Indian passport renewal in California

AshwinLeave a comment

I had to recently renew an Indian passport for a family member in CA, USA. This post is a collection of notes from that experience.

  • Who handles it: The entire passport renewal process is handled by CKGS in the US.
  • Types of renewal: There are two ways to renew your passport: normal and Tatkal. Normal process might take 4-6 weeks, Tatkal is within a week or so. Tatkal fee will be $100 or so more on top of the normal application fee.
  • CKGS online application: The online application at CKGS might take 0.5-1 hours to complete. If you need Tatkal, note that you need to follow the process detailed below before you do the online application.
  • Tatkal:
    • If you need Tatkal, you will need to first email CKGS and provide the necessary documents as email attachments. You can find the email address, the email format and the documents required on the CKGS Tatkal information page. It is a good idea to provide a reason for why you need Tatkal in the email. (For example, “I need to visit India for visa stamping in a month on date DD/MM/YYYY and would like to have a new passport for that.”)
    • CKGS will forward your request to the Indian Embassy.
    • CKGS will get back to you by email whether your Tatkal request was accepted or not by the Embassy.
    • We found that this process takes 2-3 workdays.
    • If your Tatkal request got approved, then remember to choose Tatkal both in the CKGS online passport application form and in the Indian government’s passport application form.
  • Indian passport application:
    • After the CKGS application is done, CKGS will lead you to the Indian government’s passport application page. Here they call renewal as re-issue. This application too might take 0.5-1 hour to complete. Once you finish you need to print out the application.
    • If you are keeping your Indian address in the passport, the Indian passport application will require an Indian phone number. I gave my parent’s number and had no problems.
    • You can make small changes to your passport details: fixing parents’ names, adding spouse name or fixing address. Each of these might require you to add necessary documentation in your package. The CKGS checklist (see below) will mention those documents.
    • If you are adding a spouse name, then you will need to add a notarized copy of your marriage certificate to your submission.
    • If you are fixing your parent’s name, then you might need to submit a notarized copy of your birth certificate or your parent’s passport first and last pages.
    • If you are fixing your Indian home address, then submit a self-attested copy of your Aadhaar card.
  • After your Indian passport application, you go back to CKGS application and enter the Indian passport application number and other details. You finish the CKGS application by paying the fee using your credit card.
  • Checklist: CKGS application process ends with a checklist of documents. You need to print it out and use as the reference list of documents needed to submit. The old passport is the only original document on that list. Rest are photocopies of documents, some of them need to be self-attested, some need to be notarized. Remember that all the documents need to be printed single-side only.
    • Note that the CKGS checklist did not list the documents I would need to submit for fixing errors in passport. For example, it did not list marriage certificate when I added spouse’s name to my passport. To be on the safe side, I notarized photocopies of these documents not in their checklist.
  • Documents: Use the checklist to print out the required documents. Print single-side in color.
  • Notarizing documents: For the documents needing notarization, search in Google Maps for notary to find some place nearby. I was able to find a notary who charged $5 per page. Note that for documents requiring notarization you need to sign them in front of the notary. Do not sign them beforehand.
    • If in doubt, just notarize. For example, the notary said I might not need to notarize the second page of my I-797, but I did it anyway. You want to avoid any back-and-forth with the Indian Embassy that might delay your application by days or weeks don’t you?
  • Photos: US passport-size photos are needed. Checklist misleadingly says 4 photos are needed. I found that only 2 photos are needed: 1 for the Indian passport application and 1 for the Change of appearance/signature form.
  • How to submit: At the end, CKGS allows you to choose whether you want to submit documents in person at the CKGS office or send them by Fedex/UPS. If you choose the latter, CKGS will give you the shipping labels to print on your package when you send them.
  • There is no option of picking up the passport at CKGS office. New passports are always shipped to your address by Fedex/UPS.
  • Submit in person:
    • Since CKGS office was in SF which is nearby, we chose to submit the documents in person.
    • If you pick this option, you cannot later switch to sending documents by Fedex.
    • If you pick this option, the applicant has to go in person to submit. You cannot send someone else in your place.
    • CKGS office is closed on Indian holidays.
    • When you submit, your documents will be checked and you will be given a submission number to track status on CKGS website.
  • Updates:
    • CKGS will text and email you updates for each step of the process: received at CKGS, sending to Indian embassy, got back new passport from embassy and when passport is mailed out.
  • We used Tatkal and the whole process was finished in 1.5 weeks.

The Bogleheads’ Guide to the Three-Fund Portfolio

AshwinLeave a comment
The Bogleheads’ Guide to the Three-Fund Portfolio

Last year, for the first time in my life I bought stocks. Not directly, but through index funds. First I had to pick funds for my 401K. And separately I bought an index fund tracking the S&P 500. My timing was so perfect that I had bought on the index’s highest ever day and it nosedived immediately after reducing my investment! I decided that I needed to learn more about stocks and mutual funds before I invest again. Being a person who hates reading or doing anything financial, I searched a lot and finally picked the most straightforward book possible: The Bogleheads’ Guide to the Three-Fund Portfolio. The book literally tells you which 3 funds to invest in. It cannot get simpler than this!

The Bogleheads are fans of Jack Bogle, the inventor of index funds and the creator of Vanguard. They have a more popular, more indepth book called The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing. This three-fund one is an ofshoot of that book for the laziest investor. The three funds the book recommends are all total market funds: US stock market, international stock market and US bond market. The percent of bonds is suggested to be your age. That is, a 30-year old should have 30% of investments in bonds. A large number of quite-convincing arguments are laid out to tell you why total market funds are the bees’ knees. The book also reminds you how to stay the course in a bull and a bear market.

This thin book is quite light, and can be finished in a few hours. What I found quite off-putting were hundreds of Bogleheads’ blurbs that litter every single page and there are chapters at the beginning and the end that are just blurbs. It is obvious that this is just a blogpost masquerading as a book, just because there is a market for such a book. (And a market there indeed is, look at me.) I just wish they had accepted that, cut out all the blurbs and reduced the book to its true size: about 50 pages. I guess today’s publishers no longer sell thin books. Everything has to be big and thick and should stand out in a book store. Only in books from my parents’ and grandparents’ era have I see 30, 50 or 100-ish page books. Apart from this irritation, the book satisfied its objectives, telling me what to invest in. I think I might need to read one more-substantial book in the future to understand the stock investments better.

Rating: 3/4 (★★★☆)

The awesome LINK+ library service

AshwinLeave a comment
A book borrowed through LINK+ with its sticker on the front.

I read very few books last year. Since I rely on the nagging return date of library books to push my reading, I partly blame last year on the piddly book collection at my neighborhood library.

2019 began with two great discoveries. The first was that I found out that I could place a hold for free online on any of the books available at the Central Park Library of Santa Clara. This library has a bigger collection and they can deliver the book (after its former borrower returns it) to my small neighborhood library in a few days.

The second more awesome discovery was LINK+. This is a free inter-library loan service that links the Santa Clara libraries with 69 other city and university libraries in California and Nevada! Imagine my joy when I used its online catalog search and found that I could now get my hold on pretty much any book imaginable. I started using this from the new year and it has been just great. Having access to the books I want makes me read more.

Using the service is quite easy. Search the LINK+ catalog online for the book you want. Request for it to be delivered to your neighborhood library. I can borrow a maximum of 10 items through LINK+ at any given time. If the book is checked out, you will get it only after its borrower has returned it back. If it is available, it typically takes a week or two for the book to travel from faraway California cities and Nevada to my local library.

My local library website login informs me when the LINK+ book has arrived. These books are kept behind their counter and can only be checked out and returned at the counter by asking a librarian. The books that arrive through LINK+ have a huge sticker on the front indicating the originating library and the borrower. The librarian takes out an old-world date stamp and stamps the return date on this sticker. When I am done with the book, I return it back at the counter.

That is pretty much it. If you live in California or Nevada, please check if your city or university is a part of the LINK+ network. If so, a ginormous collection of books awaits your discovery.

Racing the beam

AshwinLeave a comment
Racing the beam

Classic Atari games are a popular choice these days in the field of reinforcement learning. A delightful lunch conversation on the constraints in the Atari VCS (Video Computer System) and the resulting creativity in its games introduced me to the book Racing the beam. Written by Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost, it is a detailed look at the creation of Atari VCS, its games, its popularity and its final crash.

Atari VCS, now popularly referred to as the Atari 2600, was introduced in 1977. Atari, who was making coin-operated arcade machines, created in the 2600 one of the first home videogame systems where games could be changed by switching cartridges. Sold for $200, it was quite cheap compared to the home computers of this era which, like Apple ][, sold for a thousand dollars more. This cost was possible by the use of the cheap MOS 6507 chip, a variant of the MOS 6502 which was popular in home computers at this time. The system had a mere 128 bytes of RAM and supported 4K of ROM in the game cartridge. The hardware of the system was specifically designed for two-player games like Pong, which featured one sprite per player, some playfield graphics and a ball or missile. The system had a Television Interface Adapter (TIA) chip that was specifically designed to interface with NTSC CRT displays. The TIA had specific registers to draw sprites, playfield graphics, moving balls, collision detection between ball and sprite. The system had no OS, it executed the 6507 instructions of the cartridge directly. VCS programmers essentially had to tell the system what to draw as the electron beam moved across the screen, scanline by scanline.

The book focuses on 6 games made for the VCS, using each one to also highlight a different aspect of the video game industry of that era. Combat is the game cartridge that shipped with the VCS. It had several 2-player games, all minor variants of Pong, but featuring tanks and planes instead. The VCS was one of the first home gaming systems to popularize the use of joystick. It also shipped with paddles, which fell out of favor quickly as a controller. With the game Adventure we see how Warren Robinett brought the world of text adventure to graphics and allowed the user to move out of the screen to new rooms and locations. In porting Pac-Man from its Japanese arcade to VCS, we discover how Tod Frye had to hack past the system’s limitation on the number of sprites and the requirement of playfield graphics to be mirrored. The result was still quite disappointing and the game flopped. Yars’ Revenge was a port of the vector-graphics Star Castle to the raster-graphics hardware of the VCS and was a hit.

In just a few years, Atari was king of the home videogame market and was raking in a billion dollars annually selling both the console and the cartridges for it. Each videogame of this era was made by an individual programmer and at Atari they were paid a fixed low salary. Noticing how they were paid a 100 times less than the revenue their individual games generated, four star Atari programmers broke away and created Activision, the first 3rd-party game cartridge company. Pitfall was a pioneering game from Activision for the VCS that created the side-scrolling adventure. Like most great games on the VCS, this too was an epic hack, fitting 255 jungle screens in just 50 bytes of ROM! Another 3rd-party success was Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back using which the authors describe how toys and games were licensed from movies in this era. The popularity of the VCS led to a flooding of the market with lots of bad-quality games and led to the video game crash of 1983.

The authors are digital media academics and so the book not only focuses on the technical details, but the cultural, social and historical aspects of the VCS and videogame consoles of that era. Readers who are specifically looking for intricate details of the VCS and how important games pushed the system to its limits might need to refer to other more technical books. Since my first experience with computers were systems that were way more powerful and complex, I found this discovery of the Atari 2600 to be enlightening and fascinating.

Rating: 4/4 (★★★★)

The Name of the Game is a Kidnapping

Ashwin1 Comment
The Name of the Game is a Kidnapping

I discovered Keigo Higashino through one of those yearly book lists, which listed his most recent book translated to English: Newcomer. He is supposedly a famous mystery novelist in Japan and I picked up The Name of the Game is a Kidnapping, translated to English by Jan Mitsuko Cash.

Our protagonist Sakuma works at an advertising agency and is very successful at his job. When his latest grand project is rejected by famous industrialist Katsuragi, he tries to visit him personally. A run-in there with his peeved daughter Juri, brings them together to hatch a game: to fake a kidnapping of Juri to extort a large sum of money from Katsuragi. Sakuma and Juri lay down a meticulous and delicious set of chess moves to evade the cops and get their prize without getting caught. And just when you think Sakuma has brilliantly succeeded the tables are flipped in the third act.

This was my first Higashino novel and I loved it. Regular Higashino readers seem to be complaining about the translation quality of this one, but I felt it was fine. I can see how Occidental readers who are not familiar with Japanese manga, anime or movies might feel that the tone of the translation is too casual. But Japanese actually converse casually like this in real life with peers they know well. The novel is fast paced, thrilling and easy to read. I was expecting a surprise in the third act and the author delivered a brilliant twist. I know I will be eyeing more Higashino novels when I want to be taken on an exciting ride.

Rating: 4/4 (★★★★)

Annihilation

AshwinLeave a comment
Annihilation

I discovered the Santa Clara Book Match recently and decided to try it. I plugged in a few of my favorite books and authors and a few days later HL, an actual person from the library, emailed me three recommendations. One of them was Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer. It turned out to be a slim book, supposedly the first in the Southern Reach trilogy.

The novel kicks off great: an expedition of four women is sent to a mysterious and desolate coastal region named Area X. These nameless explorers include a biologist (the narrator), an anthropologist, a psychologist and a surveyor. They are put under hypnosis to aid crossing over from civilization and undertake the 4 day hike into Area X. Sent by the Southern Reach, an arm of the military, they are the 12th expedition here, former members having been either lost or mysteriously reappeared only to remember nothing much.

The explorers face a landscape devoid of humans and technology, the last vestiges of a fishing village and lighthouse there slowly being digested back into nature. Some Event has occurred here at some time in the past and since then the environment has been changing causing inexplicable phenomenon. And the more secrets the women discover, it only leads them to more questions and danger.

I felt Annihilation had flavors of Crichton, The X Files TV series and Night Shyamalan movies. The plot is wafer thin, but what keeps it edge-of-seat thrilling is the writing skill of Vandermeer. I was totally sucked into the overpoweringly dark and foreboding environment he has created. The bleak landscape, the mysterious tower, the lighthouse, the mysterious creatures are all truly mesmerizing. Plus there were a few genuinely shocking moments in the story. The story lags a bit in the middle, before picking up steam once the reveals slowly begin, the bodies start to pile up and you start to lift the veil back along with the narrator.

Rating: 4/4

Pluto

AshwinLeave a comment
Pluto

Pluto is a 8-volume manga series by Naoki Urasawa, who I know from his awesome manga Monster. I picked up this manga because of my interest in Osamu Tezuka. This series is Naoki’s imagination of The Greatest Robot on Earth, a story from Tezuka’s Astro Boy series.

The story is set in an Earth were AI is omnipresent and humanoid robots are living among humans. Robots have rights, can marry other robots and have robot children. Somebody has started to brutally murder the seven greatest robots on Earth one by one. Investigating the case is Gesicht, the greatest police detective and himself one of those seven robots. The case takes him across Europe, Persia and Japan and later brings us to Tezuka’s favorite creations: Atom and Professor Ochanomizu.

Naoki creates some great characters and the plot is quite intriguing. There is some great imagination of robots living with humans, robot emotions and feelings. The scientific reasoning and logic though have not dated well and the less said about it the better. What you do get is some excellent story telling, the futility of war and hatred and in the penultimate volume some giant robot battles involving Atom.

Rating: 3/4

Electricity consumption in winter

AshwinLeave a comment

Most information is best digested by experiencing it first hand. I had read so much about how cost of heat in winter in the US and other developed countries affects poor people. And I would always think: How is this a real problem? These folks can afford electricity in summer, but not in winter? How much could the increase in electricity consumption be in winter? 25% or 50% increase? That does not seem so bad, I would think.

Here is our handy electricity consumption graph provided by Santa Clara Utilities as an example:

Electricity consumption in winter

Notice the jaw-dropping 175% increase in electricity consumption for us since winter began in December. So, for poor folks who live in countries in colder climates I can see how the heating cost in winter can be a burden for them.

In case you are curious, I do not think our heating use is extravagant. We are not keeping it toasty enough to walk around in shorts inside our home! There is a room thermometer in the living room and going by it we seem to usually maintain temperatures of 21-24 C (71-75 F) using heating. You would need to be fully clothed at these temperatures to feel warm and comfortable.

Our apartment is using two heating devices:

  • GE PTAC unit in the living room: This is used for about 3-6 hours in the day in sporadic bursts when it feels chilly inside. This unit looks old, older than any air conditioning technology I had previously seen in general use in Asia and Europe. I am guessing this air conditioner is probably inefficient by current standards and is probably causing most of that increase in electricity consumption.
  • Baseboard heater in the bedroom: This is used for about 6-8 hours during sleeptime. It takes ages to heat the room. But it is supposed to be highly efficient, drawing power similar to a normal appliance. It does seem efficient too cause I can put my hand inside above its heating strip and feel that it is increasing temperature of the air flowing through it by only a tiny bit.