Zorbing - Roll and Bounce downhill

Woww - This was all I could say after our Zorb Ball halted at bottom of downhill.Zorbing seems to be a nice innovation by some crazy person who might have thought of rolling down the hill without hurting himself. A Zorb is a transparent inflatable sphere with an air cushion surrounding it.

A night before, we were playing teen patti till 3am in the morning. On day of Zorbing, we were supposed to get started by 11am and we barely managed to wake up at 11am. So you know how late were running. Amidst frantic call conferencing between PK, Swapnil, Rajnish and me, we decided to save time by fast tracking lunch. We searched for Pizza hut on the way and placed order online. It was in between our house in MIddletown and Zorbing place in Woodbury, CT. After having good pizza we reached the site location by 3:30pm :). On talking with the receptionist I managed to get a deal from her on summer tubing. I am sure she must have later thought that she gave double deal. There regular rate of summer tubing was $10 per person for 2 rides. She could have very well said that in same price take unlimited rides. But she gave double deal , 3 people free ride and unlimited ride. So this was good start.PK, Swapnil, Rajnish and I tried convinving the ladies to try Zorb. But united they stood and all declined as a group. Women power - rocks - we had to step down and agree with four of us doing Zorbing. When I was strapped in safety belts inside the Zorb, it gave a nice secure feeling. I was expecting simple rolling motion. But within few seconds of being release from the holding harness, we experienced a bouncing motion. Swapnil and I were being tossed up and down while the ball was going downhill. We were shouting partly in excitement and partly in fear. What if the ball jumps over the sides and rolls on the road? Finally the Zorb stopped and were elated to step out..PK cut another deal and got more rides for Zorb. PK and I went for second ride. This time it was more bouncy (may be PK's weight added more to it :)). One of the safety belt broke loose for PK and he shouted more while holding onto his hands. It's scary to imagine someone without any harness inside the Zorb and bouncing in wild way. Scary ...scary..friends make sure your safety belt is secured.

Next it was tubing. Who might have thought that a sport done in winter on snow can be done during peak summer in scorching heat. All of had multiple rounds of tubing on slow and fast track. Fast track had steep fall towards the beginning which made everyone scream. Best was Ridit and Ishi also sat along with Monica and Reema and had their first experience of Tubing. When they grow old, I am going to tell them that their first tubing was organised by me :). 

The group - Left to Right - Ridit, Swapnil, PK, Rajnish and me

Ishi, Monica, Reema, Sushmita and Meri Biwi :)

We did summer tubing and Zorbing at http://www.woodburyskiarea.com/summer/summertubing.htm

Rickets Glen national Park

The destination, Rickets Glen National park, was 200 miles from our place. When it dawned on Garima and me that labor day weekend is here, it was already Friday before weekend! So we called Amrisha and Monica and then the conference call began. Within few minutes the ladies finalized the plan to go out in wild. Swapnil, Abhishek and I were simply informed that next day we have to start by 9am and have to do shopping in evening.

We reached Adams fall and saw national park sign board. We assumed that we reached the right spot and waited for Abhishek and family to reach the spot. Monica called Amrisha's cell. No response. She left a voice message and meanwhile we chatted, roamed to see the surroundings while waiting for the return call. Time check. 30 minutes since we last called and yet no response from the party in other car. Both Swapnil and Monica made calls to Amrisha and Abhishek's cell and both were able to reach there voice system alone. We were wondering what route they took? Why they are taking so long. After 1 hr we decided to see Adams fall. Swapnil and I took our swimming costume and towels and headed towards the fall. Its neither magnificent fall nor very scenic. But the fall ends in a gourge which is around 12-15 ft deep and so is a place to jump and swim. Garima, Monica and Litle Ridit also walked down with us. Swapnil and I changed into swimming costume and went down to feel the water. Water was slightly cold but refreshing. After few minutes wait, we took a plunge and were swimming in water. Meanwhile we saw few courageous people jumping from the cliff down into water. This is what we wanted to do. Swapnil went up first while I waited down with Garima and Monica cheering him. He would have stood on top for 2 minutes plus gathering energy to jump. A stranger friend who had done multiple jumps till now impressing his girlfriend, showed the water spot to jump to Swapnil. We cheered from below and would have counted 1...2...3 atleast 10 times :). Stranger friend jumped to give demo to Swapnil. Finally Swapnil took the leap of faith and chapaak....was in water. Hurraaay...he was shouting aloud on the brave thing he just did :). Now it was my turn. Sitting down, I felt I will do it soon. But when I went up and saw below, it was high. I spoke to the stranger friend and tried to gather courage. Both the stranger and his girlfriend said, go ahead you can do it. Garima was cheering first from below.
After about a minute or so she changed tone and starting shouting to jump fast. At one moment I thought to walk down. But then I said...lets jump. And there I took jump off the cliff. I don't know when I closed my nose to save myself. Splash. I touched water and went slightly inside. Even inside water I felt like...woww I did it. I swam up and hurray I was sitting next to Garima and Monica watching my own video.

Now that the tough jump was over we swam a bit. Both Swapnil and I tried to reach the bottom of the fall by swimming against the water current. Funny thing was that when we reached close to the place where water fall was creating surf, we were swimming at the same spot. We tried hard to swim against the force but didn't succeed. The second we stopped trying, water pushed us down the flow and we were back in somewhat silent water. At this moment we didn't realize that this effort will pain the next day. But in hindsight I know today that my arms are paining because of the heavy swimming we tried in cold water.

We came out of water, dried ourselves and changed the clothes. We were still not able to get connected with Abhishek. There was no reply to the emails we sent earlier hoping they will reply to email when they come in coverage. Both Garima and Monica starting fearing about bad things and became anxious. Swapnil made 911 call and tried to get some information from them. But 911 group was clear that they are not going to look into where the car could be or where the cellphone could be. They cited privacy rule and said that 2 hrs is very less time to do anything. Hoping for all good, we headed towards the lake which Garima had read about online. There in parking lot 2 when we were entering we saw Abhishek and Amrisha heading out. Ufffff. What a relief. We saw our lost friends (lost for 2 hrs :)) and then saw beautiful lake in front of us. We all decided to grill near this lake, eat well and then do anything else. Barbeque, swimming in placid lake, playing with kids and the day went by. All's well that ends well.

Long version of the video showing my 2.30 minutes of wait on top
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UuZcZHiOBk

2011- Only 2.77% Indians pay income tax

Below article in Times of India made me think.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Only-2-77-Indians-pay-income-tax/articleshow/9816887.cms

What information does the percentage figure give us?

The statement by minister of State for finance says that only 2.77% of Indians paid personal income tax in 2010.

We should be able to answer following questions to put things in right perspective
1. What percentage of population is in working category (18 – 60) I guess.
2. Filing tax forms should be mandatory even when your income is less than 1 lakh per annum. Basically I am trying to get answer to the question – How many people actually earned some money by working. This number should be subset of previous question
3. How many people actually paid taxes after applying all tax benefits. I believe this 2.77%
4. I was reading elsewhere that agriculturalists are not accounted in this. In my opinion, this figure should include all individuals irrespective of class or job.

I was trying to gather information for US and was able to pull data from official website
http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/indtaxstats/article/0,,id=134951,00.html

They clearly report on all income bracket people (includes below $5000 which is below poverty line). We need such sample data report for Indian population as well. It seems in US 45% people are in working class and around 20% actually pay positive income tax.

If someone knows how to pull such information for Indian population, let us know by commenting. I cannot believe that more data is not provided around 2.77% income tax payer.

Vonage mis-advertising

No unlimited calls on Vonage

Vonage has managed to pull together another marketing gimmick with customers. It claims “unlimited” international calls for personal usage which is totally incorrect. In terms of service section, Vonage very brilliantly says that the usage should not exceed normal customer behavior. Then it says that 95% of customers use 3000 minutes or less. I doubt that the statistics is true but we cannot argue on that. So in short a customer is allowed 3000 minutes of international calls for a monthly bill of $35. This is after all the promotional offers which normally get over by first 3 months.

I mainly call India and did calculation of all international calls to India. It comes to 1.2 cents per minute for first 3000 minutes. This price is still cheaper than 1.75 cents that is charged by reliancecall and other services. But at least those services don’t claim service to be free for unlimited calls.

I am not saying service is bad or costing very high. But surely the marketing material is misleading customer i.e. us.

Cable companies have started offering international calls now. Time warner, FiOS and Optimum are few ISP providers that I know offer international calls. Time Warner I believe cancels the service when the usage exceeds certain limit. FiOS claims it is literally unlimited. If you have some experience with these cable companies, kindly comment below.

Channeling Information and collaboration - is admirable

We are living in a world of information flood. Reducing information overload on team members is very close to me as I strongly believe that at bottom level someone should focus and work on one task at a time. I can ask a developer to code two programs but he will code one at a time, focusing on one and then taking up another. Similarly if I ask someone to analyze item 1, I cannot assume he can analyze item 2 at the same time and share the results simultaneously.

Email is dominating my life. Every 5 mins my outlook refreshes itself and I get emails sent to me or to many distribution lists which I am part of. I don’t realize it is costing me a lot of time and is switching my focus away from what I am working on.

I am proponent of the idea that as middle level managers in delivery teams we should channel the information. I may gather 10 tasks from different teams or groups and want to assign it to my team. I can gather all infomation and send it to them as a summary email. With regards to onsite-offshore communication, peer level communication should happen. Team level meetings can happen for sharing extra information with all. Including everyone instead of peers alone in all emails may cause information flood.

Few may argue on information loss because of filtering and I agree with their viewpoint. Classic example of information loss is requirement gathering which is notorious for losing client’s requirements in a product. So the concept promotes that everyone in the team should have access to all information. This way one person’s judgment alone is not responsible for propagating information to the next level and it at least provides the option that someone will find that team is taking wrong direction.

To achieve a balance between information flooding and information loss we all need to think creatively and fine some solution using current generation technology. Technological solution calls for collaborative tools. We should start thinking beyond emails. Collaborative team communication tools should be customized and made primary mode of communication. Assigning or addressing content to a particular person should be allowed on this tool. The tool can add acknowledgment once the individual reads the content. Project level collaborative tools will have all communication between all team members on public domain. I as an individual can focus on content assigned to me and if I have time I can read other items. I can access additional information if I feel I don’t have everything with me and that information should be on collaborative tool. This way project information can remain in project teams’ domain as far as possible.

Someone may suggest that team collaboration can be achieved by sharing all team emails with each member. Team members can ignore email if it’s not addressed to them. Individual developers are maybe smart to create and apply filters to move emails to another place when not addressed to them. Although there are gaps in using filtering process but for arguments’ sake lets say individuals do this. At each new email notification most people want to see if it’s not addressed to them. It breaks the thought process they may be into before getting distracted.

In information age “Effects of interruption” is a hot topic of research. The negative effect of an interruption on productivity is much more than the time spent handling the interruption. Nielsen J notes: “… even a one minute interruption can easily cost a knowledge worker 10 to 15 minutes of lost productivity due to the time needed to reestablish mental context and re-enter the flow state.” Picard concurs, “We take a major productivity hits with each interruption.”

I admire channeling of information and keeping it at common place for everyone to read.