If

Thinking of Invictus led me to ‘If ‘, by Rudyard Kipling. To be read slowly. Any suggestions on other classics are welcome.

IF

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired of waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

Invictus

Saw’Invictus’ the movie yesterday. Got stuck on the poem. Decided to reproduce it for posterity. Some information about the poet here

INVICTUS

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

An idea for easing the traffic condition

Coming to work yesterday I had a flash, a brainwave. Much of our problems with traffic is due to the lack of information of whats happening ahead. Its specially true when one has options to make alternative route decisions. What I want is something like a friend in front of the traffic constantly telling me about the status of the traffic. So this is the idea.

We are increasingly having GPS systems installed in our mobiles & cars etc. There should be a system wherein information keeps being sent in from the traffic and fed into my GPS route map telling me the traffic condition on the route ahead. Traffic information from every road in the city might be picked up by special units set in taxis. These would relay information relating to location and traffic speed on a real time basis. My assumption is that at any point of time, there would be at least enough taxis stuck up in traffic to give me an accurate enough picture of the traffic conditions. The system can be jigged up to broadcast data only when a passenger sits in thus ensuring that we don’t see a taxi parking lot as traffic jam. The error in the readings due to taxis going slowly or not moving on traffic free roads will be quite minimal. Secondly data points will increase in peak traffic giving more information in the time period we require it most in.

The cost of installing the location transmitter and aggregating the information by the taxi firm can be offset by a paid subscription service that Im sure people will be more than will to pay for. Augmenting this might be advertising revenue that could be generated by ads from companies located on the routes the subscriber is looking to move on.

From what I know, google is already working on a system of this sort however, the key driver needs to be the owner of the vehicles that generate the traffic broadcast

Anybody to try it out?

Note to people travelling from Dubai to Al ain and Jabal Hafeet.

Note to everybody travelling from Dubai to Al ain and Jabal Hafeet.

We headed out to Jabal Hafeet yesterday and had been forewarned about the notoriously confusing route (especially once you enter Al Ain). But we have made it back almost on our own and would like to note the tips that helped us through.

Up to Jabal Hafeet

· From Dubai – Take the Al ain Road - E66 towards Al Ain

· Once you enter al ain through the Tea Pot round about (named by me), keep moving ahead following the “other tourist attractions” signposts. In the intial rounds you will have difficulty finding Jabal Hafeet written on any of the signposts and hence this feels like a little leap of faith. You will find yourself moving in the general direction of the town center.

· Just before the town center, you will find signposts that start mentioning Jabal Hafeet & Green Mubarazah. Keep following the signs from then on.

· Landmarks in case you get lost (not in any order)– Hili Fun City, Town center, al ain sports club

Back from Jabal Hafeet

· This route is trickier you don’t get a signpost to Dubai till much later, so there is a possibility of you moving around in circles.

· From Jabal hafeet move towards al ain

· Once nearing al ain, take the route towards town center.

· Somewhere along the way you will start seeing signposts showing routes to jimi mall. move towards jimi mall.

· As you near jimi mall you start getting signposts showing directions to Dubai

· Landmarks in case you get lost (not in any order) – Town center, Jimi Mall, hili border post, hili fun city

Hope this helps. Al ain though is a beautiful city and a wonderful city to get lost. So feel free to chart another way if you feel adventurous

Dreams from my Father by Barack Obama

Dreams from my Father by Barack Obama

Read the title again. Its not bad grammer, it is exactly how it is laid out. The book is about dreams from a father and a son’s journey into the life of his deceased father, into another continent & culture. The recent popularity of Barack Obama has meant that the book assumes a different halo but even shorn of the author’s notoriety this is a very well written autobiography. The book apparently was written before Obama became a senator and a superstar orator and covers his life from childhood, learning the meaning of being differently coloured to his trip to Kenya to discover his roots and his journey into the life of his father and his grand father through the stories told by his people.

In a manner the book is divided almost chronologically into distinct parts:

· Barry growing up in Hawaii

· Barry’s time in Indonesia

· The teenager Barry learning about himself

· Barack’s time in Chicago as an organiser

· Barack’s trip to Kenya

The thread that runs across the book is one of self discovery. It starts with Barry getting to understand the differentness of his situation growing up in Hawaii as a brown kid of a white mother and a black father with a cultural heritage rooted in two continents. The story never flows in a sequential fashion and the writer takes you back and forth through time giving you the back story of the characters. The story then moves onto his adolescence and his discovery of the subculture of the Blacks in America and his attempts to identify with this group. One gets to see his confusion regarding his actual bearings within the place and his attempts to absorb a culture he has not been born into. You get a glimpse of his mother and grandparents’ efforts to help him with his confusion.

The second part of the book relates to his work in Chicago as an organiser among the poorer neighbourhoods of Chicago. As before, the section is studded with stories of people he interacts with and the struggles and compromises that have to be made at each level. One gets to read about his initial stumbles into this process and the lessons he learns while on the field. Obama’s early works made him work closely with the church in the various neighbourhoods and here he realised the enormous organising power of the Church in a modern western society. This is specially true in the lower stratas of the society where the Church forms the only aggregator of the masses. It is the church that works as an assimilator of people and also a cross pollinator of ideas and. Like earlier, this section is filled with stories of characters each straddling the amorphous space between self interest and community service. His interactions also open to him this notion of the purity of culture and how the black people of America look at Africa almost romantically for their roots

The last part of the book deals with his journey into Kenya to discover his roots. Obama has the company of his sister as they travel in time and space through the stories told by the extended family and relive the lives of their father, their grandfather and the ancestors before them. This section stands as complete contrast to the previous one however as one reads through one gets a general feel of the common thread that runs through.

In many ways, this book is about a persons journey as told through the stories of people he comes across. Either deliberately or otherwise, Obama, with his life creates a metaphor of the general coloured people – people in an alien land with identities linked back to Africa. He acknowledges this and undertakes this journey and towards the end, in his meeting with a Kenyan historian realizes that this notion is nothing more than romantic belief – that the pure Africa as imagined the blacks is no more a figment of imagination as the noble past but it is required for the people to maintain their sanity. As with Jewish belief of Zion, the power of this concept is immense only in the imaginary form and quickly dissipates when one starts questioning it.

This book in essence is not a biography but story of the people who feature in Obama’s life. Obama just acts as a recorder and assimilator of stories as he tries to make sense of things. The pattern is evident through the course of the book, you get to hear about a person and his belief and as the author then delves deeper trying to reason the belief. All in all, this book is a wonderful read. This is one person whose memoirs are going to be very interesting.