Weblog of Anton Prakash

Few days back, I was chatting with my good friend - Paul Valente - who was born and grew up in Marin but moved to Thailand a few years back and is running few interesting businesses both local as well as online. He is one of the few people in the world that practice outright what they preach. (In Paul’s case, he preaches less and practices more

Several years back, my family was invited to spend a couple of days with Paul and his parents where they were camping in Lake Pillsbury. It was our first camping experience and our daughter was about 10 months old. It was a great experience although we had difficulties that all first-timers  would go through. We carried some disposable cutlery and after a lunch, I threw away one of the plastic forks. Paul picked up, washed it told we can use that several times more before discarding it. It was an educating experience for me. 

When I grew up in Manapad, a small village close to the tip of India, recycling is not a fancy or hippie thing. It is part and parcel of people’s lives. At the end of of every academic year, we would take the written part of the notebooks used in the year and separate them from the unused pages. The used pages get bundled and sold to the “recycled paper merchant” that visits the village once in a while. (Rarely, do we get money for “selling” the used paper. Most of the times, it would be a bartering thing - for dates or fruits). The unused paper would be used to make notebooks for the next year. This is only a start. We NEVER wasted practically anything. The groceries (such as pulses and spices) are wrapped in torn newspapers and wrapped with coir threads. The wrapped paper would be collected all year long and the thread would be collected into a yarn ball as well. This recycling merchant is not interested in these torn pieces of different shaped pieces of paper spoiled by dough, spices and what not. So, this is what my grandmother would do - she would soak them in water and get all the newspaper ink out and use the dough-looking paste to make handmade bowls which can be used in the kitchen for keeping onions, salt, palm sugar and similar things. I remember the time when we had a lot of LP records left over after “Audio Casettes” - a then disruptive technology - eliminated gramophones, my father came up with this idea of heating them un hotwater, bending them at the shape of the bottom of a pot and then use that as a canvas. He gave these handmade paintings as gifts. I would pay anything to get a few of them now. I can go on and on and on about the ways where we reused and recycled things. Right after doing the engineering school, I went to Bahrain, a cute little island country located in the Arabian Sea south of Saudi Arabia. I could not bring myself to throw newspaper or used milk cartons into the trash. After realizing the apartment I lived turned into a large trash can, I somehow threw them all away and started to be more consuming than recycling. After coming to the US, this has only increased. 

Up until the camping incident. It was an eye opener to me. It was refreshing to see people here in the US with strong thoghts about recycling. It was just a year since I moved to California. After the camping incident, I have seen more people who are way more strict and even anal about recycling here in Marin county. For a brief period of time, I consulted with Paul Hawken’s Natural Capital Institute on their WiserEarth project and traveled with Peggy Duvette to India in helping her set up the outsourcing team for WiserEarth. The association with these “green” people have deepened my commitment to living a low carbin life.

As soon as I told him about the daul-geographic life and the needed air travel, his question is on the carbon footprint this lifestyle would demand. Giving the chat transcript below:

I see some of the bloggers are posting the comments received in their emails into the content. Here is one received from the blogger of Thabaal (meaning “Postal Mail”) - someone for whom I have great admiration … Posting this here is somewhat of a pressure to write at Thabaal more!

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Read all of them at once – just like the fellows do at the Tasmac bar.  Enjoyed the reading thoroughly. Very interesting, esoteric stuff. But, your audience is going to be limited because few have the life experience you have and can relate to the things you say.

Specifically on the topics –

(1)    Would like to read Post American World

(2)    Wind energy has not been ignored. Come to where we live, you will understand. Vijayakant is accusing DMK and ADMK that they became complacent on energy capacity creation because of too much reliance on wind power.

(3)    Alcohol abuse is a very pathetic situation. As much as I abhor PMK, I think Dr Ramadoss is correct in his criticism that governments make men drunkards and the families beggars through all the free and low cost schemes. You are correct in pointing out the solution: education. 

I hope you will have the time to continue the blog. Thabaal is languishing because I just don’t have the time to do it.

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I was contacted last week from one of the research staff for a possible appearance at “The economic report” show. The person that tried to get a hold of me must have tried real hard as she even called my number in India. I finally talked with her yesterday and she went over the basics and told an assitant producer would call me this morning. I got called and had a conversation about 15 minutes but totally disappointed how canned these questions were and how they had nothing to do with my background or experience. I was hoping to share my views on Outsourcing 2.0, Knowledge Process Outsourcing outlooks for next 5 years and topics of that nature. But the questions are very dry and conventional. However, it was an interesting experience indeed!

It seems the Indian and US governments are fast tracking the nuclear energy technology transfer. During my recent trips to India, the amount of time I make sweat angels on the floor is on constant increase and I am sold on the value proposition of the nuclear energy India needs. I am very much in concurrence with the US stand on making the trade which is needed for the American economy which is slowing more than my metabolism.

There are many arguments from those that oppose the deal. We can categorize the arguments in 3 groups:

1. Conspiracy theorists who tend to believe CIA will make unannounced trips to the power plants. They often quote Noam Chowsky but the fact is that the world has changed from the time of Cuban Missile Crisis to post 9/11. While America’s ambitions on the middle east is well known, the US economy’s dependence on emerging economies (mainly China and India) does not require much explanation. It is best to ignore this group both in India and in the US.

2. Concerned Environmentalists that genuinely believe India is not ready to take the safety measures a large scale Nuclear nation would need. This is a valuable concern and one could only hope that the recent economic growth has helped India beef up on this end.

3. Leftist politicians: They think India is becoming a modern slave of America. (I suggest “Post American World” by Fareed Zakaria to this group.)

However, after reading up arguments on both sides, the biggest question comes to my mind: Is the energy we will get from the nuclear technology enough for India’s growing economy ? Last month when I was there, I saw the power cut was there almost every day for 3 hours or so. When it rains, there would be no power cuts for 3 days or so as the hydro powerplants could produce more from the water supply at the dams. From the stats, the nuclear energy being planned wont even meet 20% of the current need, which means, it would be a fraction by the time the technology is applied to functioning powerplants.

Case in point : What about the nenewable energy segment ? I have been talking with someone in the Private Equity industry and he is trying to put together a fund that will invest in India’s solar segment. The technology to be used is from a large american company that makes satellites which use their Photovotaic solar panels up in the Orbit. The technology has proven to be a viable one but the deal is stuck with US’ Technology Transfer agreement. This is even after showing that there are more than a few large businesses in India have agreed to sign a PPA (Power Procurement Agreement) and that the US entity can own majority stakes in the venture.

I strongly feel Indian government and industry groups have not paid much attention to the renewable energy segment - be it Solar, Wind, Tidal. True, there are many Wind-based generation but it is fraction of a fraction of the country’s energy needs. And more importantly, there is no policy or mandate to tap into this area. For example, early this ear, California has passed a regulation that the energy utilities must produce 20 percent of all electricity fro renewable sources. All the 3 utilities in California wont meet this aggressive target but they are working their best towards this. New ideas and fresh money are poured into this.

I am sure there is a group at Microsoft checking out Chrome and its features and there is a larger group of hackers trying to hack into its possible vulnerabilities. There will be more news on this in the next few weeks. For now, I can categorically declare that Chrome is the BEST browser ever! I downloaded on the same day Chrome is realeased and found a few sites not loading and reported them. Within a few hours, those sites started showing up without any problems. The download feature is super slick; the history view is awesome but the most unbelieveable thing is the speed. It is almost as fast as “lynx”, the text browser. Great job Google!

“Do you need the change back ?” asked he waiter at the Bombay Garden at San Rafael when we finished having dinner and Lindsey left the cash to pay the check. I was astounded by the question and everyone in the table was a bit shocked too. Can you ask the customer such a question ? Are you not supposed to leave the change back and let the customer decide on the tip ? Everyone had an opinion but all of them are sort of pointed to one “Never ask the customer such a question”.

Cindy and Doug picked me up mid morning and we stopped by to get a couple of sandwiches for lunch. Between all of us, we had 5 nets and lots of bait chicken. I was sure we would walk back from Paradise Beach with lots of crabs but we got just one decent sized one and decided to throw back also. There were many crawling into the net but they were just too small. The high tide was not there until after noon but even then the good sized crabs were not getting into the net.

Outside of that, it was a lovely day… There was cool breeze over 75 degrees of burning sun. Paradise Beach is generally on the cool side and hence everyone is to dress in layers and most of the times, you would end up wearing all the layers. Not today!

Will be uploading pictures on Posterous or Picassa Web Album later.

Met with Jack Harrington at the Harrington’s in San Francisco. Not a coincidence but not planned either. We went to 1 Market first and Duncan suggested we should be talking to Harrington at the earby namesake. Harrington’s is located in the middle of the financial district and it was Friday before the long weekend… and it is one of the hottest days in San Francisco (~90) so you can imagine how crowded it would be. We got a seat close to the bar and could see the actions of the evening there. Harrington’s is a classic Irish bar.. Even their menus and

napkins scream with bold “shamrock” printed everywhere. They furnished it in the 50’s pub except those shiny TVs which gives some sort of sports bar feeling. The service was excellent except the place  gets real noisy. Duncan, as usual, lamented “These americans - they are just loud” in addition to sharing his stories on Asians and Indians driving. Need to visit a few places in Scotland to check out his story.

Back to Harrington. Jack runs a firm called Franklin Management and hence understands the outsourcing space very well. He has not done offshore yet but that’s why I was there

PS: Wordpress has limitations on size of image files. Going to post rest of the photos on Posterous.

I got one before going to India and used it when I was there.

MagicJack works. I see so many postings and YouTube videos about how bad MagicJack is but I cannot help being impressed with it. I ordered two more. Atleast 3 of my friends got that too.

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