Public Transport in Delhi
Research shows that owning a car makes driving seem cheaper and more convenient than taking public transport. 🙄
Research shows that owning a car makes driving seem cheaper and more convenient than taking public transport. 🙄
I'm used to seeing (and deleting) "So-and-so invites you to social networking site du jour" mail. I'm used to seeing "Sorry! I didn't know they were going to send mail to all my contacts!" mail (what, did their asking for your addressbook not tip you off?). I'm used to people being surprised and hurt because I didn't accept their Orkut or Facebook invitations. I'm used to invitations from people I've never heard of, some obviously bogus. I've even become inured to invitations that say "Please reply, or so-and-so may think you're not their friend!" (followed by a sad little face, usually yellow). I treat all mail from social networking sites as spam more or less automatically these days.
But the following invitation from WAYN ("Where are you now") still managed to surprise me with its sleaziness in forging my name in the From field:
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 2009 02:11:25 -0000 From invitation@whereareyounow.net Tue Dec 15 07: 1:28 2009 From: Abhijit Menon-Sen <invitation@whereareyounow.net> To: Abhijit Menon-Sen <ams@toroid.org> Subject: You have 3 messages, 1 add friend request Return-Path: <invitation@whereareyounow.net> Message-ID: <8873441c21fe63757b147fd8053100b4@whereareyounow.net>
Sorry, so-and-so. I'll never find out where you are now.
One of my most enduring memories of Kurosawa's Sanjuro (a sequel of sorts to Yojimbo) is of Mifune's sardonic smile as he explains to a group of well-meaning but clueless young men that they're looking for corruption in all the wrong places. The other is of a cheerful bit of bird song, repeated throughout the film; and, indeed, in many other Japanese films by Kurosawa, Masaki Kobayashi, and others. I'd always wondered which bird was singing.
I posted to the naturerecordists list a couple of years ago, describing the call: a loud, fluty (fwEEEE) whitch-chit-chew. It was quickly identified as the Japanese Bush Warbler Cettia diphone by someone in Hawai'i (where it is apparently a very successful invasive species). I learned later that the long, subdued whistle followed by an explosive jumble of notes is typical of a Cettia warbler's song; but I had never seen or heard one when I first watched Sanjuro.
I assumed the species was common in Japan (given how often its song featured in films), but once it was identified, I stopped thinking about it. There seemed little chance that I would ever hear it live (although C. d. cantuarians may occur as a vagrant to North-East India), and little else about the song to hold my attention… until now.
I had the opportunity to spend two days birding around Delhi with Mark Brazil (author of Birds of East Asia) this week, and one of the many subjects we discussed was Cettia diphone. To my delight, Mark told me that there was much more to the song of the Uguisu than I had imagined.
In Japan, the Uguisu's song is very well-known, and it pervades poetry and literature as a symbol of the spring revival; signifying rebirth, hope, and an end to the hard (winter) times. It is also called the "spring bird" and "poem reading bird", and its call is traditionally transcribed as "Hō ho-ke-kyo". In poetry, the bird is associated with the ume (sour plum) blossom, and is as evocative of spring as the cherry blossom. (Aside: the Uguisu's droppings are even powdered and used to lighten the skin, since they contain guanine.)
Its position in Japanese culture is comparable to that of the Nightingale in western Europe; and the bird's name used to be translated into English as "Japanese Nightingale", though it does not sing at night. (The only bird I can think of whose call is similarly well-known in Indian poetry is the Koel, whose incessant, plaintive song in early summer has also led to comparisons with the Nightingale.)
There are many other Cettia warblers in India. I've seen the Grey-sided Bush Warbler C. brunnifrons both in its wintering grounds and nesting near the tree line in Kumaon, but not heard its song (yet). Brownish-flanked Bush Warbler C. fortipes is also relatively common in the mountains, and other species may also occur. Now that I know something of what I have to look forward to, I always keep an ear out for them.
I may never hear Cettia diphone singing, but its song has brought me much joy.
I'm often asked about my binoculars, Nikon Trailblazer ATB 8x42s (often mistaken for the Monarch 8x42, but a lower-end model). Here's what I usually tell people about them.
A couple of weeks after I received my new passport with the incorrect residential address, I headed back to the Regional Passport Office.
Unfortunately, I discovered that the RPO is closed on Wednesdays ("no public interaction"), but the information counter at the back was open, and to my surprise, I was told that I only needed to show up at room 10 (second floor) the next day with an application for the address to be corrected. I did that, and waited in a queue for half an hour or so.
In room #10 was a stern-looking lady who put her initials on my application without looking at it, and said I should submit it to the "corrections counter" 1A (downstairs). I stood in another queue to do that, and was told to submit a photocopy of the initialled application. I stood in another queue at a kiosk outside, then rejoined the queue at counter 1A. This time, my copy was stamped and returned, and I was told the passport would be dispatched the next Monday.
The ECR stamp, however, couldn't be fixed at the same time (although I was carrying all the necessary paperwork). The lady in room #10 started breathing fire when I asked about it, and said I should have the address corrected, and then come back again later to apply for the ECR status to be changed (for a fee of INR300). My protests that their documentation implies that a copy of the PAN card is sufficient fell on deaf ears.
The passport arrived by speed post today, with a hand-written correction to the address on the second page. I'll wait a while to regain my energy before the battle for ECNR status.
Update (2010-02-05): Only one visit to the RPO was needed.
A newspaper article taught me about the “complete healing of a person from within” using flowers energised by the power of the sun, but I'm not sure whether to eat or sniff them.
Raptors are carefully designed to be difficult to identify.
I installed Ubuntu 9.10 on our Lenovo Ideapad S10 (which was running 8.10), and I also got to install it on a friend's new S10-2. There's little to report in either case.
Towards the end of August, I applied to renew my expired passport. I stood in a queue to submit the application, and returned home to wait for the police to verify that the residential address I put on the form was indeed where I lived.
A month later (to the day), a Sub-Inspector of police called to tell me he was on his way. He wanted to see two separate documents proving that I had lived at the specified address for a year or more. I showed him an old lease deed and a recent phone bill for my MTNL land line. He was happy with the deed, but wanted a phone bill that was more than a year old. I didn't have one (because I send the whole year's bills to my accountant at the end of the financial year), and I happened to not have any other documents (e.g. bank statements) that he would accept instead.
He said I had three options: to produce the requisite proof somehow, or to accept that my application would fail, and to apply again later when I had all the right documents, or to "spend a little money" to ensure a favourable police report despite my (partial) lack of documentation. "A little" money turned out to be INR1000, and I didn't feel like spending that on our friendly neighbourhood SI.
I had resigned myself to failure when Hassath suggested asking MTNL for a copy of an old phone bill… and I suddenly remembered that the MTNL web site (bless its soul!) allows me to download PDF copies of all the bills I've paid in the past. I downloaded one, printed it out, cringed at how unconvincing and unofficial it looked (even in colour), and called the SI to tell him I'd found some proof. He accepted it, and went away to file his report.
Today (about forty days after the police verification), I received my new passport by courier.
But all is not well. The "7B" in my (independently verified!) address has been printed in the passport as "73". But that's not all! There's an "Emigration Check Required" stamp on the first page, even though I am (explicitly and unambiguously) exempt from that particular restriction by virtue of paying income tax and having studied in India past the secondary school level. Oh well, at least they got my name right.
I wonder how many queues it will take to get this sorted out.
Update (2009-11-23): The incorrect address has been corrected after only two trips to the RPO.
It's been two years since Bertie died. It still feels like yesterday.