Reluctant Engineer

Green is Good

2012-01-31T20:01:00.003-06:00

If India has got to look past the IT sector, this is definitely a good step forward.

Reuse Water is...Water

2011-08-16T14:24:00.001-05:00

At least with water, you can recycle...

Unemployment Benefit?

2011-07-26T18:03:00.002-05:00

And who said you can do anything?

Safety

2011-04-05T21:14:00.002-05:00

An article about safety and engineering and I might add, fallibility and humans. I particularly liked the term, "backward thinking" used by a Japanese professor.

Work

2010-07-28T10:58:00.002-05:00

Thermodynamically, work is not a state function. It makes sense. But the economy has changed it. Your output is measured at the final point with no regards to the intermediate paths.

Does...

2009-09-30T21:09:00.000-05:00

..being an engineer make me a non-believer?

re:Water

2008-12-01T21:40:00.006-06:00

Courtesy: GWI -August 2008

Truth

2008-03-29T20:10:00.001-05:00

This life is neither real nor absolute. We refine ourselves, iteration after iteration, till we are convinced we converged. The achievement gives us a meaning, though it is only a simulation of an empirical code. The Truth is elsewhere. The very fact that we exist is proof that we haven’t found Truth and the very fact the Truth exists means we are all unreal.

My Two Lives

2007-07-24T06:45:00.000-05:00

Image copyright: Worcestershire CCC

Recently I was watching a cricket match from the past on YouTube. As I relived those classic moments (India defeated Pakistan), memories came hurling at me. I remember how I used to run home after school to watch the TV when some match was on. The fact that only bits of info—we would get scores during our lunch break either by sneaking out to the nearest store that had a TV set or via friends whose home were walking distance from school—were available before you got home finally was something of a thrill. My life has always been identified by cricket moments (I know it sounds dull and pathetic, but that’s me!). It’s ironic that I be a water resources man. The rain keeps me in business while I would do anything to prevent it as a cricket fan and amateur cricketer. This new match, Rain vs. Cricket, presents something similar to an expatriate’s dilemma in choosing to support his team.

Like Anything Else

2007-07-01T21:53:00.000-05:00

Life is like a contaminant in a water body. Sometimes you get a big plume, but over time, natural attenuation steps in, and the effects are diluted.

The Grand Anicut

2007-06-18T23:24:00.000-05:00

Called Kallanai (Kal-stone, Anai-dam) in Tamil, the Grand Anicut is supposedly the oldest dam in the world. Karikala Chola, a famous king of the Chola dynasty of South India is reported to have built it during the 2nd century A.D over the river Cauvery. The dam was made of stone and mud, with outer granite layers in lime mortar (FAO, 1995). This humongous block of stone is roughly 1080 feet long and 60 feet wide. Later, in the 1830s British Engineers built a dam over Kollidam, the river’s northern tributary (it splits into two before both empty into the Bay of Bengal), basing their design on the Kallanai. This came as something of a shock to me. I had known of the dam but didn’t expect it to be to the oldest standing water structure in the world. It fills me with shame as someone from that region and someone who is a hydraulic engineer.

The dam serves irrigation purposes in the Cauvery delta, one of the fertile lands in all of India. I read somewhere that India has the largest cultivable area in the world (about three-fifths) and that its lands are generally very fertile. That’s probably part of the reason why its sons and daughters are so fertile too! A footnote before I end: Karikala Chola is supposed to have raised the banks of the Cauvery to aid in controlling flooding problems. The factuality of the matter is under doubt. I am trying to find out more information on this.

Reference in Text: Food and Agricultural Organization, 1995. Reservoir fisheries of India, FAO Fisheries Technical Paper 345 by V.V. Sugunan.

World Water Day

2007-05-04T11:50:00.000-05:00

First published Thursday, March 22, 2007

Today is World Water Day. Even as I write there are a billion people without access to clean water. Lucky are we.

Top Indications You are an H&H Person or are Living with One

2007-05-04T11:49:00.000-05:00

First published Wednesday, March 7, 2007

8. You are being honked at when crossing streams or detention ponds because he/she slows down to look around.

7. You identify streets and roads by the drainage projects you have worked on.

6. The first thing that comes to your mind on seeing the letters CIA is not the Agency in Virginia.

5. When you are most concerned with one particular Manning on a daily basis and his first name isn’t Peyton or Eli or Archie and as a matter of fact has been long dead.

4. He/she mentions mitigation when some problem crops up and you’re like, “Say what?”

3. When the monthly budget involves terms such as peak inflows and maximum allowable rates.

2. You keep referring to existing conditions and proposed conditions and think about impacts when contemplating marriage.

1. When she exclaims how romantic the San Antonio River Walk is, all you can think of is what would be the water surface elevation if a 100-year event occurs!

Legend:
H&H - Hydrology & Hydraulics

Reluctant Engineer

2007-05-04T11:45:00.001-05:00

First published Friday, February 9, 2007

It still remains a big mystery how I became an engineer. I never aimed to be one, though I respected people who practiced the art. It so happened that I had scored enough in my twelfth grade to secure an engineering admit and so began my journey. Electronics & Communications was the rage and I too dreamt of being a Marconi. Due to strange bylaws the nature of which is too complicated to explain here, I ended up with Chemical Engineering. There was interdisciplinary snobbery as branches such as ours were less equipped and less lucrative (Later I learned that Chemical Engineers were one of the well paid here and also, as a friend of mine remarked, “jerks”). We did not attend classes regularly and I can say that we had much more fun than the rest. One of the things that amazed me those days was the awareness the everyman had on my chosen field of study.

“Chemical you said? A rather dry subject.”

“You must love Chemistry, man. All those equations!”

The poor soul was convinced Chemical Engineering was the modern handle for good old Chemistry. Though I no longer am in this arena I, first and foremost, am a Chemical Engineer and would not have it any other way. That I was a dry engineer seemingly had some subconscious reactions. I decided to enter a ‘waterful’ world for my Masters. It was astonishing and comical as well that the director of water resources in our department was called Dr. Urban. My thesis advisor was Dr. Rainwater who specialized in groundwater. If I say there was one Dr. Fish in Dept. of Range, Wildlife and Fisheries and that a professor named Dr. Green taught in Plant Sciences, you would only think I am being too imaginative. This was taking “man's relationship with the institutions he creates” to literal heights to quote the English novelist John le Carré. Quite a un-computerish person, I was surprised to see such emphasis laid on the modern machine no matter what you studied. The learning curve as they call it was not easy to climb as well. At first I was slow to move, like groundwater. My professor was talking in supercritical levels and I was thinking in subcritical modes. A meeting of the two was not possible without a hydraulic jump. Then I realized that flow, just like anything else in life, comes with many losses. My money was routed using continuity with zero storage. I started working with many models. Their names were MODFLOW, HEC-HMS and the like. No, they are not women from StarWars or any other planet. These are computer models. Perhaps, this is the closest I can get to a model.