Seoul and Hong Kong

I visited Seoul for a short training program this year in May, and while on the way back had an opportunity to spend few hours in Hong Kong (Thanks to the long transit hours).  Well this was two months before the Korean hit 'Gangnam Style' was released. I came to know of Olympics and watched the first Olympic  games in Television, when it happened in Seoul and at that time (1980's) never thought or even dreamt that I would visit it later in my life. 

Namsan Seoul Tower

Seoul is a neat, clean and big city. I had the opportunity to visit few places like the Namsan Seoul Tower and the Gyeongbokgung palace. In Seoul's love tower there is an interesting practice of lovers tying locks - called love padlocks to fences and then throwing the keys away.  The Gyeongbokgung palace has a long history dating back to 14th Century. It is a beautiful and picturesque place to watch.

King Sejong

While roaming around I found a number of shops that sell women's beauty products and I should say such shops were almost everywhere, and I realized the magnitude of this business only here.  BB (Blemish Balm) Cream and perfumes are something to look out for in these shops. I also observed a good number of Coffee Shops like Starbucks and assumed that Koreans are fond of Coffee and Chocolate (Lotte is famous and has huge presence here, as the founder is from Korea), till I discovered Ginseng Tea. 

I found that people are generally helpful. Myself and my friends lost our way and a passer-by took us to the local traffic cop who dropped us at our Hotel.  I also observed that people were widely using smart phones and relying on apps for many services. 

Two things that are of concern to me was food and Language. For a vegetarian (different from vegan, as Milk and its byproducts are fine with me), its really tough to find vegetarian food / dishes. Also communicating with the people to ensure that a food item does not contain meat or fish was difficult. Communicating in English was a problem, many a times. 

On the way back, I managed to spend few hours in Hong Kong. I roamed around the streets, saw a good number of Indian restaurants, spent some time in Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Museum, knowing about his life and traveled to the  Kowloon Island through the Star ferry service - saw the Star-Cruise luxury ships on the way. In Kowloon, took a local bus to go and see Sky Towers, which was quite disappointing,(probably it would have been better in day times) and then took the Airport Express - Metro train connecting three islands - Hongkong, Kowloon, and  Chep Lak Kok (An artificial island) to reach Airport.

Hong Kong Skyline

Both HongKong and Seoul are nice places to visit for an Holiday

The Laminated Truth in Digital World

It was the early 1990's, when I was in my high school.  Lamination as a technology and as a industry was growing and touching our everyday lives - in the form of laminated identity card, laminated report card, laminated photographs etc...  It protected the cards and photographs from being smudged or stained. 

We were then quite surprised by the 'neat and clean' work done, through lamination, and it became so entrenched in our conversations, a new phrase called "Laminated Truth" was created - to mean absolute truth! and to convey that the information or message heard (invariably over heard) by that person has not been altered or modified in any way. Determining the truthfulness of this "laminated truth" is entirely a different matter altogether ... 

Coming back to today's digital world, where "cut & paste" is the norm, and documents could easily be forged, how do you achieve this "laminated truth"?  - The answer is Cryptography.  A mathematical one-way function called Cryptographic Hash Function produces a fixed-size bit string for the input message. The beauty of this function is that any alteration in the input message, even as insignificant as punctuation, will produce a different output bit string. For instance "Its mine" and "Its mine." will produce different bit strings, as the second message contains a period at the end. 

The fixed-size output bit string produced by the Cryptographic Hash Function is called as "Message Digest", which form the basis for a "Digital Signature".  The digital signature is nothing but the encryption of the "Message Digest" by using a key that is personal (private key) to the author or signer of the message. This encrypted digital signature could then be decrypted only by using the one and the only another key that has a mathematical pairing with the key used for encryption, and which is generally announced publicly (public key) by the author or signer.  

Therefore the signer has a pair of keys with him or her - One of them is announced publicly - called public key, another is kept secretly - called private key. A message encrypted using public key could be decrypted only by using the private key, and a message encrypted by using private key could only be decrypted using the public key.  The digital signature provides a reliable mechanism for anybody to determine whether a message is indeed a laminated truth!  

Kaapi and Coffee

After writing about a hot and serious topic (on Religion), its time to unwind and thought I will focus on a hot but not a serious topic.

I like Coffee ... with milk and sugar; and preferably with pure coffee powder (without chicory; and preferably with Peaberry Coffee Beans) and would like it to be a filter coffee (instead of instant variety; though I like the freeze-dried instant powder); served at sipping hot levels and with froth at top.

Well the above description of Coffee refers to South Indian Filter Coffee pronounced popularly as "Kaapi". If you are keen to know, how this is prepared, follow this link , else follow these steps:

• Add 20 grams of fresh roasted coffee powder to the brew basket. 
• Pour 200 ml of freshly boiled water over the coffee powder and close the brew basket. 
• Allow it to brew for 4-6 Minutes
• Wait for the brewing cycle to complete. 
• Pour the brew into the cup
• Add fresh hot milk and sugar to the brew

Ofcourse I had tasted the modern varieties of coffee also and liked Latte Macchiato, Cafe Latte and Cafe Mocha. Though I was able to distinguish between the taste of different varieties, I only later realized the compositions of different varieties. Here they are:

• Cappuccino - Espresso (1/3) + Steamed Milk (1/3) + Milk Foam (1/3)
• Espresso - Espresso (Black Coffee) 
• Cafe Latte - Espresso (1/3) + Steamed Milk (2/3)  + Milk Foam (as a topping)
• Cafe Mocha - Espresso + Chocolate Syrup +  Steamed Milk + Whipped Cream
• Latte Macchiato - Steamed Milk (1/2.5) +  Milk Foam + (1/2.5) + Espresso (< 1/6th)
• Cafe Americano - Espresso (1/3) + Hot Water (2/3)
• Cafe au Lait - Coffee + Milk

As you can find Cafe Latte (also called simply as Latte) and Cappuccino are similar; but the proportions of Steamed Milk is higher in the former which makes it comparable with the Indian Filter Coffee, and Latte Macchiato (pronounced: lawthe muckiyatho) makes it comparable to a 'light' Indian Filter Coffee. Cappuccino and Caffe Latte both originated in Italy.  Latte Macchiato is very popular in Germany. 

As you can see Espresso is the base, and it is nothing but the coffee decoction. However espresso is prepared by a different style of brewing, especially using Espresso Coffee machines, in contrast to the simple method adopted for preparing decoction in Indian filter coffee.  Espresso is therefore liquid coffee extracted very fast under both high pressure and temperature. A 30 ml of Espresso coffee can be extracted from about 7 -10 grams of Coffee powder within 30 seconds.  The extraction takes very little time, but the espresso coffee has to be consumed immediately after brewing to get that taste.

I also found that WMF coffee machines are used in high-end restaurants and hotels, like the one below.

Think it's enough of writing about coffee! - Looking for a hot Indian filter coffee!

Why new religions find it difficult to evolve?

I feel, this time, I have a more introspective topic to write about - about the evolution of new religions - continuing with my previous post on "Religions and Institutionalization". 

As usual it started with a 'controversial' discussion on religion and God, and as we sifted through topics like Scientology and Tom Cruise an interesting question emerged - why we do not have any new religions emerging recently? This is despite having a much smaller world - interconnected in many ways, including the Internet and its latest social networking platforms, when propagation of messages can go viral! 

A quick survey on the Web did not reveal much, (though it revealed interesting religions as in this link) and an extensive search would be required considering this list. Though  many of them are referred as 'religions' and some were found as late as in 1980's they do not seem to have any significant following. But at the same time, we cannot underestimate them, because today's popular religions also would have started in the same way, but took atleast 3-4 centuries to spread and establish themselves across the world. So, we never know! despite the connected world we live in. 

In my analysis, I believe that there are two strong characteristics that are exhibited by today's popular religions, which will stop or delay the arise of any new religion - one is continuous propagation (and propagation through all new media) by identified leaders - and the other is the embedding of the sense of community among their members, which is done by regular and mandatory gathering of their members in a place for worship. The latter ideal ensures that people don't get distanced too much from their current religious practice and instills a sense of 'belonging' and probably 'pressure' on who are not inclined. 

Disclaimer: I don't intend to start a new religion! and I am not an atheist! 

Religions and Institutionalization

We had an interesting discussion on "Institutions" in one of my classes where I was explaining about the quality processes that has to be inculcated in an organization, and work towards insitutionalization of the same to reap the benefits. Well this blog is not about it, but about religions. 

Religions serve as an excellent example of institutionalization - institutionalization of beliefs on God, and the processes represent the rituals and customs carried out by the followers of that religion.  Now the question: Does institutionalization really benefit here?  My answer: NO.

When we institutionalize the beliefs on god, and evolve them as religions, it becomes one more identity for a person. However the purpose of any religion is to lead its followers to the spiritual path, and largely that requires an individual's own effort and will.

A religion can provide an identity, impose conditions of behavior, that might lead to the spiritual path, but can't guarantee it. Also here we are dealing with abstractness and results or effects would not be tangible always to measure. A goodness of a person has to be judged over his/her lifetime giving appropriate weight to their environments and circumstances - well that's what GOD  would supposedly do in one's after life, according to many religions. 

In quality processes, there is a scope for review and continuous improvement, which can lead to new and different processes over time. However today's religions does not allow to redefine or re-orient or even re-look at the changing needs and hence constrain you to the same beliefs that were set long ago, often justified by saying that all of the processes (rituals, beliefs, and customs)  followed in a religion relate to "core values" and hence are sacrosanct and there's only one choice - either you subscribe to it or get left out. 

Disclaimer: I am NOT an atheist.    

2011 - The year that was for me!

I had been pushing myself to write this post, as it had become a kind of 'ritual' for me to start an year's blogging with reflections of my past year. Also, I should admit that, after I started 'tweeting', it has become extremely difficult to Blog!  So here, I go...

• My Current project had been driving me - as, I got more passionate about it, as days passed by in 2011, and I believe it will surely be of help to students and the academic community
• My successful completion of PhD in Computer Science - The long awaited final defense examination (viva-voce) happened on a day that's simply unforgetful! - on 11/11/2011, and ofcourse, had a sigh of relief! after the declaration of PhD award
• Attended WWW2011 Conference for the first time, and was very happy to listen to few great people, including Tim Berners-Lee and even managed to have a small discussion with him on Semantic Web, and ofcourse a photograph with him.  
• A lot of learning happened in a very different project, relating to setup of a DR. Though had to encounter and learn too many things that are far from my profession, I was happily taking on the challenges!, and did not have much regrets even when the bosses fired us on our slow pace of work!
• Continued to lead the ISO activities in the office; and managed to organize a Project Management Training for the staff members.
• Managed to coordinate and organize two National-level Symposiums on PKI and Digital Signatures along with my friend and colleague Mr. Misbahuddin.  Though I was only a team member here, I was happy that this effort came to a good end. 
• Started Tweeting! and found to be really interesting and useful (This is ironic, because when twitter started, and when I saw the way people were using it initially, I thought it may not be of much use for me!) - This gave me a lesson - Any tool can be used effectively, and it all depends on the user and their context!
• Travel: Hamirpur in Himachal Pradesh (and also visited Dalai Lama's residence), Indore, Kashmir (Beautiful Valley; Visited Srinagar, Gulmarg and Pahalgam), Kanyakumari & ; Nagercoil in Tamil Nadu; and my usual trips to Delhi. A very interesting thing happened was I had to travel from Kanyakumari to Kashmir within a span of a day or two.   

Overall, many things were falling in place, and really got a sense of accomplishment, despite some odd firings from few bosses!