Rain Drops Keep Jamming up the Traffic

In this blog we try to demystify the correlation between rain and traffic jams.

According to a Traffic Analysis Survey the usual mix of vehicles on the road are 30% being 2 wheelers, 40% public transport and the rest private 4 wheelers.

The 2 wheelers follow the same pattern as do the movement of an army of ants whose nest has just been disturbed. They oscillate from one side of the road to the other, into the foot path, over tree roots, under electric posts etc. When the traffic halts, they will even stop in their tracks, take a U turn and go around other vehicles if required under a truck and over a sitting cow all this to arrive at a new stationary position which happens to be 5.5 inches ahead of their prior stationary position.

Now when it rains everything bordering the road becomes a bunch of slush and muck. So all our two-wheeler folks abandon their otherwise used paths and land up on the road.

Next the pedestrians, on a normal day a pedestrian would walk almost in a straight line looking out and avoiding stepping on the filth and scum on the road. This is an easy mental calculation which gets processed in the brain and the brain jots out the route the legs have to take to avoid all of this.

However when it rains.. the same road gets flooded, and all of this dirt n scum comes to life and starts floating around. Now it becomes like a video game. You have all of this muck moving in random shapes at various speeds and heading towards you. The brain now has to double its processing capacity mapping and re-routing against moving targets. The result .. people also move in a haphazard manner occasionally entering the road once every 20 seconds causing traffic to swerve in order to avoid them which again cause a chain reaction to other vehicles adjacent to it.

The next significant factor are the buses. By default buses move in a straight line in the middle of the road. Unless there is a cow sleeping in the middle in which case the bus will climb onto the footpath and over the sidewalk to avoid the cow. Once it arrives at the bus stop, the bus stops right in its tracks in the middle of the road.

Due to the rain, everyone who alights first pauses for 2 seconds to open his /her umbrella and only then steps out. After stepping out with the umbrella open, the entire land below the circumference of the umbrella is blocked and off limits to fellow passengers. This in turn results in the entire bus having to wait for more than double the time at each stop. And since the bus waits right in the middle of the road. This blocks up all the traffic behind it for double the time.

Next coming to the IT culture in Bangalore, at any point of time 30 - 35 % of the people would be working from home. Now out of these people who are working from home, 80% would be working from home without even being at home.

The day it rains, all these Work From Home people realize that they would have to remain at home anyways due to the rain and cannot complete their errands so what’s the point in Working from Home? , might as well go to the office.

So now we have 100% of the workforce all on the road suddenly headed in the same direction at peak time.

The road is burdened with 3 additional classes

• Pedestrians who have abandoned the footpath
• All the adventurous 2 wheelers who would have otherwise been everywhere except on the road
• All the Work From Home people who are now heading to office

With the additional load on the same road, there is now a mad rush for space.

Picture this scene, 2 people riding on a 2 wheeler. The pillion rider would initially be sitting in a comfortable position elbows bent with his hands resting on his waist. Now suddenly he wants to scratch his back so he takes out his right hand from this position. After this he would have to continue to sit in the new position, because the free space that was earlier occupied by his elbow would now be occupied by a vehicle that just pulled into the free gap. With such a mad rush for space. the average distance maintained between 2 vehicles becomes around 1.25mm.

With such tightly packed traffic how fast can you move?

The traffic has now come to a stand still, This causes boredom and the easiest thing to do when you are board is pull out your mobile phone. While on the phone your driving reflexes automatically slow down there by causing you to maneuver your vehicle in a lethargic manner. Again this chain reaction, further slows down of the entire grid.

Put all this together and any average Joe with a normal brain will understand why traffic halts when it rains. Unless of course if you are a Six Sigma certified black belt. Then you will not understand this until you do a full blown Six Sigma Project using Minitab.

The dog that chased your car

While driving your car how many times have you been chased by street dogs?
Even if this did not happen to you, I am sure you must have observed this phenomenon on the road many times.

This post will unravel the mystery behind this bizarre behavior that dogs exhibit.

Last weekend my wife wanted me to drive her around to do some personal shopping. Thanks to the excellent parking facilities available in Bangalore I was forced to remain seated in the car while she went off to get her work done.

With nothing much to do I observed the following scene unfold in front of our car. There was another car parked at the curb around the corner. In came a street dog strolling along, It sniffed the front bumper of the car, and then proceeded to do what dogs normally do on 3 legs. After which it went about its usual business.

Couple of seconds later in came another dog, this one apparently was a good breed Labrador on a leash. The lab also stops at the same car, investigates the bumper and is soon also taking a pee on the bumper. The owner of the lab didn’t seem to find anything wrong in this. Apparently to him a lamppost, a tree trunk and a car are all one and the same. After the job was done, the dog and owner in tow walked away.

Another 10 minutes pass by and in strolls another street dog. Sniffing along it heads straight for the same bumper, after its bit of investigation it then proceeds to execute the same ritual. Now our good-looking car, has 3 coats of fresh Saturday evening pee sprayed all over it.

This got me thinking on what would happen next. Apparently the owner of the car would come by sooner or later, and blissfully unaware of what happened to his car he will drive home. The next day, he or whoever has the task of washing the car will come along with a bucket of water and a cloth.

The usual car washing ritual involves dipping the cloth in the water and wiping it on the car, after which the cloth will go back into the bucket to get soaked once more and then the process would get repeated until the entire car is cleaned.

To the untrained eye washing is what appears to be done, but in reality the person cleaning the car would be transferring the 3 different specimens of pee, uniformly all over the car. By the time the washing is complete, to a human being the car would appear to be clean. But for a dog it’s an entirely different story. Dogs have scent glands that are 1,000 times more powerful than man’s. So to a dog this car would be like a pickled block on wheels marinated in dogs pee.

The next time you drive by in one such car, You will find some dogs bark and chase you. Now why is this ?

It is because Dogs are territorial animals and will detect the smell from your car as that of 3 other intruder dogs entering their territory. Instinct tells them that they need to chase these dogs away, and this is why they chase your car manically barking.

Now that the blocks have fallen in place you now know why dogs chase cars. So the next time you find 3 - 4 dogs barking and chasing your car. Well buddy you know what your car must smell like !!!

For a dog You are perhaps sitting in a Sulabh complex on wheels.

The Considerate Manager

Recently when driving down to work I happened to enjoy the company of a Manager. Mind you a very busy manager at the same time one who is very considerate to his/her employees. For convenience sake let us assume it’s a ‘she’.

A few minutes down the road and she had to make a few calls. All Managers have to make phone calls when they are sitting idle. It’s a manager thing. If they don’t do that, then they are not true managers.

Its 9:00 am, and the call goes to a poor soul who I presume was a developer in a support team. The conversation went like ..Hello ! , a quick check on some status followed by some other instructions. Then she asked. Did you check you email? He said no , Some more instructions after which the call ended.

Subsequent to the call I came to know that this guy’s working hours are from 1pm to 9pm, since he works on a shift. Of course a person whose regular working hours are for 8 hours starting at 1pm, would check his mail at 9am. This is a fact that only managers know.

Going by the same yardstick it would imply that anyone who starts work at 9am would always check his or her email by 5am. If you are not doing this, you are lucky your Manager doesn't know it yet.

After the call the developer probably would have heaved a sigh of relief wondering what to do, now that his sleep was ruined. But not for long, because don’t forget, our Manager is a very concerned people oriented person. So she calls back to enquire about the health of the same guy.

Apparently from the conversation it appeared that this guy was slightly ill suffering from a minor ligament related ailment. In rolls the next words of advice..
How are you feeling? Oh.. ahem .. hmm Oh no .. if that’s the case you should take rest. Don’t bother to come to office. Long Pause .. You can work from home.

Work From Home !! Of course yes, we don’t want you to waste time getting to office with that injury.

I thought the call was done.. but apparently not. The conversation continues..
If you are not well, Then you should take care .. take the day off today, don’t bother about work. You know you can always finish the work on Saturday and Sunday.

Me thinking ..Saturday and Sunday!!!. Phew .. thank god I don’t have a considerate manager.

Now this is what I call having the knack of being all so considerate and yet getting all the work done at the same time. This does not mean that managers should not be considerate. Just try not to be over considerate by helping your employees plan their Saturdays and Sundays too.

Enough of flaming managers, because not too long ago I too was a manager for 5 years. But not anymore. Given this I know how difficult it can be as a manager. You have to deal with a wide flavor of employees. While some are excellent in their work, others believe they are gods gift to the Organization.

So a tip to all Managers ,When all else fails, Use the old "Mule rule"

i.e. Some you can stand in front of and coax them along with a carrot. Some you have to stand behind and kick them in the a**.

The key to management is knowing which mules are which.

The Wedding Lunch

When was the last time you were invited for a wedding thali lunch? Served on a plantain leaf. Here are some of my experiences, which many of you may have experienced.

It all starts with the washing of the leaf once its placed in front of you. All the servers would insist that you first wash the leaf. The definition of washing here is sprinkling a few drops of water on it and wiping it with your bare hands. How clean can this make it? Imagine you asking your maid to wash the plates at home in the same way!! i.e. sprinkle 14 drops of water over the plate and wipe it. But here this is considered a perfect way to wash the leaf.

All now settled down and the food supervisor signals to start the serving. In marches the congregation of servers. All our lady friends have a beaming smirk on their faces, cause turns out that today’s group of male servers are all topless.

However with changing times and importance given to hygiene demand for the topless battalions are dwindling. It shouldn’t be long before caterers realize this and get their topless servers shaved and waxed before every meal.

The next puzzle is when the serving starts. Most of the time side dishes are served in minuscule quantities. You feel like you are a wine sampler on the job. The suspense is that you are never sure of how many more dishes are on their way.

Because of this you either eat too much in the beginning and are stuffed by the time the rest of the dishes arrive. Or you eat too less expecting the best ones to turn up later, only to find that the meal has ended.

I think an Electronic board should be installed which would give the current live status of the meal. A sample would read

• Item: status
• ---------------
• Papad: Served
• Pickle: Served
• Rice: In progress
• Sambar: In progress
• Lemon Rice: Scheduled
• Curd Rice : Available on request
  
• Sweet: Scheduled
• Ice Cream: Scheduled
• Paan: Self service (Age proof required)
• Coconut: (Take away..., only 1 per family, Proxy collection strictly prohibited)

This way one can perfectly plan the quantities of portions to eat.

Lunch over, now its time to thank the host. Here again there is only one standard question to which there is a standard answer. Deviating from this standard would be a violation of the 1965 veg thali Act.

Question asked by the host
How was the food? Did you eat well?

Answer that you are supposed to give:
Ya the food was excellent, In fact I am so full that I feel like going home and taking a nap.

Although what you are thinking may be:
huh' I could’ve gone and had that Biryani I was thinking about.

Life in a Tempo Traveler

With the growth in outsourcing & offshore development, the volume of traffic has increased by leaps and bounds. However the development of roads and parking space could not keep pace. The net result, utter chaos on the road.

This forced all corporates to get thinking on the transport problem. They had to invent a means of conveyance, which would carry more people than a car, be smaller than a bus and yet have the maneuverability akin to a small boy riding a bicycle. Thus the Tempo Traveler (TT) was born.

Looks-wise the TT may be a little smaller than a bus, but when it comes to maneuverability it can pass through the narrowest of narrow lanes where even a Maruti 800 would not pass through.

Meet the TT drivers, one of the drivers I've seen always has his eyes half closed. With this half an eyelid vision our dude can zip between cars, lamp-posts, cows, dogs, buses, pedestrians and fellow motorists. All this while keeping an average space of 2.5 millimeters between the vehicles he brushes past at breakneck speed.

It’s not uncommon to see other motorists who after almost having a rub with our TT losing their calm and yelling at the TT driver. Our driver however remains calm and raises an eyebrow at max as he continues in his path. He is in a state of mind that is free from craving, anger and other afflictive states, one with the road, the footpath and the mud patch beside the footpath. There is no terrain beyond limit

Now lets step inside the TT and meet the esteemed folks in it. We have Rip van winkle who will get in and go to sleep only to wake up at the office gate (I envy these types, as I can never sleep in a TT), Then the "thinkers" who like to be left alone.

The Droid from Star wars who would stare into thin air and keep talking on his blu-tooth. Folks who are immersed in their cell phones, unfortunately they do not keep the conversation to themselves, but speak at a volume which everyone in a radius of half a kilometer can hear. To them it seems every other person in the TT is just an inanimate object that happens to be traveling in the same direction. Not to mention the far too many stupid ringtones you hear in there.

Some people travel light, while others don’t mind lugging a desktop, CRT monitor and a UPS in their backpacks. Then we always have the handful of people who for some reason could not make it into CNN-IBN, nevertheless they do the same task in the TT making sure they are audible to everyone. Like usual sitcom comedies they sprinkle their conversation with hilarious laughter at the end of every alternate sentence. This is so you know which were supposed to be the funny parts.

At dusk, with the days work done you are now on your way home in the TT. Here you see another beauty about the TT. You can alight just about anywhere you please. .

It’s not uncommon to find some celebrities who have to be dropped at an exact latitude and longitude. It does not matter if this spot happens to fall right in the middle of a major ring road intersection, and at the precise moment when the color of the signal light there has turned from a red to a green. The TT driver has to manage this stop, and wait till out esteemed friend alights. This is irrespective of the fact that there would be one million other motorists behind him honking the hell out.

All in all the good thing is unlike the folks who were assigned to your team, here more often than not you have a fair opportunity to choose the person you would like to sit with.

To sum it up I would say its a wonderful experience. We should be thankful to the TT driver because of whose skill we reach the office in the fastest time possible.