Corruption at Mumbai Airport

I visited Mumbai after almost two years. My once favorite city. It trumps other cities despite of having poor infrastructure because I always found people more cooperating and civil. Today it is reduced to hour long traffic jams, polluted air and unimaginable congestion. The city which never sleeps and feeds its last mile is burgeoning with poor urban planning, corruption and greed. Following is the welcome I received at the international airport itself.

Almost an hour after the flight had landed, people started leaving with their bags. Many will wonder why such a long time in getting the bags but that's an entirely different problem. There are unnecessary hires. Two-three gates and guards, who just check your disembarkation slip and everyone posted there wants to make their presence felt.

Well, after getting the bags everyone has to proceed towards the scanner. Everyone. Isn't that idiotic? Anyways. I was carrying some electronics, which I will list here to rationalize and even leave space for rebuking my claims. But I inquired from even custom officers it's a case of someone trying to extort money aka corruption

1. A laptop. Bought overseas and almost a year old
2. A netbook. Bought in India and quite old
3. An iPad. Bought overseas. Tax paid and is in use
4. A monitor. Bought overseas. Tax paid and is in use

What ticked the officer (although this term is getting insulted by calling these people as such) is the iPad. And following conversation quickly took place

O: What's the price for this?
M: Umm.. not sure. May be 700
O: And the laptops. You know by law you are not allowed to carry more than two?
M: They are not for import. They are in use and I will carry them back with me
O: This monitor. How much?
M: May be 200
O: By law you can only import Rs. 25k worth of items. You are certainly crossing that limit
M: I am not importing anything. These items are for personal use and will be taken back
O: {Goes into parrot mode}
M: {Tired after a long flight and unnecessary delays}
O: You will have to pay penalty of 4000 Rs (~S$100)
M: You want me to pay $100 for a $200 monitor? I carry it all the time and it's not for import
O: Others' who's didn't stopped you must be crazy

He was counting duty as

Two laptops free.
iPad + Monitor = Some 10k over 25k allowed

I could have argued why not count that iPad + laptop as free and add netbook to the 25k but was too tired.

Well, so I asked him to keep the monitor as I had to go back in four days. He involved his superior, five other people. After consulting, after telling me that it's not a big sum for you and you should pay it and after much more disgruntlement my monitor was detained.

Now the rules, clearly says that duties are to be charged on packed, sell-able goods. Since I am no custom expert, I verified this with other custom officials.

• After all these I got out of the airport in almost three hours after my flight landed
• My work suffered 
• And the feeling of frustration crept in. Feeling when you know that you are right but reason is falling on deaf ears

But this doesn't end here. Claiming the monitor back is a equally interesting experience of red tape.

So, I reached to the airport almost three hours before departure as I was told customs are slow. Also, the whole process makes no sense at all and only exists so some super lazy and corrupt people can have a job; who otherwise won't even get work as a window cleaner. This is how it went

1. I approached the airline staff that some of my stuff is detained and I need their help in going to customs area
2. Airline staff was really helpful (you guessed it, it wasn't Air India). And one guy walked me to custom area
3. Before that we filled two registers. Spoke with three guards and waited unnecessarily
4. After we reached to a box manned by a lady officer, who was really courteous and helpful. She guided us towards another floor
5. So well, custom inconveniently have this room behind the immigration. How are you suppose to take care of belonging which are to be given in check-ins? Anyways
6. Some more red tape and people just to make your life tough
7. We reached to the box of some custom officer who's facial expression suggested that he is constipated since years
8. After giving some rebukes to airline staff and unnecessarily questioning me, he asked a young officer to take me to that items detention room and help me get the monitor
9. Well after some paper work, I had my monitor back

Was all this worth the $100. Definitely. I much rather feel a bit inconvenient then being part of something wrong. Also, my case was not one off. Whole setup is to frustrate passengers and extort money out of them. As was evident from others. Not sure which path they had chosen though.

The young officer does gives me lots of hope. He is well aware of the mismanagement and corruption flowing around. But feels helpless in his current position. But being aware of the problem puts us on the trajectory to solve it.

Monetary Value of Wikipedia

I use Wikipedia for everything from learning about a new city I am visiting to checking out chemicals used in the medicine I am taking. It's a brilliant, always updated, always available resource which can also be read from almost all the devices.

Whenever Wikipedia goes in donation drive, complaints about it raising a million dollars can be heard. People often forget that it's a free service but still has huge cost commitments. But even these costs are nothing as compared to real worth of Wiki.

I do not know a single Internet user who do not use Wikipedia. Yup, even non-techies, non English speakers use it more often than people would like to believe. But let's take a hugely conservative estimate of 10% of Internet population using it. Do understand with both Google citing Wikipedia as top results and Facebook linking to it from both Places and Pages, this number would be far higher.

Internet's total population is around 2 billion (see note (1)). 10% of that number is 200 million.

If Wikipedia was available as a subscription based service of $50 and only 10% of above have paid for it. It had been a $100 million business. A company easily worth $2 billion in market cap.

So, even by most conservative of estimates we collectively pay nothing for Wikipedia.

Anyone for no donation but ad supported Wiki?

Notes

1) Internet population - http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

Invest In Japan

This post is more like a rationalization to what's already apparent to many. With Warren Buffett calling for it, this decision doesn't require rationalizing.

Let me first write about "apparent to many" part. Currency of a nation is its ultimate asset and best reflects underlying strength of the economy; and country in times of disaster. Iceland's Krona is not an old story. After a disaster it should have been natural for Japan's currency to devalue but it strengthened to all time high with a very rapid fall in the markets. I was of the impression that currency got manipulated but it only made so much sense to have bought the Yen with almost +20% fall in the markets in a single jolt. That's why the Yen strengthened.

Let's first understand what really happened in Japan. 9.0 magnitude earthquake. Richter Scale is exponential (ok it's logarithmic but exponential is easily perceivable and that's not wrong). What does that mean? A 9.0 earthquake is 1000 times more powerful than a 6.0, 100 times than a 7.0. It's extremely rare. Once in a 20 year rare. Actually  in term's of energy yield a 9.0 earthquake is 1000 times more powerful than a 7.0 one. A 7.0 earthquake should be enough to get noticeable cracks in buildings; 9.0 is 1000 times that.

Such a massive hit would had flattened any major city, in fact multiple cities. In a country like India many millions would had died, if epicenter was near a major metro. Japan had tsunamis and later reactor meltdowns. Almost 20000 died and hit to GDP is approximated at 3%. Some towns lost but major cities are unaffected.

With people willing to put their lives at risk to protect others, cities taking electricity cuts voluntarily and infrastructure to last for generations, this country is all set to emerge more powerful than ever before and faster than any estimates. Not to forget that there was no looting after the incident.

Japan's underlying strengths are too many and all to strong to make it an ultimate investment destination.

PS: We should drop the word scale from Richer Magnitude. It gives the impression that it's linear and undermines the extent.

I should mention that recent low by Nikkei was ~8200. It has since recovered by almost 15% but is still at a steep discount. May fall back to test the previous lows.

Making Your Wireless Keyboard Work Again

If anyone reading this needs pics for better understanding, let me know. This is for Microsoft wireless keyboard.

So, I had been away for a really long time. On return, found my wireless keyboard was no longer working. I use rechargeable batteries and thought the batteries must have drained and put them on charger. Checked back after many hours and it still wasn't working. Tried it again, same behavior. As other wireless devices were working fine, I concluded that these sets of batteries must have gone bad. Bought new batteries (at 5 AM!) but still no luck.

I thought it's my keyboard and was about to go back to purchase a new one when I noticed a "connect" button at the back.

Here's the tricky part. Pressing that connect button won't do anything. Tried that many times in vain. After trying multiple things when I was about to give up, got it back working. This is what should be done in a situation like this

1) There's a connect button on back of keyboard
2) There's a button on the receptor, which I had no clue until now is what for
3) Keep the connect button pressed
4) Press the button on receptor

Your keyboard will start working again. I guess that above starts a discovery routine. It was not intuitive because mouse worked without a complaint. I so wish that keyboard had been like that too as working on the laptop's keyboard was a pain and therefore ended up not doing many things.