Street Cleaning - Machines complementing human

Human-Machine-Collaboration: Perhaps the rare sight in India but quite a common one in developed countries.

I really liked the efficiency of the work - Watch the video of street cleaning in Germany. 

Any comments?

Changing weather - part 2

Sometimes there is hardly any delay is getting your wish fulfilled - I hoped to see snow soon so that I could enhance the collection of 'changing weather' gallery by some snowy pics...and by Nov 2008 end, it was there.. right in front of my eyes !

This is one of the foggy mornings (2:30am... too early in the morning - one could see this only on sleepless nights !) in Nov 2008.

When the temperature drops to zero and you see rains in the evening - snow is on the way !! (this is my version of 'meteorology principles').

and here you go !! The street filled with snow. (Nov 22-24, 2008)

Changing weather..

On 13th of Nov 2008, I am gonna complete 5th month of stay at Erlangen, Germany...and that too without a job. This is the longest break I have ever taken once i started working since 1994 (when I completed my engineering diploma). Since then I was either working or studying. After my Masters in Jan 2001, I had a period of 'no-job-in-hand' for close to 2 months sometime in Sept 2003. But for most of my life, it was more than 10 hours a day job. Well, what I meant is when I have no 'office' sort of job, I have all the free time to observe things around me - nature, people, life and almost everything..

First take a look at the changing weather..

* July 2008 - Summer has not yet gone:

Lush green and thick trees around my apartment. This is the view of the road (that leads to Nuernberg) from balcony of my apartment. Due to the green trees you hardly see the road (just a glimpse of the crossing/signal on the road).

* End of July 2008- On brighter day:

* Aug 08- A rainy morning:

* Oct 08- Fall is on its way..

* Oct end - Leaves are turning red before getting detached from the tree..

 

* Nov 2008 - Winter is not far..

You would see most of the trees without leaves now. This is the view of the same place (remember the road leading to Nuernberg?) on a foggy morning. 

The apartment behind the tree is almost invisible due to fog.

* Nov 2008 - a few minutes back !!

At 10 am on 7th of Nov 2008, another cloudy day.

See the trees with minimal leaves, and the 'clearly-visible' buildng behind the tree.

** I hope I will have pictures of the same place with some snow around.

 

German Discipline & Design

You will be amazed at the way most of the Germans (I refer to ‘most' of them because there are exceptions everywhere ) follow the rules. They follow the rules as if it were written on stone.

• When the signal is red, irrespective of the traffic, they stop. On the contrary, in India I could not dare to cross the road even 5 seconds after the signal turns green for pedestrians.
• I happen to be in a bus that was following another bus very closely. At one of the bus-stops both the buses stopped but our bus didn't open the doors. The reason being the bus I was in was just few feet away from the sidewalk that assists people to get off the bus comfortably. After 2 minutes when the bus occupied the right spot at the stop, the doors were opened for passengers. This is a total contrast to what we see at Bangalore bus stops. In similar situation at Bangalore, the bus driver would have stopped the bus parallel to the one already halted and would have blocked the road. I do remember few accidents that happened due to such ‘improper parking' of buses.

Their thought process:

• I had been to a doctor for my back sprain. Then I went to a medical store (‘Apotheke') with the prescription. The lady at the shop asked me twice if I am aware of the procedure for taking medicine (dosage, how to consume it?) and then only handed me over the medicine.
• The pack of the medicine had a space/field for writing down dosage information on it.
• The name of the medicine was also written in Braille to assist visually impaired people.