Zipping around in a Prius

I am a happy Zipster. One of the many urban dwellers who are Zipcar members (visit http://www.zipcar.com). For a very nominal fee, we get to reserve cars online and pay $8.50 and up per hour. The concept is simple: our reservation is transmitted to the car, which locks and unlocks with personal magnetic zipcards. The keys to the car are always inside the vehicle. There are no extra mileage fees for the first 125 miles per reservation. The best part, however, is that the hourly fee includes fuel and insurance. Not to mention the free parking spot at the end of the trip!

Due to a combination of circumstances, I reserved a Toyota Prius for a few hours the other day. This is a hybrid car: one that uses both gasoline (petrol) and electric engines to power the transmission system. The Zipcar website indicated that the car had several unique features, and I decided to see for myself. Better to fiddle with the new gadgets now than later, when you are in a tearing hurry.

The car itself looks sleek, with a curved dome that replaces the more traditional boxy types. For a low roof, head room was not an issue (although I am six feet tall). The curved top did pose one problem, though. It cut off my field of view to the left and right of the car. As a result, I ended up having to crane my body and neck back and forth at every single traffic light, to make sure I was not about to run over a person or pet in the crosswalk. The dome is steeper in the back, but still manages to cut down significantly on what you can see in the rear-view mirror.

Some crucial notes for the occassional driver:

1. The gas pedal is practically invisible. I searched for about 5 minutes before blindly feeling for it with my foot. The brake pedal, on the other hand, is large and prominent. Safety first, perhaps?
   
2. The ignition "key" is a small plastic device that you stick directly into a slot on the dashboard. Looks like the key you get with modern cars, the one with the standard buttons to lock and unlock the doors. There is a "power" button on the dashboard that springs the engine into rumbling action.
   
3. The hand brake is akin to the ancient pedal on the left of the car. Again, when activated, the pedal is hard to find. They put in a footrest instead, which I foolishly pressed for 5-10 minutes to no avail. I had to pull over eventually and dig up the user manual from the glove compartment to figure out its location. After more feeling with my foot again, of course.
4. When you stop at a red light, the engine "dies"! Disconcerting, but all you need to do is push the gas pedal and it roars back to life.
5. All indicators are digital, including the transmission system and speedometer. There is a little joystick on the dashboard that allows you to select a mode (reverse, drive, neutral). When you release the joystick, it springs back to its original position. The dashboard, however, indicates what gear you chose.
6. There is a funky touch-sensitive LCD display that constantly shows you "important" graphic details like energy usage: how much power the transmission system is directing to the various wheels. This keeps changing every few seconds, and was a constant source of distraction.
   

I hear there is a long wait-list for people dying to own this new beast on the block. Word on the street is that some people who do own it are re-selling for profits! Is the car really this good?!

The car is not really cheap: it costs upwards of about $20,000. Up until 2005, the accompanying tax break (for polluting the environment less than regular gas cars) is in the form of a deduction, so it does not translate into 1:1 dollar savings. The incentive apparently may morph into a tax credit for 2006, though the details are yet to be finalized. A more detailed analysis will be required (taking into account the proposed usage level) to see if this will be a worthwhile investment in the long run. I'd try out a few other models first.

A more detailed technical analysis of hybrid vehicle technology can be found at the HowStuffWorks website.

Inertia

Newton's third law of motion states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Comedian Steven Wright re-states this well-known truth in the context of today's technology-driven world:

A bus station is where a bus stops.
A train station is where a train stops.
On my desk, I have a workstation... go figure!

Every attempt at work probably has this equal (if not greater) inertia taunting you to procrastinate!

Flying with Wadsworth

The heights by great men reached and kept
were not attained by sudden flight,
For they while their companions slept,
were toiling upward in the night.

I came across the above quote only once, and ages ago, when I was merely some 6 or 7 years old. But human memory is a funny thing. I have written before about such clear recollections from my distant past, and had the urge to document this inspiring instance.

The famous lines by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow conjure for me an image of a soaring eagle or arctic tern. Or an albatross. I remember going across our housing complex in Madurai, to bungalow #3, to check out this new wall mural of the bird in flight. The couplet bounced off the waves beneath. I think the artist was around too.

I am not much into poetry, usually preferring the humorous prose of P. G. Wodehouse or the fast-paced action of Dan Brown. But these short words from a renowned source make me want to dig deeper into Wadsworth's other contributions. Maybe I will, some day...

The day Ozzie Osborne spoke to me

I thought Ozzie Osborne was a TV serial.

I have known for a while that Ozzie was a "hit" TV series from decades long gone by. I even own a DVD with some of the episodes. I bought that item even after the checkout clerk at Microcenter gave me this incredulous look while he broadcast to the rest of the queue: "Are you really buying an Ozzie and Harriet DVD?!!!" I remember nodding vigorously, mumbling some excuse with averted eyes, and running out of the store (with the DVD) thinking about what monstrosity I was going to find on that disc. In my defense, I (a) had no clue about Ozzie back then, (b) paid less than $2 for it, and (c) am yet to even break it out of its shrink-wrap.

This morning, Google politely informed me that Ozzie (or Ozzy) Osborne is some sort of rock musician who looks like (s)he belongs in a horror movie.

My first phone call on a peaceful Saturday (today) is from my credit card company. Well, I believe it was a call center in India. There was no mistaking the accent of the caller, and the background noise as though he was calling me from some car assembly floor.

Patience! This is not another rant against jobs leaving the pristine shores of the US. Frankly, I have no problem with outsourcing. It is a by-product of capitalism. If the US wants to stick by its economic model, then it has to accept the cost-cutting basis that leads to outsourcing. And well, I'm Indian, too. But I got irritated when this Indian sitting far away in India actually said:

"Hello Mr. So-and-So. I am calling from XYZ Bank. You have a credit card account with us. My name is Ozzie Osborne."

I was immediately thrown off guard. Instead of paying attention to the insane "offer" he was about to force on me against my will, my mind wandered back to that unseen DVD and the secrets it still held. I was soon jerked back to reality when Ozzie started trying to verify my address and other details as confirmation of my participation in his scheme.

All attempts at getting out of the trap proved futile, but I put up a brave fight. Mr. Osborne eventually gave up. Quoting some "internal system error", he transferred me to his floor supervisor. Blank silence on the phone, when I was tempted to hang up. But there is still some goodness left in me inspite of more than six years of harrassment by the Ozzie-types. I held on, and was soon greeted by another Indian voice. More background shop-floor sound effects.

"Hi, my name is Mr. Mascarenhas."

This is when I finally hung up. Hadn't this joke gone too far? This is not the first time I have been faced with Indian sales agents giving out fake Anglicised names. If they lie about their identities, why should I believe their statements?

Maybe Americans do not want to call Dell Customer Service and be greeted with:

"Hi, welcome to Dell customer service. My name is Panchapakesan Venkatasubramanian Balakrishna Pillai. How may I help you?"

But there are Indian ways to shorten names. Why resort to Westernization? Could it also be possible that the jobs (such as Mr. Ozzie's) being outsourced are ones that nobody in America actually wants to have?

It's a bugged life!

The US is caught up in the "warrantless wiretapping" debate at the moment. There are other topics in the boiling pot, but this one seems to be on top with a select few, such as the Judge Alito confirmation saga and Democrat senator John Kerry's promise to go for the filibuster that would block Alito. E-bugs, however, are not the only newsworthy insects today.

According to a CNN report, that ubiquitous food info label stating "added colors" is not as innocuous as it reads (I trust CNN to bring me the latest scandals and tripe that no self-respecting news channel would touch with the proverbial ten-foot pole). The red coloring that goes into a variety of everyday products (such as yoghurt, lipstick, ice cream and strawberry milk shake) probably comes from crushed bugs! The barely visible silver lining (at least according to the reporter) seems to be that the pigment and its source are as ancient as the Aztecs who discovered the dye.

The Food and Drug Administration is apprently going to require that such products include the terms "cochineal extract" and "carmine", which would indicate that you are just about to pay good money to smear bug-parts all over your face. Why not call a spade a spade, and label it with something more intuitive, like "may contain hairly insect legs and/or crushed beetles"?

So there goes my appetite for anything strawberry-flavored. Maybe I'll revert to making my own shakes at home now. Thankfully, I don't use any lipstick.

Starting over...

This is not my first blog. Now before you go off thinking I have a whole blog-family of opinions sprouting around the web, let me clarify! I finally decided to post something on my (only) blog today, and found out I could not login anymore! Looks like my account "timed out" - the page is still accessible to the public, but I cannot get in and add stuff. Really vexing.

That's when I decided that a blog-brother would be in order. So here it is. I like the alliterative title I used for the old blog, and decided to use the same here for want of a more catchy heading. If you are interested in my rants from the past few years, do click here and enjoy as long as Rediff will keep it alive!