|
BACK OF THE
BOOK
Dome Sweet Home
A city of domes is rising from the arid
Deccan Plateau, the brainchild of an American company that offers Indian
techies a bait of the unusual, says E.
Kumar Sharma
|
Porter
at New Oroville: coming home to the curves |
Swain
porter, 36, does drive in India-with a prayer on his lips. ''You drive
with the hope that someone else does not ram into you,'' says the affable
American, slamming on the brakes of his gleaming, maroon Ford Ikon to
avoid a charging autorickshaw. ''I call these yuck yucks,'' he says of the
rickshaw, and takes a deep breath before he explains his cardinal
principle in life is to, well, simply stay alive.
India often makes the Westerner
philosophise thus. So it's not surprising that when Porter's 18 month-old
company, Catalytic Software, decided to take advantage of low costs, great
programmers, blah, blah, and set up operations in India, transportation
and pollution were the key hurdles to overcome. Their solution: build
their own community.
About 40 minutes out of Hyderabad on the
Bangalore highway, this community is taking shape, but in a radical form.
From a distance Porter's new city looks like strange giant igloos rising
from the arid Deccan Plateau. Up close, the grey, concrete structures
betray their purpose: the emerging shelters of what is billed to be the
first ''dome city'' in the world.
Welcome to the 21st century company town-or
so they say. Spread over 500 acres, (though currently only 50 acres has
been acquired), the dream town is called New Oroville, inspired by
obscure, Oroville (population: 1,585), Washington. It happens to be the
home town of Porter and Catalytic's Chairman and Co-founder Eric Engstrom.
Dome city is meant to be a self-sustaining company community for the
employees of Catalytic Software. Catalytic is a software company, but
unlike many others that write code for software programmes and
applications, it intends to focus on the deeply embedded matrices of
operating systems.
TREADMILL |
Remix Your Own Workout
If you caught treadmill a
couple of issues back, you'd have found me growling about my local
gym's penchant for playing Hindi film music during early morning
workouts. Many of my gym friends think I'm unreasonable and
fanatical about it, but I have always believed that a good work out
has a lot to do with the kind of music you do it to-like (yes, go
ahead and kill me for this analogy) a good wine has a lot to do with
the glass in which you drink it! But, finally, I seem to have been
vindicated. By Men's Health, which asked Richard Hart, a fitness
music producer (yes, they have such vocations in the US!) about the
right kind of music to help pace different kinds of workouts. And
here's what Hart has to say:
Running: the ideal track
to listen to is Pink Floyd's 'Run Like Hell'; cycling: try doing it
to the beat of Van Halen's 'Panama'; lifting or pumping iron: haul
that T-bar to Led Zeppelin's 'Black Dog', one rep for every four
beats-yes, now we're talking. Hart even has for you the ideal music
for pre-workout warm-ups: Santana's 'Black Magic Woman'!
Of course, not all of us
can be his own gym DJ. Not unless you have your own private gym. But
everyone must have his own private workout. Here are four golden
rules of working out wisely. Follow them and you'll see how quickly
you get that ripped look.
Rule No. 1: Never
do what the other guy is doing. If you see someone doing heavy
squats for awesome quadriceps and gluteals (outer thighs and the
butt, stupid!), but your weak knees won't stand up to squats, don't
worry, you can do other exercises for your legs.
Rule No. 2: Pain
ain't equal to productivity. After a new workout, muscles can get
sore. But if the soreness is in your joints or on one side of the
body, that could be bad news... like an injury.
Rule No. 3: Every
set has an objective. It's either a light warmup set that will be
followed by heavier ones or a back-off set with more reps aimed at
exhausting the muscle fibres. If you aren't clear why you're doing
the set, don't do it.
Rule No. 4: Break
a record, everyday. It won't make it to the Guinness Book when you
barely manage to bench press 85 kg instead of your regular 80, but
that's what makes a workout worthwhile. Every day set out to break
an old record. Yes, and set a new personal record.
-MUSCLES MANI |
|
Over the next three to five years they plan
to build a variety of 4,000 domes with private gardens, and all within a
short walk of work, school, recreation, shopping, and public facilities.
Each employee is to get a private office at work and each home will be
wired with fibre. In full cry, New Oroville will have four indoor
recreational complexes: an ice arena where ice hockey will be taught and
played, an Olympic-size swimming pool, and a gymnasium. There are also
plans for food stores, shopping malls, and movie theatres. Also a large
meditation centre apart from a temple, a mosque and a church. Whew! The
cost: $200 million. Catalytic says that's still hugely cheaper than
setting up shop in America.
Dome City is just about 5 km away from a
proposed international airport in the region, and is virtually at one end
of the proposed over 4,000 acre-hardware park. ''The best part is that we
are not dependent on the state government to provide any infrastructure
except electricity,'' says Goutham Koka, 47, Vice-President (Operations).
All of New Oroville's water needs will, for instance, be met by recycling
borewell water and rain-water harvesting.
Why domes? Porter says domes are faster to
build, stronger and sturdier than almost any other structure. Also, since
domes enclose the most amount of space with the least surface area, they
are cool in summer and warm in winter.
These particular domes (26 ft tall, 32 ft
in diameter each) are designed in such a manner that they can be easily
expanded to three floors, allowing more than 2,200 square feet of floor
space. The company expects to foot the bill through revenue and outside
investment. Phase one of New Oroville-about 30 domes-should be complete by
March 2002 with 100 techies in residence. This, however, is a long way off
from what is on the ground at the moment. A rough investment of Rs 60 lakh
has been made given that each dome costs between Rs 8 lakh and Rs 10 lakh,
and there's only a core team of 25 people. (This was the official version;
right now there seem to be a total of three software developers and one
test manager on the field).
Company officials, however, say that they
have a lot of resumes, locally and from Indians in the U.S. keen to return
home. ''We will make some crorepatis in just five years,'' boasts Porter.
Apart from paying higher than industry-average salaries, catalyst says the
main incentives for employees here are learning on the job with
ex-Microsoft stars, the subsidised dome homes, and most importantly, a
quality of life that has all the conveniences of living in the US.
Why Hyderabad? Porter says, ''We looked at
Chennai, Bangalore, Delhi, Pune, Khandala, and Dehradun, but picked
Hyderabad for many reasons.'' More than a fifth of India's techies come
from this region; it happens to be the cleanest and greenest city in the
country, and land is easily available. But perhaps the most important
reason is very Indian. The chief minister, confides Porter, is ''only a
phone call away''.
At the moment, though much of the project
is visible as a statement of intent, especially the ice-arena and hotel
plans, it does not seem to deter Catalytic staff from getting into the
groove of being New Orovillians. Like K.V.A. Meenakshi, 24, a receptionist
busy learning c language. She's waiting for the swimming pool, getting a
chance to ''work with the Americans,'' and waiting to move into her home
sweet dome.
|