iPhone Review

So.. After a long time I managed to eek out some time for blogging...
This post is dedicated to my shiny new gadget... Apple iPhone...
Wah... After a loooooooooooong wait of nearly one and a half year, iPhone was finally available in Singapore starting from Oct 22nd 2008.

In this post, I'll try to review every aspect of the Phone, from the phone software to app compatibility to hardware and also try to compare it with competing phones...

First aspect.. the Hardware...
iPhone is not necessarily the best phone in terms of hardware compared to other contemporary phones. The camera is just a 2 mega pixel one compared to the samsung omnia which has a whopping 5 mpx. The phone is thinner than every other phone yet providing a battery life that is better than most phones except blackberries where iPhone falls by a small margin...
Many reviews point out that iPhone has a very poor battery life... But I would like to defend that. Yes, you might have to charge your phone in the mid of the day.. but that is only when you use your iPhone for over 4 or 5 hrs like me :)... I usually browse close to an hour simultaneously listening to iPod while commuting. When I reach office, the battery meter is usually at 75%... It's perfectly fine as nearly every other mobile phones of this class offer around 4 hrs of 3G Internet.
But because the iPhone offers the best mobile Internet experience, I would expect Apple to offer a better battery performance even at the expense of my iPhone becoming a couple of mm thicker.

The graphics chip inside the iPhone is pretty awesome and there isn't any jitter or lost frames while watching movies. So is the processor, a whopping 620 MHz underclocked to 430 or something. The iPhone is pretty close to a Windows 98 machine and no wonder, Quake III arena has been ported to iPhone though available only for jailbroken ones.


iPod
iPhone's iPod app is pretty good. If one has to compare it with the iPod, I would say that the sound quality of iPhone is slightly better at the expense of a little bass. Yeah.. the bass is slightly weaker for soft rock music and pretty awesome of hard rock genre. The user interface of the app has got to be the best in the world as it has become more easier to browse through your collection. But given the 16 gig meagre space, iPhone's UI may not be very useful as users tend to store only around 10 Gig of music(??). I would be happy if Apple launches a hard-drive based iPod touch or an iPhone to make better use of the user interface.

Though the UI is great, it still has some greatly missing features that are present even in the most basic mp3 phones. Yeah you heard me... Playlist creations on iPhone is still missing (except for the on the go playlists which can't even be renamed). the iPod still seems to be a passive app that depends on iTunes to build meta data for it. Synchronize your songs and play it on the go type of interface. The search feature found in the iPod 5.5 Generation is missing in iPhone. I would love to have this feature. This "missing thing", creating data on the iPhone seems to be pervasive throughout the iPhone. For example you can view your pdf attachments but cannot download them to your iPhone for reading it offline. (There is no finder, storage manager or file manager for that instance... more on this later...) Lyrics support is great and I like the overlay of lyrics on the album art. Apple has finally added support for lyrics added in other languages including tamil, though the rendering seems to be incorrect at times.

iPhone as a Phone
As El Jobso explained in his stevenotes, the killer app for a phone is "making calls". As such on the iPhone, its easy to make calls,. But the edge over for the iPhone is that, it makes other in-call operations like viewing your phone book, placing a call on hold, swapping between two calls, checking emails or any such task like that is made easier than every other phone. But I do have one missing feature. There is no clear distinction between outgoing and incoming calls and the call meter does not show how many outgoing minutes i've used. It's probably "Made for America" device where I believe most of the incoming calls are charged at outgoing rates. Another great feature is the grouping of phone numbers as you type it. iPhone uses the regional settings to detect how to group your numbers. For example (65 1234 5678 for Singapore) or (91 44 879765783) for India etc.,

Email on iPhone
The imap email support for gmail seems to be great, but I would prefer Google offers some kind of push email to iPhone. The mail app does not synchronize all the folders which means if you have rules set on the server to move your emails directly to a folder (or label + archive), iPhone will not notify you of a new mail.
Secondly the new mail notification tone is of very low volume and there is no continuous notification if you have not acknowledged the first. To add to it, the new mail notification tone cannot be changed and there isn't even a choice of tones which you can select. However the user interface is elegant and a majority of operations can be done at ease. I just archive my emails using the web interface now. Everything else, I do it on my iPhone.

Internet on iPhone
Though much hype has been around the missing Java/Flash support, you don't find that a great problem as you tend to get a "ad-free" experience without flash. The screen is large and the UI is designed just for casual browsing and it's great. There is however no support for syncing iPhone bookmarks with Firefox or with foxmarks online servers. You can however firefox bookmarks to IE using a variety of plugins available (just Google for it). The app's quality is however not great as it crashes a lot and feels "un-apple". Sometimes while it crashes, it does not even re-open the windows which I was browsing the last time. 3G is great in Singapore and though the advertised limit is 3.6 Mbps, I get around 1.2 Mbps download speed, which is more than enough for browsing on a mobile device.
Singtel offered a generous 1GB @ 3.6 Mbps for my plan though there are plans upto a download limit of 50GB for the same cost at a lower speed (1Mbps). However I use only around 350 MB per month browsing two hours a day over 3G. Because iPhone does not support tethering your device with a laptop i would not rate the Internet on iPhone to be one of the best. Jail broken iPhones however do support tethering. Apple is notoriously not supporting this feature as AT&T's crippled 3G network will be hogged even badly. Still in this field, iPhone seems to be an American device rather than a International device.

Singtel's Network
Singtel's 3G network is quite ubiquitous except for some underground stations and as such I've never experienced call drops neither did my iPhone switches to EDGE while browsing. Because the city is also WI-FI enabled at many MRT stations, iPhone seamlessly switches between 3G and "Wireless@SG" network seamlessly. However, unless you complete your browser authentication, other apps using Internet connection seems to fail. That is if you are sending a mail and iPhone switches to WIFI, you have to close the mail app, open safari, authenticate the wireless access via browser, close browser and open mail again. Or switch off WIFI or forget Wireless@SG network as I do.

Third party app support
The ecosystem around iPhone development seems to be so hot that Stanford is offering iPhone development classes for teaching students on how to write apps for the iPhone!!! The quality of the third party apps seems to be pretty good, kudos to the SDK. Free as well as low cost games are too good. This could basically stem from the fact that Apple blocks out useless apps from the App Store. However, there ain't no fring or skype for iPhone unless you jail break it. Which means you cannot make a skype to skype free voip call with your iPhone though technologically it is possible. Again, Apple is crippling iPhone because AT&T wants to.

What I expect from Apple in the forth coming firmware releases
iPhone still does not have skype or VOIP via 3G. I think this will be available only when Apple divorces AT&T.
iPhone badly needs a file manager. Though there is an app called "AirSharing" and a lot many, I simply cannot integrate it with other iPhone apps. For example it's not possible to store email attachements for later reading.
Bluetooth A2DP - The crippled bluetooth profile needs a great revamp. As of now bluetooth filesharing, printing files through a bluetooth printer etc., are simply impossible. bluetooth serves only for hands free phone calls as of now. You can't share anything over bluetooth. Very bad Apple, very bad...
iPhone still does not have a "copy/paste" functionality. you cannot simply copy text from safari and email it. This is a must have feature for a smart phone.
iPhone still does not have mobile TV support. Even an app will suffice, but unfortunately there ain't one.
More features in the iPod app including playlist creation, sorting the list of songs by any column right on the iPhone and such are missing. Custom equalizer is also missing in the iPhone.
iPhone tethering is badly needed atleast for countries like Hongkong and Singapore where Singtel offers around 50GB monthly data limit and nearly 100,000 iPhone owners (in a country with 4.5 million population).
A larger storage could be a "nice to have" feature.

Hope the review was interesting. Leave your comments...

--
Mugunth

View from Landmark Tower

Another favourite night shot of mine...

City of lights... Tokyo... (Rather Yokohama)



More night shots on Singapore city to follow... Stay tuned...!
-
Mugunth

Review on Windows Vista -- Part II

As some of you might remember, I wrote a review on Windows Vista when I purchased by new Dell Laptop. Should be around 9 months back and it is here. With 9 months of hardship, with this beasty operating system (yes Vista is 15GB and XP is 1.5GB), I called Dell support for my legal downgrade rights. Yes!, I own Windows Vista Business, and this is what the customer support agent told me.

This is an automated email sent from Dell Chat. The following information is a log of your session. Please save the log for your records.
Your session ID for this incident is 84530.
Time Details
04/01/2008 05:38:32PM Session Started with Agent (Jaemi_Jaaffar)
04/01/2008 05:38:32PM Mugunth: "Windows Vista -"
04/01/2008 05:38:40PM Agent (Jaemi_Jaaffar): "Hi Muguth"
04/01/2008 05:38:46PM Agent (Jaemi_Jaaffar): "thank you for contacting dell"
04/01/2008 05:39:19PM Mugunth: "Hi... I just saw this, http://download.microsoft.com/download/d/2/3/d23b9533-169d-4996-b198-7b9d3fe15611/downgrade_chart.doc"
04/01/2008 05:39:24PM Mugunth: "from Microsoft's website..."
04/01/2008 05:39:48PM Mugunth: "that, OEM versions of Windows Vista Business can be downgraded to XP Professional..."
04/01/2008 05:40:18PM Mugunth: "I wanted to know two things... regarding this..."
04/01/2008 05:40:32PM Agent (Jaemi_Jaaffar): "ok"
04/01/2008 05:41:13PM Mugunth: "Is it possible to re-convert that XP to Vista at a later stage... (say when drivers are available)..? and will my current copy of Office 2007 (activated under vista) work on XP?"
04/01/2008 05:43:43PM Agent (Jaemi_Jaaffar): "Mugunth let me check 1 moment"
04/01/2008 05:44:04PM Mugunth: "ok..."
04/01/2008 05:50:39PM Agent (Jaemi_Jaaffar): "Muguth, ive check"
04/01/2008 05:50:48PM Agent (Jaemi_Jaaffar): "the 2007 can run under XP"
04/01/2008 05:51:05PM Agent (Jaemi_Jaaffar): "however for your system 1420 is build for Vista"
04/01/2008 05:51:11PM Mugunth: "Yes.."
04/01/2008 05:51:22PM Mugunth: "but drivers for nVidia is not working well..."
04/01/2008 05:51:25PM Agent (Jaemi_Jaaffar): "the driver for the CXP will not be availbe completely"
04/01/2008 05:51:35PM Mugunth: "CXP means?"
04/01/2008 05:51:39PM Mugunth: "XP?"
04/01/2008 05:51:57PM Agent (Jaemi_Jaaffar): "yes XP"
04/01/2008 05:52:09PM Mugunth: "which all drivers are not available?"
04/01/2008 05:53:28PM Agent (Jaemi_Jaaffar): "The Motherboard controller"
04/01/2008 05:53:42PM Agent (Jaemi_Jaaffar): "the dell notebook system software"
04/01/2008 05:55:22PM Mugunth: "wont the drivers for vostro 1400 work on this?"
04/01/2008 05:56:50PM Agent (Jaemi_Jaaffar): "it will but the vostro is not 100% similar to the inspiron in term of the system board"
04/01/2008 05:57:18PM Agent (Jaemi_Jaaffar): "it will work as already being use by many system"
04/01/2008 05:57:26PM Agent (Jaemi_Jaaffar): "but with the reservation"
04/01/2008 05:58:20PM Session Ended
If you require further assistance, please visit us at support.ap.dell.com


Firstly, I was offed, by the sudden disconnection by the agent. Secondly, though Microsoft offeres legal downgrade rights, the OEM builders do not. Though they say we are selling Windows XP even after June 30 or whatever stupid date, these idiots are selling XP only on low end PCs.

The next most important point is that, support for the operating system is not available through Microsoft for OEM copies of Vista. They replied me that, for OEM copies, please contact your PC manufacturer. The OEM manufacturer told me that, I did not purchase operating system support and hence, I've to resort to forums and newsgroups for getting support. If I've to resort to forums, why the hell should I spend so much money on this stupid PC? A mac comes with hardware and software support for slightly higher price. The higher price is warranted by the high quality software. This windows box I got came with a useless laptop integrated webcam driver that does displays a picture in picture of the same frame and will not allow me to turn it off unless I buy the "pro" version. Contrastingly iChat is a great app that allows a variety of customizations and backdrops, ppt/pdf sharing like a video conference and so on... Same goes with nVidia driver. It knows nothing but to crash. I naively thought that BSODs were a "feature" of Windows 95/98. With Vista, Microsoft introduced this "cool" feature yet again. My XP machine never BSODed. However vista is not as stable and it's primarily because of the faulty nVidia driver.

Here are some screen shots of the driver problem.

"The display driver nvlddmkm stopped unexpectedly and has recovered". What the hell is expected out of the end-user? Bang your heads on the keyboard and restart?

Click on the picture to view it large, you could see pixellated images of my desktop. the pixellated desktop dissolves like the powerpoint's dissolve animation... Cool feature... lol... ;-)



Hey, comeon, where is my wallpaper? And why should this driver crash when I play Quake III deathmatch??? Ok, I don't expect my PC to be rock solid and allow me to play Crysis or BioShock. But I should be able to play atleast Quake III Arena, a decade old, yet popular game.

This display driver problem is augmented by the new Desktop Composition Engine. Previous versions of Windows, if I understand correctly, used GDI to render the desktop. Windows Vista uses Direct 3D which in-turn taxes the graphics processor and the driver heavily. This nVidia driver is not able to support that intensive graphics which is why the rate of crash is higher in Vista. May be in Windows XP, if the display driver is very badly written, only games crash. Here, the WDM, the desktop composition engine crashes and makes life miserable.

I also posted a video on youtube on how badly a desktop can look with such a poorly written driver.
Here it is...



Probably, I'll switch to a mac after Mac OS X 10.6 is released if it's announced in WWDC 2008 or else by July. Sick with vista in 6 months... :-(

Japan Lights

This is one of my favorite night shots...
This is the city of lights... Tokyo... (Rather Yokohama)
The shot was taken from Landmark Tower by me when I went there for a trip.
I blogged about my Japan trip previously, you may be interested in reading that.

Photo licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike 2.5

Click on the photo to view a larger image which you can use it as a wallpaper.

This was a panaroma of landmark tower I found on panaroma.dk. Simply amazing city...!

More night shots on Singapore city to follow... Stay tuned...!
-
Mugunth

Warm and Serene Sunset

As you might be knowing, one of my favourite past time is photography...
This one, a sunset was shot by me when I came here, to Singapore about a year ago...

Photo licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike 2.5

Click on the photo to view a larger image (1600X1200). I intend to post more "wallpaper like" posts in future... So, stay tuned...

Mugunth

C# vs C/C++ Performance.

Well, this is my first post in this technology series. In fact, the title of this post, forced me to start of a technology focussed blog. Well said about all these, let's now jump into the issue.

There has been a lot of heated discussion on different forums, newsgroups, and various other threads about the above topic. Now why should I discuss about the same again here?

Well, though there are many discussion groups that claim C++ to be faster and efficient, a small group of people still claim C# to be more efficient.
How the hell can a language that is not compiled to a native code be faster that a C++ binary?

Though the above statement is perfectly valid from the point of C++ programmers, I would like to highlight a few points that could state why some (not all) C# programs are *really faster* than it's equivalent C++ programs.

Point 1: C# is compiled twice. Once while the program is written and second when the program is executed at the user's site. The first compilation is done by your C# builder and the second by the .NET Framework on the user's machine. The reason why C# compiled applications could be faster is that, during the second compilation, the compiler knows the actual run-time environment and processor type and could generate instructions that targets a specific processor. Classical C++ compilers generate native code that is usually the Lowest Common Denominator of all the available processors which means, a C++ program will not be able to take the advantages of the "Hyper Threading" instruction set of the Pentium 4 HT processor. (Of course HT is outdated now...) It will also not be able to take advantages of the Core 2 duo or Core 2 Quad's "true multi-threaded" instruction set as the compiler generated native code does not even know about these instruction sets.
In the earlier days, not much changes were introduced to the instruction set with every processor release. The advancement in the processor was only in the speed and very few additional instruction sets with every release. Intel or AMD normally expects game developers to use these additional instruction sets. But with the advent of PIV and then on, with every release, PIV, PIV HT, Core, Core 2, Core 2 Quad, Extreme, and the latest Penryn, there are additional instruction sets that could be utilized if your application needs performance. There are C++ compilers that generate code that targets specific processors. But the disadvantage is the application has to be tagged as "This application's minimum system requirements are atleast a Core 2 Quad processor" which means a lot of customers will start to run away.
This is precisely where the C#'s framework compiler comes into picture. Because the application is compiled the second time at the user's site, the Framework knows about the actual running platform and is able to generate code that runs the best on the given platform.

Point 2: So, then why doesn't *all* C# programs run faster?

C# or for that matter any .NET based application runs in a sand-boxed environment and hence many instructions have to be checked for safety. Because additional safety is not free, C# comes with a performance overhead, which means a program like,

for(int i=0;i<100000000;i++) style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 153, 0);" size="4">Point 3: So when is C# really faster?
A well designed C# program is more than 90% as fast as an equivalent "well-designed" C++ program. But the catch is "well-designing" a C++ program. How many of us can manage memory efficiently in a C++ application that's so huge say a million lines of code? It's extremely difficult to "well-design" a C++ program especially when the program grows larger. The problem with "not-freeing" the memory at the right time is that the working set of the application increases which increases the number of "page faults". Everyone knows that page fault is one of the most time-consuming operation as it requires a hard disk access. One page fault and you are dead. Any optimization that you did spending your hours of time is wasted in this page fault because you did not "free" memory that you no longer needed. A lot of classical applications including Google Picasa suffers from memory management problems. After about two or three days, you can notice that these applications become slower necessitating a Windows Restart. This problem is completely alleviated in C#. the Framework comes with a broom behind you and sweeps your drop during the course of the execution and as a result your working set never grows (unless you really use it) which means lesser page faults. This means that "well-designing" a C++ program is far complicated than a equivalent C# program which is responsible for its sluggish performance.

So now I can hear you asking me,
So to conclude what should I do?
That's a nice question. Except for writing time-critical blocks of code, prefer C#. Write all your algorithmic code in C++ (not VC++ .NET), compile it into a dll and call that using a Dll Interop through C#. This should balance the performance. This technique is not new or not invented by me or anyone. It's similar the old age C programming vs Assembly, where people on one camp fight assembly programming is faster and the other camp stating C is easier to develop and then people started using assembly embedded within a C program for time-critical applications using an asm block.

History repeats...!

Mugunth

Place Locator (Natural Language Question Answering System)

Recently, I was reading through materials on Natural Language Question Answering system.

What if we use wikipedia to answer some of our often sought questions? This project is precisely one of that. I've tried to implement a system that could show places when a city is typed in.

I'm still working on an update that could show states and countries, though typing them as of now, would sometimes take you to its capital.

You can try the application by downloading this exe.

It requires .NET Framework 2.0 which is available if you use Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista or any higher operating system.

http://cid-ff9d2ba64408465e.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Public/Natural%20Language%20Question%20Answering%20System

Any new ideas, comments are welcome.


(Update): Program updated to include "What is" and "Where is type of questions".

--
Mugunth

Protect your word documents from being plagiarized or copied or modifed

How many times have you wondered that you were able to protect your resume or other information from being copied? you would want the other person to read it, but prevent him from plagiarizing it...
You can't use the traditional Save options's "password to modify". That will only prevent him from editing the *current* document. He can always do a "Save as..." and create his own version of the document you've just sent.
Microsoft offers a costly version of protecting intellectual property though their Digital Restrictions Management (actually the right term is Digital Rights Management), get a digital certificate etc., etc.,
You can do the same thing for free...! no software install required, no additional burden...

I've shown the step by step way of doing this...

First open the word document in Word 2007.
Click the Office Button on the top left corner and choose "Word Options". A dialog like the one shown below pops up...


Ensure that the "Show Developer tab in Ribbon" is enabled.
Close the Word Options dialog and select the developer tab on the Ribbon.
Click the Protect Document Buttion and Choose Restrict Formatting and Editing...


A pane as shown below opens up.



In the second part of the displayed form, Check "Allow only this type of editing in the document" and choose "Filling in forms"
Click on the "Yes, Start Enforcing Protection" in the third part.
Enter a password when prompted. You should remember this password as this is the only way you can modify this document in future.

Now while saving this file, choose "Save Options" from the tools menu in the save dialog box and add a "Password to modify". I think this is quite easy and it's also explained in microsoft website which can be found here (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA101483331033.aspx#1a)

You are done!
If you open the document now, you will not be edit the contents, copy it, do a select all or whatsoever.

However, there is a catch. A clever person may print this document out to a PDF printer and extract the text by copying and pasting the content from the generated PDF. Most PDF printers obey the Document Security settings applied to a word document. For example, the default PDF printer that you can download as soon as you install Word 2007 will not allow you to copy content from the generated PDF if the main word document does not. However, using some third party tools, users may still be able to extract text. To prevent this, you can write a macro.
Press Alt + F11.
Double click, "This Document" on the left pane to open the code editor.
copy paste the following code.

Sub FilePrint()
MsgBox "Document Printing is protected" ' or anyother useful message.
End Sub

Now, when macros are enabled, word will show this message when user tries to print this document. When macros are disabled, word will ask the user to enable macros when user tries to print this document.

To add a double protection to your document, you can also prevent select all, cut, copy paste and other functions in a similar way.

Sub EditCut()
MsgBox "Forbidden", vbExclamation
End Sub

Sub EditCopy()
MsgBox "Forbidden", vbExclamation
End Sub

Sub EditPaste()
MsgBox "Forbidden", vbExclamation
End Sub

Sub EditSelectAll()
MsgBox "Forbidden", vbExclamation
End Sub

The methods described above works for any office version. Just that the way to access these features varies. I'm using Word 2007, which is why I posted the screenshots in Word 2007.

Hope that helps...

Mugunth

Veganism - Is it good or bad...?

Veganism, as Wikipedia says, is a philosophy and lifestyle that seeks to exclude the use of animals for food, clothing, or any other purpose. Vegans diet is a subset of vegetarian diet. In fact, vegan and vegetarian are *NOT* synonymous.

In this blog post, I intend to post my views on what is good and what is bad about different aspect of veganism.
Basically, veganism can be defined as abstaining from

using leather based products
eating animal flesh
eating animal eggs
drinking animal milk

From my point of view, I would say that, killing animal for its skin is CRUEL and GRUESOME. I always prefer rexin based belts, seats and other upholsteries made of cloth over leather belts or plush leather upholstery. I have always used a similar equivalent product that could easily replace leather for my needs.

But does that always hold? Can this practice be extended for our eating habits?
I did a lot of analysis and found some interesting stuff.
Firstly, eating a pure vegan diet does not give us enough calcium, iodine, and vitamins like B12 and D. Practising vegan means, to fulfill these dietary needs, one should take pills that supplement these deficiencies. How many vegans do this? Literally very few. there are cases where people, specially babies, have died because of vegan practices like http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/21/opinion/21planck.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Secondly, evolution says that humans should eat meat.
Monkeys lived on plant foods. Chimpanzees, which are slightly close to humans in evolution started eating meat (http://science.jrank.org/pages/1418/Chimpanzees-Eating-habits.html) based food. They have canine teeth and can tear flesh. So are humans. And yes, we are not pure carnivorous like tiger as our anatomy says that. By eating vegetarian food, are we trying to fool nature and go back in evolution? Similarly, to digest chlorophyll based green leaves, cows and other herbivourous animals have something called an appendix. The appendix which is a vestigal organ in humans, is used to digest plant based food in herbivorous animals (http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/bio99/bio99430.htm). In humans, appendix serve to store good bacteria that aid in digestion and that's it.(http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/the-appendix-does-have-a-use--rebooting-the-gut-396277.html)

Do we really get energy by eating spinach or green vegetables? No... We are only able to assimilate the minerals and vitamins contained in those leaves.
The ecological pyramid states that humans are not primary consumers of plant based food. Are we trying to change nature and its laws by becoming vegans?

But, yes, I'm against using animal products for anything else apart from eating. For example cosmetic usage of animal products and so on. I'm also against using animals for pulling logs of wood from forests (especially elephants), making money by training animals in circus, animal testing, which includes killing animals for experimentation which itself is estimated to be around 50 to 100 million vertebrates per year. I'm also against domesticating animals. A gold fish, which is very common in a majority of houses (specially in cities), is usually found in deep dark waters. The gold fish is an animal that hates light. In the name of domestication, we catch it, feed it with some "junk food", and grow it in brightly lit fish tanks or aquariums. This could be crudely equivalent to shutting a human in a dungeon without any source of light and asking him to eat to his heartful. Same applies to caging birds. If you really care for animal rights and animal welfare, please do not domesticate them. please do not cage them. You don't lose anything by doing this. Instead arguing that following vegan diet because you care for animal rights and welfare will only make you weaker and unhealthy. Moreover, you will be going against nature by abstaining from eating meat.

So from now on, avoid using leather based or ivory based or any animal based products. Avoid domesticating pet animals. But do not avoid eating unless it's religiously banned. People who speak about animal rights and animal welfare, should think twice.

-
Mugunth

My Japan Trip (日本の旅行)

Ah… Back from Japan at last… I went for a short trip to Japan for attending an interview with Toshiba. This blog is dedicated to my Japan trip. I'll speak about two main sections. Japanese Culture, people and hospitability and then about Japanese Technology and Infrastructure. After all, these are the two main important aspects that Japan is famous for.

The place I visited was the famous Honshu island that hosts the World's largest metro, Tokyo. I stayed in Shin-Yokohama (New Yokohama), and travelled around the city. I went to Ome, Yokohama, Tokyo, Shinjuku and Akihabara. Unfortunately, the weather was pretty bad and I was advised that for going to Mount Fuji, this is not the right time. I had a glimpse of Mount Fuji while traveling to Shin-Yokohama though.

Japanese tradition and culture is well known. As opposed to the myth that in Japan people speak only Japanese, I could see a lot of people who could converse well in English as well... Even when I started conversation in Japanese, they replied to me back in "pretty good" English and that amazed me. Japan in no longer a isolated country. So are the announcements in trains. Nearly every announcement will be in Japanese and English. Yes, of course, you room cleaner cannot speak English and you have to live with that. Apart from that, Japan is not completely into English too...(like Singapore) You can't find English novels and people do not read them nor do English papers, and yes, you can find a lot of English teaching courses. So, to summarize, if you have any plans of going to Japan but fearing that language would be a barrier, please do not hesitate. Go ahead, and book your tickets!!! Of course, learning some Japanese sentences could be useful.

Now, onward to the culture. Japanese are very traditional. They bow for nearly everything, like saying a Thankyou or a sorry. They will try to help you out in nearly every situation that's possible. For example, I was stuck at a railway station as I could not buy a railway ticket. The interface language was in Japanese and so is the map. If anyone have learnt Japanese, they would know that unlike western languages, Japanese is pretty difficult to read and write that to speak. For native tamil speakers, speaking japanese will be a breeze. I picked up within 3 months as Japanese has close relations to Tamil. (no not my own hypothesis, read this http://arutkural.tripod.com/tolcampus/jap-tamil.htm research done by a Japanese professor). So as the board was in Japanese, I approached a person to help me out. I only asked "shin-yokohama e ikitai desu ga..." (I want to go to shin yokohama...) and he readily helped me out. He asked me every detail as how many people are going etc., etc., You can't expect this hospitability elsewhere. Same happened in Shinkansen ticket counter. We were called seperately when we were in the queue and the person (who looked like a police) bought us the tickets from the ticket vending machine.

We ate inside our residence, a canteen sort of. Food was pretty expensive compared to Singapore standards. The canteen is actually subsidized for the employees and for us, it was free (hi hi, so finally there is something called "free-lunch") as our meals and stay was paid by the company. A meal costed around 600 Yen (8 SGD) where as in Singapore I can get a equivalent meal for about 3-4 SGD and in India it should be around 100 Rs. If it were not subsidized, multiply this cost by two. One interesting thing to note here is that, one of my friend, a pure veggy, just told the canteen incharge that he cannot eat NV and a special customized vegetarian noodle was prepared for him!!! Japanese are helpful to that extent and if you speak Japanese, rest assured that you are a king in Japan!

Let me now move on to other aspects of Japan, especially technology. I don't know why I did not like Japan's transportation system. Was it that I expected more?


www.flickr.com/photos/mugunthkumar/2296292436/















A comparison of Farrer Park station in Singapore (LEFT) and Tokyo (RIGHT)

The station is clean though not as clean as Singapore. The population is overwhelming. People, people, people everywhere and Shinjuku, the most busiest station is used by over 5 million people (slightly higher than the population of Singapore!)
Travelling from Shin-yokohama to Ome, took about 3 hours by train, a pain-in-the-butt situation, where everyone hangs on to the train, no place to sit, etc., etc., Trains are clean and warm (yeah, japan is freezing cold (-2 to -2 degrees), but still the stations are quite unclean compared to Singapore and the reason could be over-population. Same applies to Narita Airport. I would rate Narita a B in cleaniness if Singapore is A+. I have not yet visited Hong Kong as I've heard that Hong Kong is well ahead of Singapore in the quality of service. (Even if I go to Hong Kong, I would still rate Singapore A+ and Hong Kong A, as I live in Singapore... Huh..? just kidding... leave it)

One of the technological marvel in Japan was the Shinkansen. I traveled from Shin-yokohama to the next stop Shinagawa in Shinkansen and it took about 5 minutes to reach. I could not feel the speed of the Shinkansen from inside as it was all closed everywhere. While returning back, I came in the normal train and reached my place in about 30 minutes. Now that should give you an idea of how fast the Shinkansen is!!! It travels at about 300 KMPH, and you will not feel it! But travelling by Shinkansen will cost you an arm and a leg as that one station travel costed my 1250 Yen (SGD 16) or (450 INR). The whole of the Honshu island is connected with Shinkansen and Air transport within Japan is slightly under used compared to United States, which could partly be because of the size of the country.

I toured the city and reached Yokohama Landmark Tower. Wow, marvelous, was my first word when I reached the top of the tower. A few shots from the top of the tower.
















The city is lively!!! Full of lights everywhere and so large when I compare it with Singapore. Shinjuku the business district was also rocking!



I went to Akihabara and purchased a cover for my iPod. Unfortunately, upon opening I found that the cover was for iPod classic 80 GB whereas mine was iPod video 80GB... If it were any other country, they would not have returned my money back. But it's Japan! No questions asked. They told they don't have a cover for my iPod and hence will give me money instead!!! In this world which is full of cheaters around, this was very different for me. I have had very nasty experience in Bangalore when I got a blank DVD only to find that it was scratched like hell. The shopkeeper replied, "it's not covered under warranty". After all a 20 Rs issue. A few photos from Akihabara...


Though, the city is pretty clean, I was almost choked when I returned back owning to Haze.



No idea where these dust came from, but, it makes you suffocate given the close-to-zero temperature.

Electricity in some parts of Japan like Shin-yokohama is still transmitted through open (non-insulated) cables which is something that was quite disgusting given the country's technological advancements. As the electric voltage is very low, 100V 50/60 Hz (50 or 60 depending on which part of Japan you go) the conductors are really thick. Power lines are found virtually everywhere as in the picture below.



This was something which I did not see in Singapore. Not all the parts of Japan have underground electric wiring.
All in all, the city was amazing. It's a kinda new experience. Though i did not enjoy much, which is probably because of my overly high expectation, Japan is still amazing. I think people have over-exaggerated Japan's cleanliness. My next trip to Japan will be to cover the northern island, namely Hokkaido and probably climbing the Mount fuji in the main island.

My gallery of Japan photographs can be viewed at flickr here...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mugunthkumar/sets/72157603972972870/

Mugunth