A series of happy coincidences introduced me to the Laneway Festival (or St. Jerome’s Laneway Festival, as it is also known) sometime towards the end of last year. The lineup of artists performing this time around was diverse and brilliant; the fact that Bat for Lashes was also going to be there was all I needed to convince myself to buy tickets and attend it. This also aligned quite neatly with the fact that I was travelling around the east (and by east I imply a very tight circuit around Singapore-Malaysia-Thailand) through January this year.

The Laneway stage, set against the backdrop of Singapore’s skyline at the Gardens by the Bay.

I attended Laneway with the primary intention of witnessing the glorious Bat for Lashes perform and to a certain extent to also see Tame Impala, who were amongst the few bands at the festival I’d actually heard before. I’d hurriedly researched the other bands performing, but I thoroughly missed looking up a band called Of Monsters and Men. The first time I’d ever heard them was when I heard them live that blisteringly hot afternoon on the 26th at the festival.

It might not have exactly been love at first sound, but it’s pretty much the closest thing I’ve experienced to it.

I’m not going to pretend to know how to pronounce or accurately spell the names of the folks that make up the band, so I’ll let Wikipedia paraphrase for me:

Of Monsters and Men is a five-piece indie folk/indie pop band from Iceland, formed in 2010. The members are co-singer/guitarist Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir, co-singer/guitarist Ragnar “Raggi” Þórhallsson, guitarist Brynjar Leifsson, drummer Arnar Rósenkranz Hilmarsson,and bassist Kristján Páll Kristjánsson.

Their music is eclectic and multi-instrumental (all bands tend to be multi-instrumental, if you think about it, but I’m referring to the pipes, accordions and glockenspiels these guys also actively perform with) with a sound that is both indie and folksy, amongst many other things. The lyrics evoke mythical fantastic imageries (in a vein similar to Bat for Lashes) whereas their sound is akin to that of bands like Mumford and Sons and Arcade Fire.

Most great contemporary bands stand of the shoulders of so many older great bands and that their aural DNA is so rich because it contains the experience and archetypes from so much music history. This is probably why (in my opinion) Of Monsters and Men sound so very familiar and feel so instantly likeable. Their music is fresh and new and yet very, very familiar.

The first song I’d like to introduce the band to you with is one called Little Talks. No slow starts here, this one’s meant to be a concentrated dose of what makes the band so special, a super catchy intro on pipes and a soulful duet between Nanna and Ragnar. This song is off their first EP, Into The Woods.

Also from Into The Woods, this next song is called Six Weeks, a song that holds the very special memory of thousands of voices chanting the la-la-la bits of the chorus in unison.

The band released their début album My Head is an Animal in 2011. The first song from the album is one called Dirty Paws. The second line of the song is where the titular line of the album appears (Jumping up and down the floor/My head is an animal/And once there was an animal…). I found you a live version so you can experience the song in a similar fashion to how I did for the first time.

King and Lionheart is the second song from the album. This one’s amongst my personal favourites; the video is rife with fantastic furry creatures and what looks like a child of eastern and Norse mythological imagery.

Sloom is a song I only heard off the actual album (since they didn’t perform it at the festival). I choose to show it to you here because it’s a more purely acoustic (with some four guitars and vocals) sound, relative to the multi-instrumental-eclectic nature of their other songs. The version below is a live one (possibly before they had a name for the song), but you can click here for a link to the studio version, which does sound rich and beautiful in its own way.

Here’s a version of Your Bones. The song tends to sound terribly familiar once you hear it. The melody does sound a lot like Phantom Planet’s California. They’re very different songs; the more I listen to Your Bones the more distant it seems from anything else.

This is Lakehouse, beautiful to hear live, with people chanting the lyrics along with the band. Also, pipes.

The last song on My Head is an Animal is a song called Yellow Light. The song starts off with an quietness quite in the key of The XX (the band) and climbs upwards into a gentle multidimensional swell.

I’d like to end with one of my favourite songs from the album. Mountain Sound has currently been the default song that echoes through my brain when I’ve been walking about the city. It has all the things a song needs to successfully earworm itself deep into your brain (and you probably wouldn’t complain).

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The drawing you see on top of this article was made over the course of a few hours (in sweltering, blazing sunlight, which is why it took so long) during the early hours of the Laneway festival, while trying to fight sunstroke and sunburn. The final strokes of this drawing were made during the exact moment that the band was about three-fourths through their encore. Of Monsters and Men were the only ones to encore at Laneway this year (though this might have been thanks to the fact that the other stage wasn’t ready as yet once these guys were done, as much as the audience itself wanted more (we wanted more of most of the acts that day/night)). The song they chose to perform for their encore was one called Numb Bears, which will always hold a special place in me. I quite clearly remember how cheery and happy the crowd was at the end of the performance (the song is, as you will hear, rather catchy and cheerful) and more clearly how happy I was to have finished this sketch within this special moment that I was probably going to remember for the rest of my life (a little hyerbole never killed anyone).

YouTube song sources:

Little Talks- OfMonstersAndMenVEVO | Six Weeks, Dirty Paws - KEXP 90.3 FM Seattle | King And Lionheart - OfMonstersAndMenVEVO | Sloom- ReadTheHits, Ritz Her | Your Bones- bowerypresents | Lakehouse- KEXP 90.3 FM Seattle | Yellow Light- Adriano Ravon | Mountain Sound - OfMonstersAndMenVEVO  | Numb Bears- ReadTheHits

Cover image property of Loretta Marie Perera, drawn by The New Vitruvian Man.

The music of Of Monsters and Men is currently available for purchase online in India only via Flipkart. Their music is apparently also internationally available on iTunes, but this is not the case in India, yet.

The previous version of the fare card has seen over 13,562 downloads since I put it up in April (this is just counting the PDF file of the Mumbai version, the JPEG of the same saw 6,415 downloads, the Thane PDF and JPEG saw 2,301 and 1.364 downloads respectively, before I unlinked the files). This version is as per the 11th October 2012 revision. Click on any of the two (now more finger friendly) buttons below to download the JPEG or PDF versions of the revised cards for Mumbai . I’ll be creating a Thane version also, depending on the response here. Do read the text below also, in case you want to know why the things are the way they are on this version. Also, do give the Facebook page a like to keep track of updates, or follow me on Twitter.

This year has seen two revisions of the auto fares in Bombay. This added a new layer of complication to creating a revised version with the updated fares. Some rickshaws had by this time converted to the digital meter with the previous revision, so this meant that there would in fact be two sets of fare cards, one for the regular old mechanical ones and another for the electronic ones.

I hope that this particular version doesn’t have to see much use; that all the meters get changed to the newer digital meters with the right calibration which would mean we’d no longer have to use these fare conversion cards to figure out the right fare.

I knew I was not going to make two separate versions for each (mechanical and digital) mode because there’s nothing less convenient than having to fumble through a bunch of files and select the right one while in a hurry to take the meter reading and pay up. Worse still, there’s the possibility of picking the wrong file and read the meter wrong and getting into a fight with an unsuspecting auto-rick-driver.

At first, I thought I’d let the old mechanical meter readings remain, and only add the distance in kilometres along with it for the digital metres. All digital metres show a distance reading along with the fare, so this should have worked. However, that would be half the information and could possibly lead to further confusion with what was on the meter and what was on the fare card itself.

With the addition of two extra columns for the digital meter reading and the distance in kilometres I think this list has gotten quite cluttered, but I wouldn’t want to remove any information from this because I think it’d be a deficient list. The digital meter reading is set in red so that it connects directly with the digits on the electronic meter.

The source of the data for these cards was the Maharashtra Motor Vehicles Department website.

I noticed a bunch of odd discrepancies in the numbers (in some cases the “old fare” on the digital meters was shown different from the official numbers from the April ’12 revision, errors of 50paise that added up towards the end from the 20km mark), but I’ve transcribed the fares exactly the way they are on the PDF files linked to the website.

It would be really nice if some of the early adopters of this could go through the entire list and check the numbers for yourself and comment at the bottom if (or even if you don’t) find any errors, not only will this see to a more accurate fare card for your own use, but it’ll also let potential users know that the numbers have been checked by more eyes than my own and is in fact all in order.

As usual, point your smartyphones to this QR code to bring your phone browsers to this page:

11th October 2012: I’m currently updating these cards, so please hang on till I put them up here. I’ve taken the download links off for now to avoid any confusion.

Updated version here.

Update (30th April 2012): The different versions of the tariff cards have seen well over 200 1000 downloads since I released it last Friday. If this has been meeting your tariff-assessing needs well, please do spread it around by passing it on to others (via Bluetooth, Twitter, Facebook or any other means you fancy). Do give The New Vitruvian Man’s Facebook page a like, or follow along on Twitter so that you can keep abreast of updates and revisions, if and when they happen. Comments/feedback would also be much appreciated.

Almost exactly a week ago, Mumbai saw its second hike in rick fares in less than a year. When it happened last year, I couldn’t find a version of the fare-chart to carry around with me. The ones that the auto drivers carried around themselves seemed dense and cumbersome. So in the interest of convenience (and saving paper) I made a chart that I could carry around on my phone. The idea was to create a scrollable list of the basic information needed (meter reading, regular fare and midnight fare). Every tenth entry is marked to allow the user to move quickly to fares at the bottom without having to keep track of each meter reading number while scrolling down. I kept the overall look of the list light, mostly because I’ve always ended up having to use the brightness of my phone’s screen to get a better look at the meter reading in near pitch darkness in the middle of the night.

I’ve uploaded two versions, a light (248kb) PDF version (which you can view on your smartphone’s PDF reader) and also an averagely light for its dimensions (619kb) JPEG image for phones that don’t support PDF files. The image file is 480 pixels wide, which should read clearly on most phone screens. If you have trouble with this, do get in touch and I’ll upload a few more sizes of it.

I’ve triple checked the data in these charts myself, but in case you come across a discrepancy or have feedback regarding its use, do add your comments to this page.

These lists were designed solely for phone/screen use. Please do not print them; be kind to the trees.

To bring your smartphone to this page, scan in the following QR code:

Download the PDF Mumbai Auto-Rickshaw Fare card here (will open in a new window/tab).

Download the JPEG (image) Mumbai Auto-Rickshaw Fare card here (will open in a new window/tab).

I’ve also made a version of the Thane rate card this time around. There were cases in the city where unsuspecting people had been fleeced after being shown rate cards with the higher Thane fares. In fact I also came across a bunch of kids selling fare cards at traffic signals in Bandra with the Thane rates, so watch out for those. Thane fare cards downloadable below:

Download the PDF Thane Auto-Rickshaw Fare card here (will open in a new window/tab).

Download the JPEG (image) Thane Auto-Rickshaw Fare card here (will open in a new window/tab).

I wrote the following FAQ out for the last fare card, but I think it’d hold true for this one also:

How do I get this on my phone?

This depends on the type of phone you have. You can either browse (from your phone, if it will let you) to this page from the home page of thenewvitruvianman.com, where this page will stay for a few weeks, and download the image directly. You can do this over WiFi or a data plan. If you don’t have a data plan, you’ll have to either download it onto a PC and then transfer it to your phone (via cable or Bluetooth), or ask someone with a data-capable phone to download it for you and beam it over to you via Bluetooth.

Which version should I get, PDF or JPEG?

Again, this entirely depends on whether your phone can read PDF files. Most smartphones (running Symbian, Android or iOS) can read PDF files. If your phone isn’t very smart, you could go ahead and download the image file. Almost all phones have cameras these days, so viewing images is rarely an issue.

Which is better, PDF or JPEG?

PDF, for two reasons. Clarity (you can zoom in as far as you can and the text and numbers will be crisp and sharp) and size (PDF is a vector format, which means that its file sizes are very low).

I’ve provided a JPEG version solely for phones that don’t have the ability to read PDFs.

Why? (Since there’s an app for that already)

I’m sure there is. This is meant for those folks who don’t have a phone that can run fancy apps and hook onto the interweb to download said apps. I know there are a bunch of online services where you can enter the meter reading and have it calculate the fare for you. Again, this isn’t possible if you don’t have a data plan or are in an area where your coverage is iffy (or if your data service decides to be petulant and misbehave spontaneously; who hasn’t been there?).

Is there such a fare card for taxis?

Not yet. I might be inclined to make one though, sometime in the near-distant future. I mostly travel by buses, trains and auto rickshaws, hence such prioritising.

Why does the image show up as a long vertical band on my phone?

Your phone is probably trying to fit the entire image onto your screen. This is normal. Zoom into the image to fit the width in your screen and then scroll up and down the list.

Is the data accurate; where was it sourced?

The tariffs have been put up on the Mumbai Traffic Police Website. The data is off their PDF file.

(This was of course for last year’s version. At the time of the writing of this article, the list on the Mumbai Traffic Police website is still the old one from last year. I actually created the list as a spreadsheet and cross checked it with published versions of the fare chart and rickfare.com)

How do I know what size my phone’s display is?

You could look it up here.

My phone’s display doesn’t match the three versions here, what now?

Choose the version closest to your display resolution. If the image does not fit precisely, you can easily resize the width of the image using Paint, Gimp, Photoshop or iPhoto.

Why not a printed version?

Practically everyone has a mobile phone capable of carrying image files on it these days. It’s just more environmentally friendly to have it on your phone than as a printout in your wallet or pocket.

Just another small step towards keeping the city litter-free.

Are there versions for other cities? Why Mumbai?

Not yet, no. Mumbai, because I live there.

Is this an act of shameless self promotion?

Why, of course. However, The New Vitruvian Man is all about better living through design, this being a prime example of the same. If you find this endeavour interesting or useful in the smallest way, you might also find the rest of the content on this site worth a quick look-see. Or you might not, but I’m not insisting you stay and read/look.

You could always give the site’s Facebook Page a “like” to keep abreast of updates or add the site to your RSS aggregator. You can also follow along on Twitter.

Can I distribute this around?

Please feel free to spread it across to all your friends and family who live in Bombay. Don’t make them pay for it though.

Is money being made from this?

Nope. Just the satisfaction of having people across the city use something created by me to better the way they get things done through their day.

Can we have advertising on these images?

No.

And if you’re also a designer:

Why on earth was Helvetica picked for this?

I think Helvetica is ideal for this. This is a simple list after all, there’s no need for soulful typographic expression or fancy font-work. This is meant to inform you, rather than inflict thrill or pleasure.

Issues like high x-height and things don’t really matter because the bulk of the data is numeric. Helvetica is plan, it is simple. This list needed to be plain, yet simple. I rest my case.

Couldn’t the type have been a little larger?

It could. Larger type size also means it’d be a longer list, which in turn would entail a lot more heavy duty scrolling.

Why the morose grey colour palette?

I originally wanted the overall image to be as white as possible, but since black text on white can look exceedingly dull, I made it grey. Colours behave differently on different qualities of display, so I thought it best to leave colour out of it for the most of it.

73% of the graphic is light because its always nice to have a light, bright mobile phone screen while reading the meter in the dark.

The column on the left is condensed because the meter usually has numbers in a condensed format too (and is set against black). Half the times I read the lists the drivers have I end up losing track of which column I’m supposed to be looking up the meter reading in. This should make that connection slightly clearer.

She creates her songs in an almost organically grown sort of manner, guitar in hand, creating melodies and chord combinations coupled with words, as opposed to sitting down with an idea for a song, writing the words out and then fitting music around it (or even the other way round).

Lucy’s voice sounds like a smoky combination of Leslie Feist and Fiona Apple, most poignantly demonstrated here in this first track that’s I’d like to introduce her to you with; this is Night Bus.

Lucy moved to London and performed at assorted open mic events all over the city, where she ran into (and became good friends with) Bombay Bicycle Club. The following track is a very informal looking recording of a very soulful song called Gamble Like I Used To. It’s quite clear how her voice creates this vibrant and varied landscape of sound coupled with the sound of solitary feathery notes plucked off an acoustic guitar.

This is Middle of The Bed, her first released single, followed by the very soulful Scar and Place.

I’d sourced these videos off YouTube about two weeks before I wrote this article out. While I was actually writing these words out, listening to her as I typed, I came across this gem of a song All I’ve Got, recorded at the Beatnik Sessions.

Right after which, I came across this track. This is a particularly raw recording, with the sound of traffic and birds acting as a very live background score to her music (without actually interfering with it). This sound is an almost therapeutically contrasting alternative to that auto-tuned, electronic, manufactured sound that litters the landscape of what we know as contemporary music. This is a song called Shiver.

You can find a lot more info and details about new releases and gigs (predominantly across the UK) from her official website, http://www.lucyrosemusic.co.uk/.
If you like this music (and if you have good taste, you will) please spread and share this far and wide, good music is meant for all ears.

Special thanks to YouTube channels and users WatchListenTell, BeatnikOnline, City SessionsUK and TomSwindell for all the videos.

In light of these occasional gems that I come across from time to time, I’ve decided to start a new section called Brand New Bands, where I’ll be writing about and compiling songs by interesting new or hitherto obscure bands and artists.

I came across Bombay Bicycle Club a few weeks back, while looking up Lucy Rose, who is a very talented British artist. Bombay Bicycle Club are Jack Steadman, Jamie MacColl, Suren de Saram and Ed Nash, who’ve been together as a band since the rather tender age of fifteen. They burst onto the Indie music scene when they won the Road to V competition and opened for the V Festival. The only thing the band’s name has to do with Bombay is probably the fact that it’s where I’m writing this article from; they chose to call themselves this after a chain of Indian restaurants in the UK.

I usually go chronologically, but since first impressions matter, I’m going to introduce one of their cheeriest tracks to open this article. This is called Ivy & Gold; note that the video is pretty much recorded in one take (with a bunch of people bursting in and dancing around halfway through).

They’re also pretty good live; this is their performance of Lamplight, one of my favourite tracks off their 2009 debut album “I Had The Blues But I Shook Them Loose“, at Glastonbury. Following that is their very quirky video of the song “Always Like This“.


Playlist wise, the next song to listen to would be Magnet, but since that particular video wasn’t embeddable when I looked it up, I’ve hotlinked it instead. We’re now going to move onto their next album, Flaws, which released in 2010. Ivy & Gold, the opening track to this article, is from this album. This is Rinse Me Down.

Their videos are usually quite quirky and offbeat, though this following video of the song Dust on the ground borders on creepy and looks like it was inspired by The Others. Like Rinse Me Down, this song also has a predominantly acoustic sound.

A Different Kind Of Fix, was released this year (2011). The first single released off the album is Shuffle, which has a sound that seems to (in my opinion) sit on the borderline between folk and alternative rock.

I’d like to conclude with a segue to our next artist, Lucy Rose. This is the title track to the album Flaws, a light peaceful acoustic track sung as a duet between Jack Steadman and Lucy.

The members of the band only recently finished school and already have three very good albums under their belts, which means they’re going to be a very interesting band to follow because they quite literally have the rest of their adult lives ahead of them, through which to mature (even though their sound is already quite mature), change and age.

More info about their new releases and gigs at http://www.bombaybicycleclubmusic.com/.

Special thanks to YouTube channel and user BandsInTransit and daimiel69, with Bombay Bicycle Club’s official channel bombaybicycleclubtv for all the videos.

Over the course of this article you’ll see how powerfully the visuals meld with the music, through its surreal imagery and vivid choice of colour. She seems to have a penchant for using red quite prominently in her videos (this does not happen much in the album art), but this might just be an observation formed thanks to my own inclination towards the colour.

Fur and Gold, her first album, was released in 2006. With songs like Horse and I and The Wizard, it has quite a fairytale theme to it. This is the video of What’s a Girl to Do, which is quite a layered track. The song is essentially about the feeling of subtly falling out of love with someone for no reason in particular (that does tend to happen sometimes, doesn’t it), but the video is like a surreal homage to Donnie Darko:

The American release of the album had a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s I’m On Fire as a bonus track. It’s amongst the most original renditions of a cover I’ve come across; it actually took me a while to make the connection to the original Springsteen song.

2009 saw the release of Two Suns, the second Bat For Lashes album. The album explores a theme of duality. The following track is a concert recording from a performance at Galstonbury, of Glass, the first track from Two Suns. Live performances are usually the best test for true talent and you can see her shine through the highs and lows of the song here:

The second song on the album is Sleep Alone, which is amongst a few songs on the album which have a  very clear 80′s feel to it. You’ll see the prominent splashes of red I was talking about earlier in this video and the next one. This might only be my interpretation and there is a small  chance my interpretation might be wrong, but I think the bit with the kids with the little lights represents her experiences with racism and the peer pressure of drug usage:

Daniel carries on the 80′s sound even more prominently. The song is about the character Daniel LaRusso from The Karate Kid movie (the original 1984 version). The video is amongst the best made and most surreal of all her tracks:

This final video is probably the most prominent representation of the theme of duality through the whole album. “Pearl” is an alter ego of sorts, a polar opposite-blonde, destructive and self absorbed. This is Pearl’s Dream:

At the time of the writing of this article, Bat For Lashes isn’t currently on tour. The album Two Suns did see a special edition release with a DVD of a documentary called 2+2, which features Natasha talking about the conception of the album and how she writes music. I haven’t seen it yet, thought I’m sure it’d be and interesting watch.

Special thanks to the YouTube channels of EMI music and Parlophone (the label under which Bat For Lashes records) and YouTube users Liafanog and Rancidfever for the videos.

Do comment if the videos don’t play in your country, I’ll link up alternates if this happens.

Sprouting avocado is quite a common school biology experiment in the west; it’s still quite a novel thing here. When I first learned about this, I just had to attempt it. The most popular way of doing it, as per what the internet says, is to spike three or four wooden toothpicks along he upper third of the seed (or pit, as it is also known) and submerging it about halfway in water. The toothpicks hold the seed at the mouth of the glass or bottle. Eventually the seed will crack open and sprout a finger like protrusion which will eventually grow a bunch of leaves. It’ll also send out roots into the water.

I’ve tried two methods, the popular submerged in water method and by directly planting it in soil. Quite surprisingly, the latter method proved more efficient. This could also have been because the seed might have been more mature, but I’d still recommend the second method over the first, because it’s a lot easier and hassle free. With method one, you need to change the water every two days or so. Since the seeds germinate thanks to exposure to light, I tried putting the seeds with water in direct sunlight for a bit. This was a bad idea, because sunlight accelerates the growth of algae in the water, which in turn makes the seed itself decompose rather badly. With the second method, I watered the seed every three days or so; the soil should basically not go dry, or even be saturated with too much water.

Bombay has a particularly clayey soil, most of which was brought here to reclaim what we now know as this city from the ocean. Clayey soil tends to stifle the growth of roots when too dry and can also lead to root rot when wet because of their tendency to drain very badly. I always make sure I start my plants in a mix of soil, cocopeat and vermiculite (or compost/organic fertilizer). I’ve also heard success stories of plants being grown in a mix of just cocopeat and vermiculite in a 50:50 ratio. Cocopeat is a fibrous and light potting mix that is made up of dried and compressed coconut husk. It has no inherent nutrient value, so it needs to be mixed with soil and organic fertilizer to ensure healthy plant growth.

The seed can take anything from two weeks to six to split open, so this exercise does demand a certain degree of patience. Some seeds might also be dead, so it does make sense to do this experiment with at least two or three seeds at a time.

The stem pokes out of the split seed like a green-purple alien finger; the leaves will sprout a week or so after this happens. The stem keeps growing vertically, so it’s best to trim off the top with a scissor or garden shears once the plant is about two feet tall. This arrests the vertical growth for a bit and allows the plant to spend more energy developing its roots, which ensures the longevity of the plant.

The plant would probably grow best in a spot that gets a good amount of sun for at six to seven hours a day, but it seems to be doing better than expected on my windowsill, which gets only about four hours of direct morning sun. This makes the best time to plant the seed well before the monsoons, sometime in January or February.

In nature, the ripe fruit would probably fall to the ground and its flesh would have provided it with the necessary nutrition to sprout and take root. Avocado tends to go quite quickly from ripe to rotten, if not careful, so it also might be a good idea to convince your vegetable vendor to give you an over-ripe (usually completely black and squishy) avocado to plant.

I plan to keep it in the pot for about a year (I currently have two of these growing on my window sill) till they can’t be contained within the pot they’re in and will look for a patch of earth somewhere on the planet where I can let it grow into a full size avocado tree.

A note about breeding and biodiversity

It takes about seven years for an avocado plant to reach maturity. When I first read that the plants tend to have male and female flowers, I assumed that the plants themselves would be either male or female. This would mean you’d need two plants, a boy-vocado and a girl-vocado, so to speak, in order to have fruit bearing trees.

This isn’t the case. The avocado is self fertilizing, which means it actually has both male and female flowers (which bloom at different times in the day). However, the fact of the matter is that the fruits might not resemble the parent fruit at all. This makes the act of growing avocado from seed a bit of a gamble. What you end up growing might or might not be a very good tasting variety.

This phenomenon is probably a little easier to explain with apples. Every seed in an apple will give rise to an apple tree that is nothing like the parent tree. In fact there are actually thousands of varieties of apple, some of which are quite inedible. The popular varieties (Granny Smith, Golden Delicious etc.) are all grown from grafts. They are all essentially clones of a parent plant, which is the only way to ensure that all the apples in a harvest will be exactly the same. This also means that they are all also susceptible to the same diseases and infections.

So if you’re looking to grow the exact variety of avocado that you’ve tried and liked, you’d have to go to the avocado orchard and get a cutting or graft and plant that, instead of the seed. This would also reach a fruit bearing phase a little earlier than the seven years it takes a tree grown from seed to reach maturity.

Even if you’re not interested in growing an avocado tree on your windowsill, it can always be grown as an ornamental plant, trimming it from time to time to keep its size in check.

In this particular case, every consecutive circle shares the relationship of a common proportion of 1:1.618 (which also allows each circle to inscribe itself into consecutive squares of the Golden Curve. The position of the baseline of the text also is tangential to the largest circle, 1.618 times the size of the diameter of the circular graphic of the logo.

The Golden Section isn’t the only proportioning system out there; in fact, my second most favourite proportioning system is that of the Islamic grid, or the √2 ratio (which is incidentally the ratio of the side of a square to its diagonal). The Golden Section relates directly with the proportions of most human bodies and elements in nature, which makes it a good starting point for proportioning shapes and elements. It’s also a proportion that the eye tends to naturally find appealing, if used right.

I only recently found out that the method I was following was known as “the absorption method” (thanks to a certain competitive cooking reality TV series). The advantage this method has over the other popular method (boiling with a lot of water and then draining it once the rice is cooked) is that the grains of rice don’t clump up and get all lumpy and sticky. This is ideal when you’re incorporating it into things like fried rice, where you need to mix the rice up with vegetables and things without having it congeal into large sticky lumps.

It’s important that the rice is washed very thoroughly at the very beginning, because the powdery, starchy bits get washed away this way. With the boiling method, most of it gets poured out with the remaining water.

I usually cook about half a cup of rice for myself, so you could add an extra half cup for every extra serving. It’s best to wash the rice half a cup at a time because its easier to handle than a large amount of rice in a sieve. Washing it in the sieve makes it a lot easier to use the flow of water to wash the rice powder away. You know you’ve done a good job if the water in the vessel isn’t milky once you put the rice in it.

The amount of water you put in should be double that of the rice. A half teaspoon of salt gives the rice some flavour and the tablespoon of cooking oil in the water eventually boils down to the base of the vessel and coats it, preventing the rice from getting stuck at the bottom.

This method calls for monitoring the process around twice once its put on the flame. Let the water come to a full boil and evaporate away till the water level reaches the level of the rice. You’ll see little pits forming in the rice where it bubbles and steams. Once it reaches this point, turn the flame down to low and put the lid on the vessel.

It’ll take around five to ten minutes, depending on the heat of your flame and the quantity of rice, for it to cook completely. Open the lid and stick a fork in the rice all the way to the bottom and scrape some aside. You should turn the flame off just when the last of the water evaporates away. Test the rice at this point to see if its done. It should neither be hard (undercooked) or pasty (overcooked). If you hear a popping, crackling sound, it usually means the water has evaporated away completely and is burning the rice at the bottom of the vessel.

Put the lid back on the vessel and let it sit for five to ten minutes before serving. This last bit of self-steaming helps get the rice at the base unstuck (if in case it was left on the flame too long) and also makes the rice fluffier.

Fluff the rice up with a fork; this makes it easy to serve.

Different types of rice can take different times to cook completely. Varying the amounts of water also can help adjust this (more water for slower cooking rice, less for faster cooking rice).

Rice doesn’t essentially have to be boring. You can add a stick or two of cinnamon or a few stems of lemon grass (I usually separate out the blades of lemon grass and tie a few knots in it to release its flavour and also make extraction easy) at the very beginning to flavour the rice and give it an aroma.

Red Rice Update:

I’ve been attempting a shift to red rice for a bit (due to its higher nutritional value; it’s also supposed to be quite fibre-rich) so I thought I’d write this update on how to cook it, because cooking times are apparently quite different from regular white rice.

Just to be clear, this is Kerala Red Rice, or Matta rice, which is available par-boiled.

The first major difference is in the quantity of water that is used to cook the rice. Since this variety of rice absorbs water a lot slower, the ratio of rice to water is 1:3 (as opposed to 1:2, with normal rice). This variety of rice also takes a little longer to cook.

Add salt and oil as per the original method. Once you turn on the flame, it should take exactly 30 minutes to prepare (for half a cup of rice). The breakdown is something like this:

7 minutes, uncovered on high flame (the water should come to a boil, not much bubbling and froth with this variety)- turn flame down low and put lid on, cook for another 16 minutes- then let it sit for another 7 minutes (-at least, maximum 15 minutes, beyond which it’ll start going cold) before serving.

I usually run a fork through the rice after the first seven minutes to distribute the rice evenly, since the bits towards the middle would have cooked more than around the edges.

The last bit, when it is left with the lid on allows the rice to continue cooking in its own steam for a bit. This also contributes towards it being less sticky and lumpy. If any rice gets stuck to the bottom, it’ll also help moisten it up and make it easy to scrape off and clean.

]]> http://thenewvitruvianman.com/gastronomy/perfectly-fluffy-rice-the-absorption-method/feed 4 http://thenewvitruvianman.com/design/the-mumbai-auto-rickshaw-fare-card http://thenewvitruvianman.com/design/the-mumbai-auto-rickshaw-fare-card#comments Wed, 08 Jun 2011 02:28:38 +0000 Anand Prahlad http://thenewvitruvianman.com/?p=344 Update: I’ve released the updated version of this for 2012 here. I’ve been noticing continued downloads of the old fare cards over the past few days, even after the new release. Please use only the updated version, you’d probably end up in a fist fight with your rickshaw driver if you use the outdated ones now.

Sometime in the middle of last year, public transport fares were hiked across buses, taxis and auto-rickshaws. The new conversion involved a sort of complicated math that I haven’t yet attempted deciphering.

I’ve mostly relied on memory (I usually always end up travelling within the 1.7-2.4 meter reading range, so had eight sums to remember) or the driver’s conversion card to figure the rates out. The card they carry is usually a printout of the list issued by the traffic police or some sort of local DTP-shop-enhanced excel file print which has been fit into a little half A4 or less. Usually the columns are stacked side by side with no gap, making it really hard to figure the tariff if your meter readings are somewhere in the 5.0s, since the number is lost in the jumble of numerals somewhere smack in the middle of the list.

I initially thought up a printed version of the rate sheet, but I decided against it because it’d entail a lot of wastage of paper, even if I laid it out to fit in an A5 size or perhaps four lists per A4. Everyone carries a mobile phone these days, most of which have colour displays of a decent resolution enough to view an image file. So I finally came up with this; I’ve made it in three sizes depending on your device’s screen size.

I’ve only tested it out with a few devices, so do come back with feedback in the comments section if you find it hard to read on your display (also include your phone’s display resolution or exact brand and model). So far, the PDF file seems to work best for large display phones. If you’re a possessor of a “smarter-than-the-average” phone, I’ve also included a QR code which you can scan right off the screen you’re reading this on; it should bring you to this page, from where you can select your download of choice.

Yes, you’d need to be connected to the internet via WiFi or some sort of a data plan to download these. Else you could download it onto your computer and bluetooth or cable transfer it to your phone.

Do spread it around, phone to phone bluetooth transfers should be a breeze and shouldn’t take any time at all.

Size a (320pixels wide) for small display phones.

Download here.

Size b (480pixels wide) for medium display phones (works for most Blackberries, Symbian OS phones).

Download here.

Size c (640pixels wide) for large display phones like the iPhone 4 and other assorted Andriod devices.

Download here.

And finally, if you prefer crystal clear vector goodness, you can download the PDF version of it from here (right click and “save target/file as” to save yourself the trouble of having your browser open Acrobat).

You’ll need to have Acrobat reader installed on your mobile to make this version work. I’d recommend the Acrobat file above all others because I’m sure it’ll be the clearest.

Scan in the following QR code with your phone; it’ll get you to this page, from where you can select whichever version works for you:

Since I’m sure a lot of you might be brimming with questions regarding this entire endeavour, I prepared this:

Possible FAQs:

How do I get this on my phone?

This depends on the type of phone you have. You can either browse (from your phone, if it will let you) to this page from the home page of thenewvitruvianman.com, where this page will stay for a few weeks, and download the image directly. You can do this over WiFi or a data plan. If you don’t have a data plan, you’ll have to either download it onto a PC and then transfer it to your phone, or ask someone with a data-capable phone to download it for you and beam it over to you via bluetooth.

Why? (Since there’s an app for that already)

I’m sure there is. This is meant for those folks who don’t have a phone that can run fancy apps and hook onto the interweb to download said apps. I know there are a bunch of online services where you can enter the meter reading and have it calculate the fare for you. Again, this isn’t possible if you don’t have a data plan or are in an area where your coverage is iffy (or if your data service decides to be petulant and misbehave spontaneously; who hasn’t been there?).

Is there such a fare card for taxis?

Not yet. I might be inclined to make one though, sometime in the near-distant future. I mostly travel by buses, trains and auto rickshaws, hence such prioritising.

Why does the image show up as a long vertical band on my phone?

Your phone is probably trying to fit the entire image onto your screen. That’s normal behaviour. Zoom into the image to fit the width in your screen and then scroll up and down the list.

Is the data accurate; where was it sourced?

The tariffs have been put up on the Mumbai Traffic Police Website. The data is off their PDF file.

How do I know what size my phone’s display is?

You could look it up here.

My phone’s display doesn’t match the three versions here, what now?

Choose the version closest to your display resolution. If the image does not fit precisely, you can easily resize the width of the image using Paint, Gimp, Photoshop or iPhoto.

Why not a printed version?

Practically everyone has a mobile phone capable of carrying image files on it these days. It’s just more environmentally friendly to have it on your phone than as a printout in your wallet or pocket.

Just another small step towards keeping the city litter-free.

Are there versions for other cities? Why Mumbai?

Not yet, no. Mumbai, because I live there.

Is this an act of shameless self promotion?

Why, of course. However, The New Vitruvian Man is all about better living through design, this being a prime example of the same. If you find this endeavour interesting or useful in the smallest way, you might also find the rest of the content on this site worth a quick look-see. Or you might not, but I’m not insisting you stay and read/look.

You could always give the site’s Facebook Page a “like” to keep abreast of updates or add the site to your RSS aggregator. You can also follow along on Twitter.

Can I distribute this around?

Please feel free to spread it across to all your friends and family who live in Bombay. Don’t make them pay for it though.

Is money being made from this?

Nope. Just the satisfaction of having people across the city use something created by me to better the way they get things done through their day.

Can we have advertising on these images?

No.

And if you’re also a designer:

Why on earth was Helvetica picked for this?

I think Helvetica is ideal for this. This is a simple list after all, there’s no need for soulful typographic expression or fancy font-work. This is meant to inform you, rather than inflict thrill or pleasure.

Issues like high x-height and things don’t really matter because the bulk of the data is numeric. Helvetica is plan, it is simple. This list needed to be plain, yet simple. I rest my case.

Couldn’t the type have been a little larger?

It could. Larger type size also means it’d be a longer list, which in turn would entail a lot more heavy duty scrolling.

Why the morose grey colour palette?

I originally wanted the overall image to be as white as possible, but since black text on white can look exceedingly dull, I made it grey. Colours behave differently on different qualities of display, so I thought it best to leave colour out of it for the most of it.

73% of the graphic is light because its always nice to have a light, bright mobile phone screen while reading the meter in the dark.

The column on the left is condensed because the meter usually has numbers in a condensed format too (and is set against black). Half the times I read the lists the drivers have I end up losing track of which column I’m supposed to be looking up the meter reading in. This should make that connection slightly clearer.

What next?

I wouldn’t want to make any promises I couldn’t keep. If I make time for it, I’d love to work on an improved local train map. Its next to impossible for someone new to the city to figure out how the trains work, or which platform arrives on which side of the train.

Ah, but I dream.