to commute: to travel regularly over some distance

How much is "some" in that distance in this title? Transportation itself is a large industry with lot of people, power and money involved. Whenever these three are involved along comes trouble. My visits to Mumbai during my childhood was always exciting. It was not just because I was with my dear and near ones there but it helped me to visualize what city life would be that is the future for every semi-urban places in India that time. The most fascinating thing I saw in those times were of course Mumbai traffic and Metro Rail. In recent past as old as 3 years back, I was forced to reschedule my flight to Delhi since I got stuck in Mumbai traffic for 1.5hrs while returning from a business meeting to my Hotel. I just had to pick my luggage and rush to airport. But in that pace it would have taken me 4-5hrs to reach airport. Similar incident had happened to me just after two days in Chennai when I trusted Chennai to be better than Mumbai in traffic. Often think how life is at such a high pace in such cities where people don't have time to run fast since most of their life is spend in travel or stuck in traffic.


Right now we don't have a complete solution to reduce these traffic jams. People like me could just preach to use public transport more but can that happen in big metros of the world? When will people realize that these hours they spend stuck in traffic just eats up 10% of their life for no cause, good or bad. We should try to address the root thought of why we prefer to have our own cars or motorcycles or bikes or whatever vehicles. One of that I could think of is mobility. It gives us mobility and freedom to get to wherever we want and whenever we want. Having a closer look at these two key points makes us think. Do we really have that freedom? Remember we have a higher chance to get stuck in traffic. That kills of the 'whenever' we want part of it. Now 'wherever' we want, is that because our public transports can't get us there?
Maybe true at times it happens. No train can come to your house!

But consider we use public transport for our daily needs. Knowingly or unknowingly what all problems we tackle with that?
1. We tend to plan our schedules more better since we know what time our bus or train leaves our place.
2. We protect our environment by less carbon emissions and provide a better world for our next generations.
3. We might end up walking some distance that most of us don't want to, which in turn helps your heart and helps you keep fit.
4. You can cut short on your gym spendings to keep fit. Accidents could be reduced but should not overlook the fact that when one happens it could be devastating too with public transport.
5. Can forget about your vehicle insurance payments and much more.

I would leave it to you guys to find out the pros of it, since cons would always be on back of every body's mind when it comes to question our habits. Do remember that the number of private vehicles is growing exponentially which is evident from the total sales(YOY) of Maruti Suzuki & Hero Honda in India.

Coming back to the second thing that always fascinated me in Mumbai and later made me think for sometime was the Metro Rail & the best part of it was the frequency of operations. The only turn off to that was the rush to board and the rush inside these trains which at times hit my lungs since I was too short for the tall crowd. But again if we really think of making people use public transport to overcome few issues create more issues? More rush? More suffocations for other short guys in there? Yes, would be the answer that we would have for now.

We should start thinking of a solution which would be worked upon and vigilantly scrutinized. First thing that I saw most places lacked is the discipline of people boarding which would be a difficult problem to tackle at this stage with current infrastructure.

Can we think of having double decker trains with high rise Railway stations which would have boarding on each decks at same time? For each train there would be 4 platforms. Two platforms for boarding and two for alighting. Proper man power should be recruited to make sure that people alighting through the boarding side of the train is promptly fined for their action. When a train stops in a station, people should be boarding from both the decks at same time from one side of the train and people alighting in both decks from other side of the train. Both stations and trains should be well lit with proper surveillance cameras in place. Current solutions our country is looking to just give these existing trains a world class look with replacing them with state of art stylish trains. But is that what we really require considering the population and growth of our country needs to be revisited. Technical challenges for the proposed solution would be how a double decker train would balance on the current tracks. This would also need new kind of tracks to be built with new architecture which needs to be thoroughly designed and engineered to perfection.

We could also think of special compartments for old people similar to existing ladies compartments in these new trains. This would help old people to board and alight at their own pace without getting hurt by the rush of adrenaline in some youthful body.

Do we really need Oxygen to live?

These funny thoughts had been in my mind for some time now. Always thought are we overlooking the fact that we need Oxygen to live? Or is it that we have taken it for granted? This picture is of a tree which used to shower Oxygen in my neighbourhood, now don't ask me who used to breathe from it or how much Oxygen it produced daily. The significant thing here is that it is not there any more and gave way for 3 parking lots for two wheelers as you can see.

We all accept the fact that two wheelers can help people to travel fast during rush hours and can beat the traffic jam with ease. But in case we don't have these two wheelers parked in exactly the same place where this tree once stood, it can never be parked? Somebody has to keep riding it always? Are we that short of land? Maybe its insane to post such questions which might look ridiculous for few. But the fact is we really are running shot of land. People ignore the importance of trees in human life. How many of us really observe the breathing that our body does so efficiently and effectively? We actually think it as an automated job running in background always in the human server called 'Myself'. But what will happen if we don't get enough Oxygen? Our otherwise brilliant world had never found a substitute for humans to survive without spending a Zimbabwe dollar.

Is it a plot by extra smart governments to finally sell Oxygen created in some lab as a byproduct of some chemical reaction in plastic bags to the common man? It will be unfair to people of this world, if they had to fight for Oxygen along with the current fist fight for money, food, water and whatever. We should understand the importance of trees for the existence of this world. We often read about climate changes and adverse effects of hurricanes, tsunami's & earth quakes. It is just another by-product of what we are giving to this planet called earth. We are destroying the natural habitat in this planet to satisfy our fashionable needs. I don't want to go into global warming with this post. Which itself is another world of bone breaking issues. We all should take active participation in protecting the trees around us and promote the importance of planting new ones.

Never take our successor, our children to a state where they have to pay to breathe. Increased use of public transport by those three scooter owners would have let that tree live. We should rethink about buying vehicles if we already have one to satisfy our need. Current world sees mode of transport as fashion and forget the importance of fuel efficiency and our responsibilities to the planet. We all should respect the fact that we need vehicles to commute fast but not to destroy our world. We should restrict the urge to buy more than one car/scooter if we really don't need it. How many cars can you drive at a time? Forget the marketing that these companies do which makes you think its like a suit or blazer, i.e. a car for every occasion. Do good to our planet, our plants and it will surely give us the best in this world. This prayer is not just for us but for the future generations also.

In case you feel like you need to know what is Oxygen, - Click Me!

Teens - stay at home or get stabbed?

My title would send chills to few parents considering what new youth is up to what they enjoy doing. In recent weeks there had been couple of incidents in otherwise quiet Singapore with teens stabbing two guys.

The first one seems to be a gang war whereas the reasons for second one is still unknown. I would suspect these guys are using kitchen knife's stolen from their mama's kitchen cabinet. What would be the real thrill in piercing someone's body with a knife? There should be something about it that makes people doing it.

Singapore is a very good country in terms of protecting their people and securing a good living environment. These two incidents would have definitely made the intelligent minds in this country think about severe punishments so that there is no repeat occurrences. This is normal in any countries case. This keeps happening everywhere and people think of stringent rules and shocking punishments.

But should we just go for the root cause of it rather than just punishing the foolish youth. I would assume part of it is to blame the parents who might have got less time due to the work demands to educate the children with moral values and to respect peoples life. It is very normal for an adolescent youth to get violent. Most of us must have at least got very violent at home at the very least once. And our parents might have corrected us that time joking between them "he is proving he is in his teens."

There should be proper programs in schools which enhances the moral values of the wards. These programs should attack the shortcomings in parenting and still be able to feed the tough teen kid with words of wisdom from virtues of humble living. Current youth seems to be blind in believing the folks from entertainment. You can see the growth of sales for companies which basically just uses few entertainers for their advertisements. Fashion & Movies which is completely different topic have a good say at these youths way of living. People try to imitate the stars thinking whatever they do is the way of living. Its good in some cases at least there is someone who they obeys or respects in that age which is usually a tough period to pass through mentally.

The competition in the academic world also would be a factor in ruining the sleeps of these young minds. We all understand how tough it is to keep the young minds at bay when it comes to music, movies, fashion & adultery. All these industries has the power to add values to our life but at the same time there are segments within these industries which can completely take us to a different negative world. This affects our mind directly and the comeback from this world to the ordinary humble way of life is impossible in most cases. We need to educate the youth what is best in these segments for their life. Then let them choose the path and if it ever gets wrong will leave it again in the safe hands of Police and governments to correct them.

Diminishing family values and love is another factor which is affecting the growing children. This reaches its prime when the kids are in their teens. The downfall in family values is simply because of the chase for money which everyone in todays world are happy to indulge in. Kids are like clay models which I strongly believe is which can be mould into any forms between age 0 months to 12years. I am no expert in this but these are just my thoughts. Your own research would be appreciated when it comes to your kids. Don't take risk buying my words. Once they get to their teens its totally different story. The gist of it is good parenting cures 50% of the problem and rest can be taken care with the help of good friends and good schooling.

You think it's fair to cut the queue?

The word itself is the real cause of the problem. "CorrUPtion" itself comprehends the meaning of growth, a green arrow pointing upwards if you take it in today's world. People get obsessed with growth n money and easiest way UP is getting corrupted. I don't blame the corrupt people of the world. I just pity them whereas I would come back to across a proposition to the system. We should start with cleaning up the word corruption before we get to the root of it.

Corruption can be tackled in few different ways which would be only successful when every individual get to take part in it and enact their role to the max. Last day I happened to read an article from a spiritual leader who had given example of youth in some place in India who decided that they will never pay bribes. When they happened to visit a government office in India they were asked to pay bribes to proceed. These young men dared to respond to the seeker that they can come back 20 times for this, they would still respect the officer but will never pay bribe for what they need. This impressed the seeker and he agreed to do his job faster. This is just an example but there are in-numerous examples where people were ready to pay bribes just because things can be done out of the queue. This is the urge which we would require each individual to tackle himself. We must together enter into a covenant that we would never think of cutting the queue with bribes.

The piece where we would require the system to help us is to understand the importance of civil servants or government officials in keeping the system ticking and give proper remunerations which would help them sustain a reasonable standard of living. Most countries deny the civil servants with such pay checks and allow them to make money out of their position themselves. It is a good idea to build entrepreneurs but would bite back the system like what it had done today. Once again I would say we should educate the youth and children from schooling to fight against corruption in their own ways. The recent happenings around our world especially in India made me think about this evergreen disgrace to the world "corruption". To quote a few of those happenings India's telecom minister is forced to resign due to scam in selling 2G licenses, one of the chief minister of a state in India again forced to resign.

We need governments across the world to forget the existing order of prosecution and in these cases have a different one which doesn't need to go through different layers for few decades. It should be a one where in within 1-2 days there is a decision and people are punished. I know it can be unfair in case of just people. But trusting the judiciary and under the belief that it will bring justice to all, we should not allow another hearing for such cases. There should not be any more re-opening of such cases by persons unless a ruling or opposition government want to support this person and reopen it with their backing where they take the blame as a unit if decision is against them. This will make them re-think whether to take the risk of putting the brand name of their political party on the spot.

As it is the case today, biggest investment in India from foreign entities is also through political corruption and not in Infrastructure, healthcare or markets or whatever. We should tackle this international threat with proper understanding of the operations and execution rather than been naive. No country should allow the world to take advantage of their corrupt system. Following a process in every form of life and work is important and beneficial if everyone follows it. Otherwise it just mess up the whole system beyond correction. In case of corruption, it is this correction that we need to execute now. Every moment lost in this regard is a decade lost for sure.

Is it time for something new?

New here would be completely new or something we overlooked along our way to the riches. This is on the world without oil. It is not just oil but everything related to oil. Crude Oil & Petroleum industry had made lot of people & countries what they are today. The whole world seems to be run by crude oil price including the share market, inflation, deflation & foreign reserves and much much more. Do you think without oil will it all get to a dead-end?

I will leave it to you to get to know the chemistry of the hydrocarbons inside the oil but let's discuss on the economics of it. The pricing references of crude oil is based on the place where it is mined from. For e.g. North America, Europe, Africa, Middle-east, Dubai, Oman, Malaysia, Indonesia & some other OPEC countries. Oil always brought power to nations since its use was in various industries in multitudinous forms. Some of its uses are as fuels, lubricants, wax, coke & agriculture.

Based on Consumption of Oil, US leads the world followed by China, Japan, India and Russia in that order. Production of Oil is led by Saudi Arabia followed by Russia, US, Iran & China. US being the largest consumer of Oil the export is very few from US. The export charts shows Saudi Arabia as the king of oil exports with Russia, Norway, Iran & UAE far behind them. The worlds leading importers of Oil is again US, Japan, China, Germany & South Korea.

Oil extraction is considered as a process which has lot of negatives in it including pollution and also the infrequent spill which kills a whole world under water. Based on what Science had told us, Oil is a fossil-fuel. Which of course is not forever. Are we ready to face a world without Oil? What would be the world without Oil? What are the options we have? Right now very few but as the world found use of Oil to throw away the old horse carts which produced more stuck traffics and environment pollution we believe we would find something else this time.

Today's world had been after different technologies and concepts for a Oil free world. Forget about what will happen to the people of all those Oil rich wealthy lands which itself is a different story. New world is trying to make use of wind to harvest the power of nature to create energy. This technology cannot feed the world for its needs to substitute oil because it is profoundly dependent on geography. Hydrogen seems to be costly option as well. We still need to go a long way to either get rid of Oil completely or make more man made Oil.

Maybe a time will come when man will learn to make more OIL from OIL in our school chemistry labs and hope those days are not very far.

Thinking generation

Ours is considered as a generation who thinks lot more than our forefathers in most cases. We might have often heard these worlds flying around at normal households nowadays. "Dad, you don't understand. This is generation gap". Is there really such a big generation gap? I don't buy that.

There is a gap but it is not because of generation, it is just a matter of thought. We consider sometimes ourselves more intelligent than the so called wise ones with some grey ones on their head.

We need a change in thought process and this change can only come once both the parents and todays youth get access to same news, same channels & same people. Even though this is a tough thing to achieve, our social networking sites are doing a good job in doing so. New age parents are friends with their children's friends in social networking and can easily track the mental growth of their loved ones by the nature of their posts.

But are they sharing the same news feeds? That is where our society needs drastic change. Parents should get grow younger to enjoy what their kids enjoy to understand what news they access.

Consider the case of India, other day I saw a video in Facebook which shows brain drain examples and Indian kids showing their thrill in getting a job abroad. In India people want to stop this. But is that really possible without creating a thinking generation rather creating a industrialism ready generation?

New age parents, teachers & NGO's should together pledge to educate the youth to understand the importance of growing a country rather than growing the weight in their own wallets. Countries like Japan, US, Singapore, Korea & China are examples of such growth. Parents should stay put on the fact that for them more than their kids growing richer want to see them making India grow richer.

People should apprehend how they can together grow a rich India rather than waiting for others to grow for them and meanwhile mourning on what they have. We definitely needs to stop brain drain with all your help.

Editor's post