - NO ... then comes the more important point ... when all laws are not good then shouldn't we stop following the "not good" ones ? (this may look like sedition to a lot of people - but it is an honest question)

You see - an impartial judiciary can ensure implementation of any law (by punishing the violators) ... India can boast of a slow, but largely impartial judiciary ... If judiciary has to implement "bad laws", it would effectively be spreading injustice (even if it has the best intentions ... because the fault lies with the law not the judiciary) ... Any law not based on time-tested and important principles like equality and assumed-innocence runs a big chance of being a "bad law"... By dishonouring the principles of equality, assumed-innocence etc, the parliament is actually exposing the common man (note the pun) to possible travesty of justice.

The onus is on the parliament - By passing good laws, they can prevent the courts from meeting out a travesty of justice ... more importantly they can prevent people (like me) from thinking "... should I even be following any of these biased rules? ..."

Greater good of people demands that the rules and laws be based upon equitable and universally accepted principles ... I think some "equitable" principals are laid out in our constitution (I know the constitution provides an exception from "equality" by saying that special rules can be made for women- making a women specific law for tackling a problem faced by both genders is plain idiotic) ... Whether these principles are "universally accepted" remains an open question (The fact is - An individual has practically no choice over his country's constitution just like she/he has no choice over her/his parents, her/his looks , religion, etc ... most people are usually happy with what they have ... the ones who are not become - whiners ... deserters ... misfits ... rebels ... revolutionaries ... pioneers ... inventors ... prophets etc)

Finally, the two things that can reduce the justifications (actually there are some good ones) for partial and biased laws are
1) A more swift, effective and impartial investigative force (can it be police?)
2) Faster justice from the courts