Category: Life In The City

Life In The City, My Take

Exploring San Francisco in a Waymo Driverless Car

Perhaps in 2019, while walking in San Francisco’s Mission District, a white coloured car with some gizmo rotating on its roof caught my attention! I hadn’t seen anything like that before. I was told it was one of those experimental driver less cars! The stuff on the roof were sensors, cameras, and God knows what which enabled the car navigate busy city roads without a human being at the driving wheel!

Cut to October 2024. We were back in San Francisco and were eagerly waiting to take our first ride in a Waymo- a self-driving/driverless car service, which is become increasingly popular by the day. These cars are now called autonomous vehicles or robotaxis. It was very simple really. I downloaded the Waymo App, created an account and was ready to go!

Shobana and I decided to visit Cole Valley for old times sake. Using the App, we hailed a Waymo for a ride from the Luma Hotel where we were staying. The Waymo pulled up to exactly where we stood. The App had advised me to pull the door twice. Once to unlock the door and the second to open the door. As we settled ourselves comfortably in the spacious back seat of the all electric Jaguar IPACE, we couldn’t help marvelling that there was no one in the driver’s seat to take us to our destination! Our thoughts were interrupted by an announcement reminding us to fasten our seat belts! We did that- and we were off.

Our ride took about 24 minutes and covered 4.5 miles in San Francisco traffic. Never once did we feel nervous. Not even when our Waymo halted at the top of a steep slope when the lights changed to red. When the lights changed the wheel spun and we were off again taking a perfect turn.

There was light music playing in the background. We could have changed the music and chosen something else but we were much too busy enjoying the ride. To our delight at a traffic signal, we stopped and another Waymo pulled up beside us!! It was mind boggling for us to see our Waymo speed up when required, slow down when appropriate, stop where and when required- all without a driver!!

I have written about our personal experience of the ride. For those who want more in depth information of how it works, please do check out The Waymo Driver in their website.

Soon after, we reached our destination at exactly the time projected at the start of our drive! Congratulations to the folks at Waymo! This was a memorable experience for us. Our Waymo ride was way more comfortable and exciting than we expected!

Life In The City

Sharing is Caring : The Millennium Elders’ Forum

For the past two years, it was my proud privilege to be the President of the Millennium Elders’ Forum. My term came to an end recently in the course of the Annual General Body Meeting held in April 2019. It was a satisfying experience despite the difficulties, at times, of having to deal with elders many of them much older than me! When I was elected the President in 2017,  I was 65 and the average age of our Executive Committee was 73. At that time, someone had mentioned that I was too young to have become the President !!!

MEF Executive Committee for 2018-19

The Millennium Elders’ Forum was established as a registered society of elders in 2008 by a few eminent gentlemen living in the JP Nagar area of South Bangalore like the late Mr S K Banerjee IPS ( a former Director General of Police) and Prof K S Bhat ( a former Professor at the Administrative Staff College of India). They became the Founding President and Secretary respectively. I joined the MEF, as it is popularly called, in 2011 on becoming a Senior Citizen. I had the opportunity, over time, to serve on the Executive Committee. At that time, Mr R Jagannathan IPS, (retired Director General of Police) was the President and he was succeeded by Prof S R Seetharam, a former Director of BEML. We have about 120 members,  all senior citizens living largely in the Brigade residential enclaves in JP Nagar.

I am glad that I suggested we support elders in Old Age Homes in our area as a community service cause to channelize our energies. In doing so, we could render whatever assistance we could to those less fortunate than ourselves. It is so sad to see some elders having to stay there because they have no other place to go to. In some cases, they have been virtually abandoned by their families. It is reported that 18 % of  elderly men and 26 % of elderly women have disabilities because of chronic diseases. After all, our motto in the MEF was ” Sharing and Caring.”

To celebrate International Day of the Older Person in October 2017 we raised funds through a souvenir and donated Rs. 4.13 lakhs to old age homes by way of goods and equipment which they needed. These included cots, mattresses, UPS systems, wheel chairs, large sized cooking vessels etc. Likewise, in the next year we raised another Rs 1.05 lakh for this ongoing community service project. So far, over 390 elders residing in old age homes in South Bangalore have benefitted from our initiative.

I have given much of my time over the last two years for this cause. I have derived a lot of satisfaction from this. The satisfaction of helping someone in need is reward in itself

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Life In The City

“Life In The City”

As mentioned in many posts in this blog, November finds me busy with NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month, an international event in which we aim to write a novel of 50,000 words in the calendar month of November. The rules permit the writing of short stories too as long as the collection has a common theme. This year, like in 2012 when I did an anthology of short stories called, “A Bouquet From India”, I have embarked on writing a collection of short stories once again.

The common theme is that they are all set in the cities of India, a land I know best having lived in different parts of this vast country, all my life. It was natural then for me to select, ” Life In the City” as the title for this year’s effort. Continue reading ““Life In The City”” →