Archieland

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Monsoon is here...season of poetry and rainy romance.

I miss the KGP monsoon. Although many complain of humidity, it never bothered me. KGP is pegged on the 'monsoon trough'. The average rainfall is like 1400 mm. In some years it went up to 2200 (without cyclones). Though it is called South-West monsoon, KGP gets the Bay of Bengal Branch and so the wind is from South-East.

And the mating calls of the thousand frogs are from the Tech Market.

In Hyderabad the onset of the S-W monsoon is quite dramatic. It gets the Arabian Sea Branch. The wind direction reverses suddenly...the hot and dry winds from upcountry are replaced by the cool and moist. This is here called the "Windy Season". It blows curtains and crockery away. The average rainfall is half of KGP. But it is not humid...quite pleasant.

Last night (till daybreak) I was watching (for the tenth time) Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times...pretty grim movie of the Great Depression years.

I have been through the reigns of a great many US Presidents.

Ike, certainly had the romance of a Five Star General of WW2. Kennedy was more known for his assassination and his comely wife. Then Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Bushes and Clinton made their marks one way or the other.

But Obama is different...in many ways. Of course his times too are different, what with the recession and all that...but the bluster is lacking and he is not afraid of speaking out his nation's concerns bluntly, something his predecessors avoided.

Take this item from DC:

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Hungry Chinese, Indians grabbing US jobs

"So, these are the jobs of the future. These are the jobs that China and India are cranking out. Those students are hungry because they understand if they get those skills they can find a good job, they can create companies, they can create businesses, create wealth. And we're falling behind in the very fields we know are going to be our future. So we can do better than that. We must do better than that. If we're going to make sure the good jobs of tomorrow stay here in the US, we've got to make sure all our companies have a steady stream of skilled workers to draw from".

Mr Obama said at present there are more than four job-seekers for every job opening in America. "But when it comes to science and high-tech fields, the opposite is true. The businesses represented here tell me they're having a hard time finding high-skilled workers to fill their job openings," he said.

Mr Obama said only four percent of all undergraduate students enroll in the STEM subjects --- science, technology, engineering, and maths. Of those students, one-third will switch out of those fields, and only about two in five will graduate with a STEM degree, he added.

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I must say it is pretty eye-opening for me.

A decade ago, the then CM of AP abolished History from High School Curriculum and replaced it with Computer Applications.

99% of students here enroll for STEM (the rest for Medicine, which is very costly).

Crazy?

Last month there was a suicide case (typical) of a Class XII student. In Class XI he got 97% and was expecting to improve upon it in Class XII, where he got only 96%.

There is one prestigious college admitting students for Commerce (Honors) that discriminates against science students applying for it (as opposed to 'arts' students). So, the cut-off is pegged for them at 100%.

Where am I living?


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