Monday, October 05, 2009

Of Ghee roast , sada roast and Heat transfers

The sappadu ramargal's annual meeting was convened at this year at the famed age old Karpagam Mess in Mylapore. There was Venkatadri sitting adjacent to the president carefully recording the minutes of the meeting. All the members were present. The club does not tolerate anybody missing the meeting, they had decided it was sacrilege to the venue. So there was the usual talk about passing of motions by various people. All was fine it seemed. Then it was time for the gala event, hogging of food, for this was all the club is all about. Eating.

Ambhi was immediately called for. Ambhi appeared in his immaculate dress for the occasion. The owner of the mess was an ex-member of the club and had to quit due gastronomical reasons, he was very particular about the treatment. So there was Ambhi with his 100 holed yellow brownish sleeveless shirt (aka banniyan), the dhoti was, in true with the great traditions, was folded in the box way (dabba kattu), on seeing the amount of oil used to perfectly comb his hair every member of the club was satisfied that it was going to be a fat treat. Ambi stood there in rapt attention with the Gandhian pencil out of its usual position behind his ear now in his hand. Ambhi was ready for the fight. "Sambhar Vada da, Ambhi, then Adai Avial for desert get me that superb degree coffee, you know venkatadri these days I dont drink that much coffee, in my youth..........." , then there was "Ambhi oru ghee roast da, then i will have one bonda and then kesari, i cant have the basanthi you see my wife told me not to have so much fat" , "Ambhi nekku oru keera vada da, you know when the British was there in India they rated the Kapragam mess's keerai vada as the best, I have nominated it to be featured on the Food channel then I will have on special dosai da, make sure you make the dosa immediately after the ghee roast I am on diet you see" and it went on. Ambhi's pencil was moving at the speed of light jotting everything. Then with a smile the pencil went back to its high perch.

Every one was rubbing their banana leaves with glee. The food arrived. The ghee roast of Vasudeva Iyengar was in true style folded like a maharaja's crown and the special dosai of Swaminathan was folded neatly, with the creases sharp enough to cut fingers. This would have delighted all the members of the club. But today was not any normal day. Vasudeva Iyengar's son who had just entered IIT had taught his father the art and mysticism of heat transfer and he was raring to show off his newly obtained skill.

Vasudeva Iyengar, " Oi Swaminathar ummakku theriyumma oi umma dosai is losing heat faster. Ambhi you should stop serving dosas like this. Based on the laws of convection conduction and confusion his dosa is losing heat fast. And the taste of the dosa is in the heat. Enna sollrel oi ?"

Ambhi stood there totally confused about what was going on.

Swamintahan, "Oi umma payyan IIT porannu romba than pithikkrere. Sappdum oi"

V, "Athu illa oi sappadu nanna irukkanam ollyo athu than"

The discussion was just heating up or rather cooling down (i cant make up my mind)

There on the side was Parthasarathy a new engineer. He wanted to get in.

P, " Mama athu neengo sollrathu serriya varathu mama"

V, "Ennada appa nee yaaru ?"

P," Naan Parthasarathy namma _______ payyan amma athulla illa athu than sappda vanthen"

V, " Athu enn serriya varuthu acoding to cond..."

P," Illa mama actually onga dosai than most thermodynamically inefficient, since it is like a maharaja;s crown it is fully exposed to the ambient air and not only that there is the fact that air can move to the inside of the dosa making it lose heat faster. On the other hand mama's dosa is folded neatly and its layered since most of the dosa is not exposed to air it retains heat faster"

At this time Ambhi saw that V's mouth was fully open. He thought this would be the perfect time to pour the piping hot sambhar and the mediumly warm chutney.

P," Mama now that the sambhar is poured on the dosa it changes everything, now the thermal properties would be...."

S who had not had fun like this since the days of Sunil Gavaskar;s cricket thought it was enough and he piped in

S, " Dai Pachu pothum da. Irrukkattam. Oi Vasudeva intha heat transfer problemukku ennoda thoppannar oru sooper idea vechirunthar ya. Ennannu kekkariya 'vayamudindu sapdum oi'"

Every body smiled and started attacking the food with vigour. All was well at the sappadu ramar club.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Winter woes

I give up my vanity.

I give up everything that makes me, me

I give up my life, almost

I give up my dreams

I give up my virtues



I will bloom back to life

I will conquer my dreams

I will hold fast to my virtues

I would have survived the thaw,

I would live on and see many more springs.



The trees look so good at start of autumn and so inspirational. Had to do this.

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Fuel woes & Hybrid cars

DISCLAIMER: A VERY LONG AND MAYBE A BORING POST. I WAS BORED AND DECIDED TO BORE YOU GUYS WITH IT. BORE ON NOW!!!

To most of all you this might be a small move from the usual but I tell you this is all for a good end. I love cars & bikes and I can't but wonder how a world can survive without one. All this talk about reducing emissions, increasing fossil fuel emissions, depletion of fossil fuels is getting somewhere but where? Will that do us any good ? Can we actually adopt any of them ? These are the million dollar questions that people want to know the answer to.

All this talk about having to adopt public transport is good, if we can trust the public transport to be on time. Believe me in most countries they work like clockwork. But here lies the problem in most places where they work like clockwork the frequency & the operating hours are horrifying to say the least. This being one valid reason for people to avoid using them people never will want to relinquish the little freedom if at all they have any. So where this leads us is, most of the time the public transport ends up operating at 10% of its capacity. The trains may be electric but the electricity is mostly generated by the fossil fuels. The buses either run on Diesel or CNG. They may be efficient when you take the full capacity but at 10% I doubt it very much. They also emit particulate matter, CO2, CO, the entire works. If we consider this to be a start and say people have to use them more, one word my friends, convenience . Most of us never like wasting time waiting for something but we dont spend all our time wisely, again I blame human nature for it or its just me. And we have to agree a car is never just a transportation its much more a style statement, a symbol of prestige and a lot more. So nobody is going to give it up very easily. You always have to arrive in style my friend.

Car pooling works to an extent. And most corporations are also getting greener by providing their own transportation. I bet the MBA suits have a lot more and better reasons for the company providing the transportation. One more step in that direction should be to give incentives to the people who use the mass transportation instead of their own cars to get to the office.

One thing the developed nations can learn from the developing nations is the use of small motorcycles to travel. Most of the time we travel in our car all alone. Why not ride a motorcycle to work ? Even the very fast ones have better fuel efficiency than a car (I am not even thinking about yummy mummy SUV's). The real small ones are also getting close to running very clean with all the fuel injection and catalytic converters. Yes, I agree its definitely not as safe as a car. But also you seldom fall for something which was not your mistake. Your dodge-bility increases. The icing on the cake are the mini electric scooters. These are Zero emission vehicles and also small ones so you dont waste electricity charging them. They can reach 40 mph/60kmph max. For a city with speed limits in force I dont see a point why one shouldnt ride one. At least at 40/60 you are on the limit on these :D.

The pricing of fuel should be based on the mileage you are getting out of the car. Most cars have the average fuel efficiency on their onboard computers. Why not take this data and use it to base the price of fuel on this. If you are driving a small car or a car more efficiently you are rewarded. For people driving good sports car I bet its just the price we can afford to pay for all the fun we are having. For those with big heavy SUV's, I dont know what to say, maybe pay the price for the road presence you have ? This can make people drive keeping the fuel efficiency in mind. If we are having fun we also pay for it. That makes it a fair game. Doesnt it?

I saw the story of Gordon Murray's new car on Top gear . His ideas also for the implementation are also awesome. If the above idea is implemented it would only make these small cars sell more. So if car manufacturers are listening, have you started making the calls for the lobbying ;). I bet a lot of 'green' guys would help you here.

One of my pet peeves is the hybrid car. Top gear just showed the entire world that a M3 BMW is much more fuel efficient than Toyota Prius. If at all there had to be hybrids I would say make the big SUV;s a hybrid. The fuel savings percentage will be sky high. A mile saved can be worth a lot of digits. Think in terms of cars like Escalade and the Hummer, think one more mile per gallon. Ah! see thats what I am talking about.

Fuel being depleted, no fuel in the next ten years ? Well with fuel prices increasing it is just making it more economically feasible to dig at places which were not feasible. Moreover fuel is called fossil fuel for the reason being it is decayed plants and animals basically. All autoclaved in the Earth's crust. SO there will be more fuel formed and we can dig it.

So there you have it. A small start. Lets see.

American Cars

Hopefully my last effort at dishing out the Americas. This time its more of the things that I know a little about. And also some of my friends have also asked about this post for quite sometime. Lets put the crux of the matter first, american cars are horrible, simple, end of matter. Why ?

  • Handling or the non-existence of it.
  • Turning radius as big as the earth's.
  • Huge engines with very low power.
In an attempt to make the car more comfy they isolated almost all world environments which would give a feedback to most parts of the car. The steering turns the wheels but when you are turning the steering one has no idea how much the wheels are actually turning. The suspension is too soft to communicate anything except give you an illusion that one is on a boat.

I bet they did this all in good faith. They just wanted you know to know that you can actually turn a 3 ton brute with your finger (the little finger if you are strong enough) and you can definitely go for a luxury cruise to the grocery shop !!

Don't want to say anything more. THE END. Seeya.

Saturday, May 31, 2008

Playing Turncoat

What I am putting together is just what I think, its nothing new. We all probably have thoughts which are on the same lines.

The presence of God. The most debated thing in the entire world. This is just one more drop in the ocean.

Enough introductions lets get on with it. God. The concept of God is just a stroke of genius, a fantastic thought. And the thought is, God was a character created by our ancestors to keep us sane.He is a multi faceted character. He was/is the first psychiatrist known to mankind. Think about it, we tell God all our miseries and we feel better , the weight in our heart is lifted. Isnt that what most counsellings are about ? We talk to him about what we want, what frustrates us and what not thereby venting our feelings and making our lives less miserable. Isnt that what most people expect from a shrink ?

He is a source of hope. The one thing in this entire world who is with you always, he keeps optimism alive and kicking till the end ! We pray for certain things to happen and what are they if not a hope ? God offers a constant support. One has to accept the fact that more we pray to him and the more promises we make. This just keeps us going. You trust him, you are always on his shoulder leaning for support.

Also God was defined as a "Role model". There have been so many stories told about the righteousness, the suffering they endured. Their morals are flawless. We look to them for molding our characters. There are so many festivals based on what they did, probably just to remind us what we are supposed to do.

We can explain the creation of the universe with Big bang theories and theories of evolution. We can even explain things which happen to us, the incidents with the chaos theory, the butterfly effect thereby establishing a bit of our lack of control our future.

So there you have to it, there is God for you. A master stroke by our ancestors which has kept us going till date. So is God a work of fiction ??

The one main argument that completely shoots all the above arguments to a new galaxy is, if there is "No God" how do we explain the fact that every human being born on the face of the earth is equally talented. Someone in someway is special (No I am not getting corny here) . Think about there is always talent somewhere in someone and the chances are we suck big time at that. That makes the world a level playing field. How do we explain that ? DNA ? From what little I know, what prevents the offspring to take just the non-important parts from his parents ? But that doesn't happen does it ? There is always a some talent in a person. Doesn't this point to an external agency messing around with our genes and telling them what gets passed on and what doesn't. Isnt that convincing enough for the presence of God ?

There are we have come a full circle. Phew!!!

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Indian F1

This post is a complete rumination of how things could have been or will be in Force India.

Since the launch of Force India most of the people I talk to ask me if I already have a job with them. (I obviously dont, not that I wont take it if being offered or anything). So it all started at this point when me and my fellow motorsport engineer spent a couple of hours discussing how a true blue India team (make it a south Indian team while at it)should be. Here goes the essential to do stuff for getting the transformation done to make team Force "India".

We shall start from the all important kannu padamal irrukka / nazar/bad eye repelling lime and chilli in the front. See this doesnt even affect the performance of the vehicle by much, due to the shape. The lime is perfectly spherical thereby having a low frontal area and thereby a lower drag co-efficient. The chilli on the other hand if oriented in the right direction would act as a winglet producing some downforce which is awesome stuff. But the orientation is the key, fellows! So in the pits we would have some allen keys to adjust the orientation of them.

Then comes the photo of the bhootham with tongue out. The same type we hang outside our houses. Come on people the chilli cant handle it all. We need the gory / scary face to repel the bad eyes. So the rear wing will be painted with that. This is will also have a great psychological effect on the driver coming to overtake the car. Picture this, the face moving at about 300 kmph in front of you. Scary. We also thought of making Mallya do that pose we certainly think it will be more scary.
Thinking about it still.

The whole body of the car will be painted with the "ishta deivam" of the team. After much deliberation it was decided that it should be the "Murugar with Vel" (of the "Rani" calendar fame). We are confident that this will help us force more cool air into the ducts and keep the engine cool. Vettri vel Muruganukku arrogara!!

Now that the car is done lets come to the mechanics and the drivers. The drivers are going to be our very own "pallavan" drivers. The car will be fitted with air horns. ( they seriously dont know how to drive without horns). Scene,"Force India car 1 coming to overtake Lewis Hamilton, pa pa pa paaam paam, watha lewisu saavu graaki ootanda sollikunnu vanthittiya kailla kadache nasthi ayiduvva". Overtaking complete. Very Possible.

The pit lane will have a F1 stop board about 15 feet away. Come on they are our pallavan drivers. Instead of the lollypop man to signal the car it will be a bang bang on the body and a "pollam right". The car will zoom away crushing the blessed limes under the tyres.

The race engineers will shed their Nomex suits and switch to "Veshti sattai". Veshti will be worn in true Raj kiran Style, Pattapatti showing with veshti in dabba kattu.

If you had seen a race you will remember the quick banana snack they take. Not our race engineers, namma aalunga full carrier meals adikkame vidamattanga. The team pit garage will also feature a "Nair tea stall" for the benefit of the driver and the mechanics. So you will hear radio conversations like " Master oru special paal tea"
For countering any problems the ECU will have headphones on it. Our captain , Vijay Kanth's dialogs of " kanna intha racela 22 cars irrukku athulla 11 company ella ECUme FIA supplied ippo nee off annenna nee namma nattukku throgam pannra. Then ECU sends data and captain says mannippu enaakku telemetryla pudikkathe vartha" hoohaha...
So this will be our team of the future.

P.S : What inspired me to doing this post is this photo http://www.formula1.com/news/interviews/2008/4/7630.html
the third photo of the 4 look to the immediate right of Fisi's leg. Recognize the photo ? Its our very own Tirupati Venkatachalapthi. So me and my friend werent far off. So here we come people Watch out.

Sunday, March 23, 2008

The season

I know people are dying to want to hear my season's comments. And all I can say now just after watching the Malaysian gp is this is going to be one great season. One for the history books. This exactly what they call a level playing field or any body's season i guess. In Australia the performance of the Ferrari was abysmal especially Kimi's (my frnd is going to kill me for saying that aloud). I felt as if when he was pressurized he forgot that he no longer had the Traction Control and got it all wrong. I was very pissed off with his performance. But I have to give the devil its due he drove a perfect race in Malaysia. From the word go or should I say from the phrase 'Five lights and they go off and this marks the start of the Malaysian Grandprix'?

The BMW's showed a good form in the Oz and so was their performance at the Malaysian watch out guys the BMW's have arrived. The surprise at the Malaysian was the Toyota. They were nowhere last season. Suggests that money wasnt burnt at cologne. We all expected Lewis to be the man of this season at least I was. There is the new kid in the mclaren block Heiki he is awesome. Dont know what the mclarens are doing but they are definitely having a great driver arsenal. Awesome.

I felt the stab when the mclaren's made the 'Business as usual lewis' but the Ferrari did spring back. I would have loved the same hit back from the Ferrari. But they dont broadcast their radio so .... pity indeed. It was damn good to hear the Italian anthem being played. I was excited as I would be if the Indian anthem was played. The anthem kind of has grown up on me. Hope Vijay mallya is listening and we all Indians get a chance to conduct the anthem from our couches with the remote on hand. That would be definitely damn good. Even more good if its a double whammy. Is Narain or Chandok being inducted in the 'Force' ? If so guys get a darth vader helmet. The force and all. (Sorry Couldnt resist :D)

So this is going to be a great season dont miss it for anything in this world and by chance you dont follow f1. This is the best season start watching. Beats the shit out of 'sex and the city'.

I am the having fun!!!!