13 October 2022

Want to give this a shot?

From the picture you may be able to see that it is raining heavily. Sitting in my balcony, I can see the rain drops hit the parking lot surface in the light that is reflected there.

Here is a question that flashed thru my mind. How many raindrops does the earth get? Millions? Billions? Trillions?

To get started, let’s say it rained in Alpharetta (say 25 square miles) this morning for about 4 hours. How many raindrops did we get?

First take a guess. Just guess how many zeroes (or digits) will be there in that number.

Now, try to do the math. Make whatever assumptions you need to. (And they will differ from person to person). What number do you get? How many digits?

How close were you?

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12 October 2022

Book review: The Ikigai Journey by Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles

Last month, at a bookstore in New Delhi airport, I was browsing thru a few books and this one caught my attention. I had no idea what Ikigai meant. (I now know it roughly means the “reason for your being”) I wanted the electronic version. Apple does not carry it but Amazon does. Downloaded it and started reading it.

The book is divided into essentially three parts – The Future, The Past and The Present. While reading the first two chapters, it seemed to be ho hum mostly. But the third section had a lot of good tips. That made me go back and read the first two sections again.

The good news is that I found I already practice a few things in alignment with Ikigai – notably, writing, fewer clothes, read news at fixed time and one source only, go analog (use printouts and pen, listen to LP records) etc etc.

However, the book also gave a lot of new ideas to try for Ikigai – like (haiku – but different style, koan, add randomness in a day etc)

I will give some of them a try. Maybe even archery!!

If you are into this kind of books, you might like it. But I do not want to set your expectations too high.

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11 October 2022

Any scientific explanation for this?

As I was looking into the clouds on our way to Budapest airport, I noticed something on the left bottom corner. It looked like a rainbow but very circular one. Took a few pictures and color enhanced one of them. Sure enough it looked like a circular rainbow.

What I am not sure of is whether it is a true rainbow or something to do with the window of the airplane. I checked thru two other windows – I could still see the “rainbow”. And after a few minutes it went away – although the clouds were still there.

Can anybody throw some light on this? (sorry for the pun). Is this a real rainbow? Can rainbows be of this shape?

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11 October 2022

Heartwarming scene

We were taxing to the Budapest airport, when I saw something intriguing. It looked, from a distance, like a bunch of folks with their construction jackets on sitting on the ground. As we pulled closer, something more interesting and heart warming emerged.

Those are a bunch of school kids. From the sign on the bus “Air Tours”, I assume they have been brought by the school to watch planes land and take off. You can see a few teachers also around (they are the ones standing).

The excitement the kids had as the big jumbo rolled past them was palpable. They involuntarily started waving at us. Not sure they could see me thru the window, but I got caught up in the moment and kept waving back at them too!

Flying has become so run of the mill today that I often forget the romanticism that was attached to it when I was a kid. (I got to fly for the first time when I was 27 years old). Watching a plane go above us would bring all our sports activities in our neighborhood to a stand still. Especially if they left the contrails behind.

Interestingly enough, as a kid, I had a very wrong impression of how planes land (or take off). I used to think they go in circles as they lower in height! Ah! juvenile ignorance!!

By the way, I do not think this scene will ever happen in the USA today. These kids can literally walk onto the runway as you can see. Of course, there is a cop car there to ensure such a thing does not happen. But I just do not see such a thing happening in the USA without having a fence between the kids and the runway for safety.

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11 October 2022

One more interruption on our return journey

As you can see, this looks neither like Doha airport nor like Atlanta. That is because we have landed in Budapest!!

Medical situation in flight with an elderly (75 years) gentleman. Unfortunately, he is very sick and is traveling with his wife only. Neither understand English (only Kannada).

Chatting with the staff, I understood that the procedure in these cases where a decision has been made to divert a plane for medical reasons is to offload the patient after initial paramedic attention and the passenger is NOT allowed to board back the same flight.

I hope he quickly recovers and the elderly couple do not have too many difficulties with language in getting local help.

Meanwhile, saw Budapest for the first time. Sharmila had mentioned this once before – saw it for the first time today – that it is really two cities – Buda and Pest on either side of the Danube.

On that note, I think this is the first time I am seeing the Danube River.

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