Joe asks 'Is it me or what?'

It’s Your Choice

The recent decision by the European Court of Human Rights that Abu Qatada cannot be deported to Jordan on the grounds that evidence against him might have been extracted via torture has started an outcry. The solution seems relatively simple. If you have committed a crime that warrants a sentence followed by deportation you have two choices, voluntarily leave the country after the sentence or remain in jail.

Of course this will cost us money but better someone remains in jail than is free to carry on doing whatever it was that was illegal in the first place.

On the other hand I’m not sure that deportation is as effective as it once was for this sort of crime. With global communication so easy inciting a religious war is possible from wherever one is based, but that’s a different story.

Grounded

Eric Carter claims he was amused rather than angry when told that he could not climb into the cockpit of a Spitfire on display at at the Potteries Museum in Stoke-on-Trent. The ubiquitous health and safety excuses were given but the reason that this is newsworthy is that Mr Carter is one of the airmen who actually flew Spitfires during World War II. He was involved in dozens of missions both in Spitfires and Hurricanes and commented that he understood that

the staff were being extra careful, it’s a pity the Luftwaffe weren’t so considerate.

Mr Carter’s missions were mainly over northern Russia, attempting to keep the port of Murmansk open. Apparently one of the reasons was that the cockpit seat had been removed, another that some paint was used in the refurbishment that contained radioactive radium – not really sure why that would be – whose idea was that?

Three Cheers For Christmas

Well, as promised, some good news as opposed to my usual rants about injustice etc. I have not included such controversial items such as no snow for the majority of UK residents and the traditional last-minute buying sprees seen in high street shops as well as the Military Wives trumping another Simon Cowell fabrication for the Christmas number one.

First out of the trap is the story of a boy who so wanted to help the hospital who treated him he sold his toys to raise money. Ayomide Soleye was treated for a ruptured appendix when he was eight, three years later he has helped raise money and donated many of his toys, CDs and DVDs to the Royal Free Hospital.

Secondly, Kids Company, who do much good work all year round, are especially active at Christmas trying to bring cheer to deprived children. One project is a special party for children in Hackney. According to some statistics around 44% of children in this area live in poverty.

My final story, more in keeping with my usual style concerns the tale of two US citizens who tried to steal from a shop in Utah. Not only were they caught with the goods on them, when they were released later they found someone had broken into their car and stolen their stereo, among other things. If you want to scare your children show them a picture of the couple, no wonder they were nicking make up.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

No News is Bad News

Two stories in the media this week that speak volumes about young people’s attitudes. The first is quite disturbing and involves a thirteen year old girl’s letter to Santa in which she requests, amongst other things, a BlackBerry. She warns Santa that if she doesn’t get this, and another electronic gadget, she’ll kill him and eat his reindeer.

Notwithstanding the idea that surely thirteen's a bit old to be writing to Santa; if that was my daughter her present count would be reduced to zero and we’d be down the homeless shelter Christmas day helping out. perhaps that would teach her something about materialism. Typically, and this is probably where the problem starts, her mother’s reaction is to make sure she gets what she wants then. Her daughter’s sense of entitlement comes across in the article when she states that, well I want these things and don’t see why I can’t have them. God knows what she’ll turn out like when she’s older, although I can venture good guess.

The second story concerns an attack on a 79 year old Manchester man, he was pelted with eggs and then had a concrete block thrown at him by Ryan Girdlestone. Although Girdlestone professed to the court of his great remorse the first thing he did, after receiving the non-sentence of a curfew and restraining order with an electronic tag, was to brag on Facebook:

Jus got out off court wiv a 4 mouths tag hahahha.

Other than the notable achievement of five mistakes in such a short sentence his mental attitude comes across well. His victim, Bernard O'Donnell, summed it up well when he said:

It is quite disgraceful. There's a terrible lack of grace. In its place we've got evil and it's spreading I'm afraid. I think it reflects a general attitude of many of the youth of today. They lack moral fibre, they lack morality. Good or bad doesn't come anywhere in their vocabulary.

(At least Mr O’Donnell can string a sentence or two together and, I dare say, can spell too.)

As many have claimed surely this is contempt of court, perhaps in future judges will be less gullible when criminals claim they’ve learned their lesson.

Now I know that the media only like to report bad news, no one gets in the papers for writing a letter to Father Christmas along the lines of:

I have too many things already and I hardly ever use most of them, please give my presents to someone less fortunate.

and I’m sure that the majority of young people are caring, responsible and not illiterate, brutish louts like Girdlestone - but it would be great if there was some encouraging news over the Christmas period.

For my contribution I promise that my next article will be a cheering one rather than a rant.

Merry Christmas

Give Me the Office Any Day

Our company, Kaplan, does try to do things for the community. It supports many charities but lately they felt they needed to do more locally and staff were told that could do at least two days volunteering each year. It’s often difficult to take this sort of time off working in a support department like IT. The work still needs doing and this means that either you do it your own time or those left behind have to work harder. For this reason we avoided the challenge but recently decided to bite the bullet. Six of us decided to work the first shift at the Whitechapel Mission in London’s East End.

So, we arrived at Whitechapel at 05:30 and were given our instructions by Lilija, who is a permanent member of staff there. We were going to be preparing and cooking the food, distributing toiletries and hot drinks, serving breakfasts and then tidying up. The homeless can also request clothing and there was also the chance for them to charge their mobile phones, they can’t pinch the office electricity like most of us do, so this is really a great facility. A mobile isn’t a luxury item with the lifestyles they have. It all seemed very complicated with lots to remember but I kept thinking - there’s a new volunteer team very day, how hard can it be?

Well it was physically hard work but not mentally taxing, I was on sausage, bacon and burger duties, cooking about 200 of the first, about 100 rashers of the second, and a couple of dozen burgers. All in all these took about an hour to cook and, although I’m sure they were all edible, I don’t expect a Michelin star will be heading my way any time soon – no one said my compliments to the chef. Others were serving hot drinks and helping with toiletry distribution (for which there is no charge) whilst my boss, head of a large IT department, got to grips with the highly technical process of toasting bread, some 200 slices, using a machine that came with no F1 key. Others were buttering bread and frying what seemed like 150 eggs as well as heating up mushrooms, baked beans and tomatoes. At eight o’clock we began to serve the breakfasts. There are three set meals costing from 50p to £1 but most customers ordered à la carte and we had to use those mental arithmetic skills we all claim to have but so rarely have to prove. I can now calculate that two sausages, two eggs, a rasher of bacon with beans mushrooms, hash browns and six pieces of toast comes to 75p, or 70p to you sir. I was pleasantly surprised with the general demeanour and politeness of the people we were serving. In truth I’d expected some very rough characters but everyone I served was pleasant, if sometimes a little fussy. At one stage, after one person had sent back three eggs as not being cooked to his liking – in the end I just asked him to choose his own from the cooking tray – he requested baked beans, I politely asked how many and he replied 32, and then humorously commented that I’d given him 42 when I dished them out. This process lasted almost two hours and we served something like 180 people although I didn’t have time to count - this was a somewhat slow day, it can be as high as 300. It was hard but enjoyable and made a change from wrestling with the intricacies of Microsoft created software.

At ten o’clock the shutter came down and it was time for the real work, getting the kitchen spotless for the next day and cleaning the eating area. This took some ninety minutes at the end of which we were all regretting having to go to our normal jobs. Some did though, fortunately my conference call with the US was cancelled and I spent the afternoon working from home and trying not to doze off, somewhat unsuccessfully I might add.

I can’t begin to say how amazed I was at the permanent staff there as well as Lilija we were looked after by Ramesh and Sue, the manager as well as three or four others. They all work incredibly hard and I'm sure it’s not the best paid job in London.

At the end I felt like I do after a long session at the gym, very tired but extremely glad I’d done it.

The mission itself is grateful to receive donations, both cash and such items as clothes and disposable razors, there’s a full list on their site.

Besides being a sobering experience, there but for the grace of God go I etc., I now realise that small monetary gifts to homeless can help. You can be cynical and say that they will just waste that £1 on alcohol but you can’t know that, it could mean two hearty breakfasts.

So, despite the title of this post, office work being much, much easier, we are all signing up to do it again in the new year.

The Great Game

I spent last week in Bangalore on a visit to an IT firm we use at Kaplan UK, where I work. The firm was started by one of our ex-employees who relocated back to India and although technically they’re a private company for day-to-day purposes they just behave as a remote development team. This posts documents some of what I saw and my thoughts on the trip and India in general.

It’s a long flight from London, even direct with British Airways it was over nine hours which, with the predictable faffing at the airport meant a journey time over fifteen hours starting from Queen’s Park. (Why is it that, however much information you provide to airlines in advance, and even do the online check-in, they still spend ages tapping away on the keyboard – even copying passport data – when you drop your bag off?)

We were met at Bangalore airport and driven to our hotel, The Paul. This was our first introduction to the phenomenon of Indian driving and, being as I’m a nervous passenger, was scary to say the least. There’s no lane discipline, no room left between vehicles and you must sound your horn if you’re about to overtake to warn the person ahead not to veer to either side.

We also had the chance to see the rather dishevelled nature of Bangalore, poor quality roads, virtually no street lighting and generally grotty shops and businesses. Apparently India prioritises spending on education over infrastructure if a choice has to be made; remember this is one of the larger cities with a population comparable to London, so I’d expected it to be a bit more up market for India. There is however signs of improvement, a new rail service has opened recently to aid intra-city travel and there are plenty of new roads and buildings under construction. The big technology parks, Bangalore is an IT hub, also provide well-appointed office facilities for many Indian and international businesses. In fact the office where we’d be was just outside one of these and was very pleasant to work in.

The Paul hotel is officially five stars, the service is great, although again, like the airports, check-in took ages for no discernible reason. It wouldn’t get five stars in England though, despite its well-appointed decor it turns off the hot water at night so I couldn’t have a proper shave before eight thirty in the morning.

Manual labour is cheap in India which explains why you get the sorts of staffing levels at places like airports and stations that you only see in England whilst watching Brief Encounter. As an example I had my boarding pass checked seven times, three times within thirty feet and in areas that you’d already had to go through dozens of checks to enter. The office we worked in, which had fewer than a dozen technical staff also had two full-time office administrators, that’s two more than my London one has with its staff of about fifty.

I had intended to be circumspect about what I ate whilst away. I wasn’t going to go completely vegetarian, although that was advised by many, but my cautious plans went out the window at the first opportunity. The first night we were taken to dine in one of the Paul’s restaurants, which specialised in sea food. Given that Bangalore is about ten hours drive from the sea in all directions this seemed a risky proposition but it felt like to refuse would have been a great insult to our hosts. So I tucked into a very good meal of fish curry, a Keralan speciality, and hoped for the best. I wasn’t disappointed and had no problems the whole trip. My only concession was to limit food on the go to vegetarian options such as samosas, although I was told that only tourists order these. beware though of the water, even our hosts stuck to bottled or filtered water, apparently tap water is only drunk by those who can’t afford better. I took the conservative view that beer was the safest bet.

The picture here shows a typically baffling site, I encountered the musician with his decorated cow on the way to work one morning. He was calling at houses asking for money, if none was received he kept playing. Needless to say he also wanted money from me when I took his photo.

Even though I often pick up a smattering of languages quite quickly I struggled in India. Hindi is the official language and English is widely spoken but each state has its own language. This continues to smaller regions, there are estimates of some 500 to 1000 active languages throughout the country. Most signs in Bangalore are in the language of its state, Karnataka, which is Kannada, this is also what locals use to communicate. Both Hindi and Kannada and written in a script which really needs serious study to pick up and unfortunately I hadn’t had time to do so before I left. So other than odd words like thank you I left with no knowledge of either Hindi or Kannada.

After the best part of four solid days working, and trips to three more restaurants and a shopping spree, we set off late Friday afternoon for a trip to Bandipur Tiger Reserve. The passenger foot brake was tested to its limits in the five plus hours it took to get there, I had become more immune to the general driving madness but the overtaking, especially at night when at least half the vehicles had no lights (or worse cars with only one headlamp so it looked like a bike), was still a time of prayer to any gods that might be listening.

We arrived safely though and this was my first introduction to India’s tourist pricing system, foreigners pay at least ten times what the locals pay. I can see the pros and cons of this but at the end of the day you pay less than what you would in England anyway. The reserve never lived up to its promise of an actual tiger but we did see other wildlife and it was a pleasant early morning safari through forest that could have been in the UK. We returned to Bangalore via Mysore, which houses an old palace, in very large grounds, and it was a fascinating history lesson as well as an example of the grandeur that was prevalent when the rajas ruled the land.

To sum up my thoughts on the whole experience:

• A fascinating culture, I don’t think I could ever hope to understand
• A very religious place, although I’m not sure how much is actually belief and how much just ritualistic; you can say that about most religions though
• Terrible pervasive poverty leading to many beggars and persistently being asked to buy rubbish from street vendors; there is a large middle class and some very wealthy people though
• A wonderful history although I’m still ashamed by some of the things that the British were responsible for
• I’d never want to live there, however another visit is definitely on the cards, preferably for a longer time, one week is too short giving the travelling time there and back and it is a very big place

I would look on any trip there as an education rather than a holiday, it really is a whole new world.

Qué?

The idea of automated translation between different languages has been a goal of many for a long time. The British, and even more so the Americans, are notorious for their poor linguistic skills and seem to think that everyone should just learn English – even if the two groups can’t agree on just what English is. Other nations disagree and, although languages are dying off at a substantial rate, according to some source about two dozen annually, it doesn’t look like we’ll all be speaking in one tongue for quite some time.

There are two main methods used by computers to translate between languages. The first involves documenting the language’s rules in a machine readable format, adding in the exceptions – of which there are many, languages are not logical – and incorporating the vocabulary. This method has never worked well. The second method is to compare vast amounts of text to a known good translation and build up a knowledge of what should be replaced by what when translating. This is the approach used by Google Translate. Google’s arrays of computers have been fed with millions of lines of text from such sources as the United Nations and the EU parliament which constantly require documents in multiple languages. It’s like using the Rosetta Stone to decipher an unknown tongue. This works much better than the first method but I recently stumbled upon an instance were its translations were completely wrong.

Pangrams are sentences that use all the letters in a specific alphabet. The classic English one is:

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

(Note that it’s jumps, not jumped as I often hear.)

They are used to display fonts and test handwriting skills etc. I was looking at some in other languages recently (I know, I should get out more) and came across this one for Spanish:

El veloz murciélago hindú comía feliz cardillo y kiwi, la cigüeña tocaba el saxofón detrás del palenque de paja.

It’s quite long as it has all the diacritical marks (in Spanish ñ, ch and ll are also counted as separate letters and therefore some insist that pangrams must include these). I wanted to translate this so pasted the first part into Google, this is the result:

The quick brown fox ate happy golden thistle and kiwi.

Because pangrams are rarely literally translated but are often near their foreign counterparts Google Translate has decided that El veloz murciélago hindú , in reality the quick Hindu bat, means the quick brown fox. It also decided that the end of the sentence, palenque de paja, meant lazy dog. The actual full translation should read:

The quick Hindu bat happily eats golden thistle and kiwi, the stork played the saxophone behind the straw arena.

Now you know where Dalí got his inspiration, no one said pangrams had to make much sense.

So the majority of interpreters (who do real time translation) and translators won’t be out of a job just yet, even using automated tools you still need a fluent speaker to tidy up the results, but for many less formal translations tools like Google Translate are good enough.

For some areas, such as legal and scientific documentation it will probably take a lot longer for automation to be reliable.

(There is a feature in Google Translate that lets you change the result. If anyone notices that these translations are now correct it might be because Google updates based on these contributions.)

And if you want to test Google even further you can use the old favourite:

Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.

It makes a good job it getting fruit flies correct, but fails on the second like.

Do You Know This Man?

I found an article in the Evening Standard this week very amusing. David Cameron was pictured on the London Tube with a lady of obvious Asian origin.

Apparently he ventured out on the Jubilee Line, obviously having half the carriage reserved as there’s never enough room to take photos when I travel on it.

The article told how he went to this lady, who hailed from India where she’s a relatively successful actress, and made a standard politician’s comment on the bonniness of her baby. She was a little wary of this strange man and when he went away asked her husband who he was – That’s the British prime Minister – he replied. She told him off for taking the mickey until she realised from the accompanying entourage that her hubby was telling the truth.

She then felt the need to go and apologise for not recognising such a famous man.

I sympathise, not sure I’d recognise the Indian Prime Minister if he was sitting next to me on the Tube.

RIP

Musing about how the media, and some of the public, are dealing with the death of racing driver Dan Wheldon. Of course it should be sad when anyone dies but Dan died pursuing a sport that is based on danger. If travelling at high speed wasn’t dangerous then it wouldn’t be thrilling. Naturally the sport should be as safe as possible given its intent, but you can’t remove all risks.

Compare the coverage to that of the thousands who die every day in Africa due to no fault of their own, often because they lack basics such as clean water. If the news was in proportion to the number of fatalities then the whole of every paper would be devoted to those topics.

Presumably part of this phenomenon is that people feel an attachment to Dan as they followed him on television etc. Is that the only reason though?

Spot the Difference

Two news stories this week with a common theme.

A drunken student in Edinburgh is convicted for a racist breach of the peace after accusing someone of being a terrorist and putting his hands down his trousers before wiping them on the Israeli flag. He gets a criminal conviction and 150 hours community service (just time to paint a minister’s flat with two coats).

In the second a group of about 60 so called Muslims burn the US flag at a 9/11 memorial service in Grosvenor Square, London. Some of these are the same ones who burned poppies on Armistice Day. They claim Obama is a terrorist. They also chant that their dead are in paradise, their deceased foes in hell (no evidence produced to back either claim). Result: police protection as they are exercising their right to free speech.