Air travel/moving, childhood dreams?

Getting some notes I made earlier finally published in blog form- phew, I can get some guilt for pending TO-DO's off my chest now! It's been a long while since I posted if you neglect this and the last post published on the same day. Procrastination- the ultimate fall mechanism of even great men. Hey, but as Mr. Wayne says in 'The Dark Knight' movie, "Why do we fall?-- So we can get up again!" or something like that ....[Batman maniacs don't point out mistaken wordings].

For those in the US, the new check in bags fee added to the cost of air travel (was when it was introduced almost industry wide some months ago and) will continue to be a burden-- this is not a temporary spike thanks to the oil and economic crises. However, there are variations in the monetary penalty between various airlines. For example some offer free check-in of 1 bag at least [the last time I checked!]. As far as I know, from online search I found that these airlines follow that system:

• continental
• delta
• northwest
• airtran/frontier
• southwest
• jetblue

I performed a comparison of a single trip between 2 major cities. First of all I must mention that I found the average industry overweight cost [assuming you are fined for going over a few pounds or kgs of initial limit of each check-in bag, and you aren't violating higher limits like 2x etc. which invite higher fines] to be $100.

It was found that when it comes to base ticket cost, some airlines' cheapest option was more than $100 the average base ticket cost for the trip considering the average of cheapest ticket cost from all airlines. This stand-outs include- fares for the trip from :

delta northwest jetblue

I don't know about you, but as a recent penny pinching graduate, I will steer clear of these folks when looking for my airfares next time.

If you are moving for good from one city to another you may be looking for rooms or apartments or full houses and will be no doubt using the ever powerful Internet in your endeavour. If you scout out search results for rentals or roommates, you are bound to come across these websites which I suggest you avoid:

• sublet.com- information not free, requires subscription
• easyroomate, metroroommates--contact info not accessible unless you create a member account
• Localfiles, Locanto: can't narrow search using keywords like 'laundry' or 'rent includes cable'

Instead I suggest you get straight to the point with these sites especially when you are operating in a short timeframe:

craigslist olx sulekha

Sulekha.com has a pretty neat system where you need to supply your e-mail to get to see the party's contact details [of course there are many things I hate about Sulekha.com not related to housing rental results that can take a whole post of their own]. This way the advertiser and responder can be assured [to a limited extent] that they don't waste time with prank callers or scam artists who get access to their contact details.

Ever noticed how you want to do so many things in life but get to do only a small percentage ever? That is the truth and reality of life staring at your face [it becomes bitter the more you compare yourself with someone extraordinarily successful that everyone admires]. There is no real way to achieve your childhood dreams except to roll up your sleeves and work hard towards them.

Due to the 'technological singularity' [a term that roughly represents the elevation of machinery to such advanced levels that man integrates with machine] that we are approaching, we are facing exponentially more change every year [maybe more change than some of our great x n grandparents - say 10th century experienced in a lifetime]. So childhood dreams themselves become a moot concept: things move so fast that before you develop a liking for something as a child, more things pop up to distract you.

This rapid change means we increasingly shy away from getting used to and attached to something. Doesn't this imply we get more dispassionate and machine like as time goes by? Maybe someone I know is already lost the ability to emotionally attach to an activity or hobby or technology (or even person?). What will this cause?

Closed communities, funny orkut behavior

Let me guess, there is a good chance you were expecting to see something about 'social websites' (Facebook. Orkut etc.) here once you saw 'Orkut' and 'communities' together. If so, it amuses me; funny how we humans get programmed like buggy AI to jump to incorrect conclusions.

Let me turn to my recent experience with Orkut recently. Many times over many weeks [maybe months] past, I had huge delays or 'infinite' waits while loading some pages/features in Orkut and I don't even use the advanced features![Call me old school , but I am not one who tries out all features available in a system just because they exist- we should dictate what tools must use, not the other way round-- see the theme of becoming machine-like again]. Turns out when I checked my community page [after letting it gather dust for God knows how many months]- surprise, surprise- we have about a dozen communities which I didn't recognize, let alone join! Looked like someone had cracked my password? Anyway, changed it and for the moment, things seem to be OK.

So, let's return to the other 'protagonist word' of this post: Communities. What I have in mind is closed communities. Examples would be the ghettos made by Muslims in corners of a city-complete with walls and fort-style gate. I became aware of one old Hollywood silent movie which was like a pioneer horror movie ['Gollum' is the tile I think]where a Jewish community life is portrayed. Didn't know how the Jews lived in the past, but the movie was a revelation. When I come to think of it, 'agraharam' of south India, which is a close knit [I think this involves walls too] community of priest class Hindus which forms a more or less independent social unit providing for itself, resembles such set-ups. What could be the origin, development method and motivation for such closed communities? If they are all due to some common fears or attitudes, then what is the primary mechanism for development of such groups so as to totally physically exclude members not belonging to the set? Is it fear of violence[most mid-east/Indian cities in mythological and historical Islam,TV or movie depictons tend to make the cities targets of armies], necessity of compensating for being a 'social minority', or the desire to maintain inbreeding? Any interesting thoughts or presentation of details I don't know are welcome. I know in the past especially, megapolis cites were impossible and smaller communities were the norm given that there was no automated mass production fo goods, but building walls- that seems like an extreme step. It is eerie to note similarities between such diverse cultures.

Maybe you are a history student at some college, looking for a doctoral/thesis topic who happened to randomly read this! You lucky @#$@#$!!!!!@#.....

Health Insurance + spirituality links

One of the things you better realise when you are in the US is that health costs are prohibitively expensive [unless you happen to be a millionaire :) - even then it's a loss to pay relatively high costs out of your own pocket].

For international students who want to buy insurance quickly, it is not feasible to use policies such as those from Blue Cross Blue Shield, which require you to show a physical exam prior to approval and also charge high monthly fees for providing coverage. I am not trying to single out one company here, but just showing you one example of a policy which like many others makes the expenditure by students too high for comfort. The temporary policy from Blue Cross Blue Shield which alone provides flexible month by month coverage [which you would want if you have open plans regarding travel back to your country etc.] has a deductible of $500 which renders the plan useless for small emergencies.

OK, before I make some newbies scratch their heads, let me explain what a deductible means. It turns out, for basic understanding, copay and deductible are terms used to mean almost the same number: the amount you must pay before the insurance company pays any bills. Then, there is the coinsurance which is a percentage that stipulates what fraction of costs beyond the deductible are to be borne by you. Usually it's an 80-20 split meaning you have to pay 20% or a fifth of the cost if your medical bill exceeds the deductible. Add to this the constraint of the coverage rates being valid only for specific groups of health care facilities or hospitals and you as a student get a raw deal in many cases, if you choose regular plans with monthly payment option [imagine having the sense to select the hospital where you have better coverage and looking up the insurance card or document when you have fallen down a flight of stairs and cannot get up!].

Anyway, there are some insurance policies for international students although not numerous. My advice is that you pick one of them. These have slightly better terms than mainstream policies. Don't buy very cheap insurance either, as for the regular policies , this would mean your deductible might be as much as thousands of dollars! Imagine shelling out $1000 of your own money for an X-ray-- I bet most of us as students won't have that much cash lying around our house.

So, those were some simple tips from this simple man for neophytes fighting in faraway lands. On a side note, I found this pretty interesting link which explains to people without a degree in philosophy the movements of 'Enlightenment' and 'Romanticism':

http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/feature/1999/06/15/brin_note/index.html

Also, for those interested in spirituality, here is an interesting interview:

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/04/28/ken_wilber/

Apparently, Ken Wilber who is interviewed, is a philosopher who follows an amalgam of teachings of various scholars such as Sri Aurobindo among others. You might recognize SriAurobindo as the 'guru' of 'The Mother', a prominent Hindu 'yogin' who had set up an 'ashram' in Pondicherry near Chennai in India and has several followers. I was familiar with The Mother and surprised to find out that there are many philosophers like Ken Wilber who follow Sri Aurobindo's writings to this day. I am new to spirituality and I am just mentioning things I know here. So, don't think of me as a very spiritual person!

Ciao, boys and girls .

Good laptops on a budget

Hi, this post will just record some findings that I made while searching for laptops. It may prove helpful to you. Being a very cost conscious buyer (and I really mean very!), I was intent on avoiding all that could reduce the computer's utility to me. I wanted it to run Linux (without VMware) and so I wanted hardware which would run under it. I also wanted a durable machine which could be serviced if needed. 'Dell' automatically became my choice as my friends had bought it and didn't really have any complaints. They give some amount of customizability at their purchase website. This is hearsay- so take it with a pinch of salt: I have heard HP-Compaq laptops aren't good at having drivers available for the long term, especially if you plan to play around with multiple OSes. Also, other brands are not well established like Dell- Gateway, Acer etc.. Toshiba looked good to me, but my friend advise against it for whatever reason. Some good models for budget-minded buyers I found were:
(you could get these prices around Nov 2007-- probably after applying some coupons at deals2buy.com and such sites)

Inspiron 1420N- comes preloaded with Ubuntu Linux - in this age of VMware, we don't really need to buy this- but it assures peace of mind that the hardware will definitely run some Linux (with all sound, display and networking features being usable) - for around $800

Vostro 1520- circa $750

1500- around $620

1700- around $850

E1405- $900(pre-'coupon rebate')

If you are planning to run Linux directly (not as a virtual machine), try to make sure you browse some forums dedicated to running your laptop model with Linux on the Internet. Dell has such forums maintained by the company I suppose, where consumers exchange info. Especially watch out for Intel 3945 card requirement and graphics card issues.

If you are just wanting to stay connected, check e-mail, watch movies, run regular Windows, MS Office etc., don't waste time- just buy a budget model from any established brand for $600 or less. But, I would still say Dell rocks for that, especially their net based purchase and after sales support considered. Make sure you get the best processor you can buy because that is one component you cannot upgrade unlike RAM or other things. Ports are also an important criteria: do you use USB (if so how many), IR, Bluetooth? Good luck on your purchase, if you are going to own a new one soon! [I think refurbished laptops are also good provided you are not going to have serious time loss if something goes bad (small % chance in which case you may be able to use warranty) and you are spending veyr less say <$(800-900)].

Travel websites etc.

I came across this program on the net called 'Botwars' which is a game where you write a program to instruct a robot on a rectangular battlefield so that it can survive and compete against other robots. It requires coding in a variant of BASIC devised by a developer. Now this guy probably worked alone and it was a commendable, fun application. But the debugging was so bad that I kept on stumbling across a 'subscript out of range error' till I got sick of the program when I could find no error even after debugging line by line! Well, for some time taking out the use of floats seemed to help as one or more attempts to make the code work succeeded when I tried to do all calculations using integer in the code. But, the problem error message cropped up again and I am sure it had nothing to do with array subscripts. Well, it was at least a more useful waste of time than some of my other activities!

I am new to online ticket purchasing and travel website usage[having piggybacked for purchases on parents and others so far!]. To save more time, I decided to waste more time to actually personally experience the leading travel website and aggregators! My conclusion. follows (if you disagree, you are welcome to an argument with me :), otherwise just consider this information at least as not useless)---

THE BAD
*expedia, farecast, wholesalefares miss the cheapest ticket options
*4lowfare - bad review
*hotwire- one way ticket feature not added yet - ridiculously useless for new graduates and students who don't have a relatively permanent residence and shuttle about searching jobs or changing schools
*cheapoair, travelocity- ripoff of orbitz-same search results (I am guessing it's not the other way around for cheapoair because orbitz being a bigger name may have been established first) ; mind you-Orbitz is also better than Travelocity because it shows taxes also readily
*onetravel, sidestep, ultimatefares, vayama- like aggregator site kayak.com, but not as many results. These sites are not bad as much as they are redundant.
*priceline, make my trip-no results!!! (for my particular query- maybe the server was temporarily down?- but I did get their homepage and all)

NEUTRAL (UGLY/NOT WHO KNOWS?)
*2mycountyr, ATIflights : no reviewers used them

THE GOOD
*cheaptickets- has refundable ticket options
*kayak.com- best overall with maximum results and few negatives
*bootsnall- travel site for backpackers 'Lonely Planet' style- will have cheap options and travel suggestions

The reasons other than above which influenced my choice(s) were things like ranking and no. of stars given at consumer review websites. I checked the prices for a particular international trip- not a very good statistical input, but good enough for me , a simple customer.

Let me share a secret (at least for some who read this) I found through my search work on the Internet-- Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays are typically the cheapest days to buy tickets on. Till next post, have a good life. As a parting gift is this ad by 'Subway' if you have not already seen it:
http://www.mefeedia.com/entry/subway-five-dollar-footlong-monster/7474455/
(The Japanese girl's acting looks funny to me)