The sweet elixir of Tamil Nadu

Germans love their beer; Irish, their Guinness. Spain is obsessed with gin tonic and Russians take their vodka seriously. None of these national love affair with drinks can compete against Indians obsession with milk. While this love for milk pervades the entire country, it is particularly strong in the south, peaks in the state of Tamil Nadu and is off the charts with TamBrahms (Tamil Brahmins). So much so that when the state and its capital, Chennai was reeling under the wrath of the heaviest rains in a century, milk topped the list of essential commodity the hapless Tamils wanted. Even good drinking water took a second place to milk.

Milk packets

To understand this intriguing phenomenon, one must look deep into how milk controls everyday life on an average Tamil. Each morning, well before dawn, fresh, refrigerated milk will make its way from Aavin (Tamil Nadu Cooperative Milk Producers Federation) warehouses to the innumerable distribution centers around the city. From there, individual vendors distribute the milk packets to homes. When people wake up at the crack of dawn and open the house door, their supply of milk will await them in the bag they had hung on the door knob the previous night.

Typically, the milk packet makes its way to the kitchen, receives a quick wash before an edge is snipped and the milk poured into a container for boiling. A packet or two is stashed away in the refrigerator for use later in the day. When the milk is getting boiled, something equally important happens in parallel. That mornings requirement of decoction is brewed afresh from the perfect degree blend of coffee the family has settled on... somewhere between 55% coffee and 45% chicory to 70% coffee and 30% chicory. 

Tumbler-Dabara & filter

This decoction is nothing like the brewing coffee in the west. No sir! The dark black elixir is lovingly brewed with the perfect coffee grind and hot water in a coffee filter first thing in the morning and as many times as needed during the day.  And that days first kaapi is readied mixing the boiled milk with the right amount of decoction to suit everyone's caffeine needs. Think 90% or more of milk and about 10% of decoction. The health conscious avoid sugar these days, but this milk-decoction combination, served in a stainless steel tumbler-dabara is something every Tamil enjoys vicariously. Staking claim for the best of the best is Kumbakonam Degree Kaapi, a trademark in its own right.

Should a visitor show up unannounced, they are offered kaapi even before they are offered a place to sit. As they nod yes to the offer, a packet of milk from the fridge goes to the kitchen and in no time, the visitor has a steaming cup of kaapi served traditionally in a tumbler-dabara!

Some families go the extra mile to procure their milk right from the source. By source, I mean a cow or a buffalo. Freshly milked milk from a cow's udder is distributed to those discerning few who are fortunate enough to get it, especially in a city. In rural places, it is easier to find the non-homogenized, un-pasteurized fresh milk than the refrigerated, homogenized, pasteurized ones from Aavin or another local milk aggregator. 

No matter which milk is used, the kaapi ritual stays the same and is repeated as often as needed during the day to get everyone in the family their caffeine fix. This is a ritual that also cuts across economic and social boundaries that may otherwise divide the society.

In a typical TamBrahm family, the story has yet another twist. Boiled milk is cooled slightly and used for making fresh curd. Perhaps not as intense as kaapi, but these folks are proud of their homemade fresh curd without which any meal is considered incomplete. 

Should a day start with the milk packets missing in the bag, frantic calls are made to the vendor while alternate arrangements are made to procure milk from a nearby store. Out of coffee powder? No worries! A quick walk to the neighbor with a request for some coffee powder just to tide over the morning and an unsaid IOU typically takes care of the emergency.


While it is kaapi that Tamils drink, remember, it is made with 90% milk. Every home has its stock of degree blend coffee powder, but milk... To enjoy the caffeine rich sweet elixir, fresh milk is needed every day. So that the aforementioned rituals can go on without interruption. 

Beer, vodka and guinness may qualify as a national drink in their respective countries. None of them have the same involvement that each and every home has in brewing their favorite drink in Tamil Nadu. 

And it is made possible by milk... it does a kaapi good!

Regulated Monopolies for Profit - A Flawed System.

We are in the midst of a four-year drought in California. No one knows if next winter will produce enough rains and snow to break out of it or not. Water usage and conservation have become heavily debated topics, with opinions ranging far and wide. The Governor of California has mandated a 25% reduction in water usage statewide. In this backdrop, our local water supplier, San Jose Water Company, is imposing quotas for residential customers, restrictions on how they can use water and penalties for not complying.

This post is not about the drought and water conservation. I am fully appreciative of the seriousness of the drought. My family has reduced our water consumption by 38% in 2014 (compared to 2013) and we will make every effort to reduce our consumption even more in 2015.

This post is about regulated monopolies in general and San Jose Water Company in particular. Regulated monopolies like PG&E and SJWC serve large customer bases with crucial resources they cannot live without. PG&E supplies electricity and natural gas to 16 million customers – residential, commercial, industrial and agricultural. In California, SJWC supplies water to nearly 230,000 metered connections, serving about a million people. It’s Hobson’s choice for customers who need electricity, natural gas and water in their home or office.

Monopolies like these have their customers by their balls. PG&E and SJWC know it. They probably smile all the way to the bank every month, every quarter, every year, raking in guaranteed revenues.  Consumers supposedly have the Public Utility Commission protecting their interests and regulating rate increases by these monopolies… hence the category regulated monopolies.

I believe regulated monopolies that are for profit is a flawed idea.

AN INEFFICIENT SYSTEM THAT DOESN’T WORK

Let us understand PG&E’s and SJWC’s business. Both businesses involve two key aspects:

1.   Procuring and/or producing the resource: water, electricity or natural gas

2.   Distributing it

PG&E either procures or produces electricity and natural gas; SJWC is a water retailer that procures water from Santa Clara Valley Water District. It would not make sense for multiple companies to run power, water and gas lines to homes and businesses. Because of a need for efficiency, the second aspect of the business, distribution, tends to be a monopoly. The good news is that once the lines are laid, the cost of distribution is relatively flat and fixed over long periods of time.

Procuring and/or producing the resource being distributed have an associated market. For instance, wind, solar or fossil fuel may be used to produce electricity and the cost of electricity produced would be different from each source. Any fluctuation in rates should solely be due to the actual cost of resource being acquired.

Is that indeed the case? I am hard pressed to believe it. Let’s analyze the water retailer, SJWC. For the past five years I’ve been a customer of SJWC, and I’ve seen the water rate go up by 31% on the low end and 46% on the high end. In the same period, SJW’s market cap has gone up by 30%. Between 2012 and 2014 alone, SJW’s revenues have gone up 22% and net income has gone up 132%. All of this happened under CPUC’s watch. For 2015 and beyond, SJWC has proposed three rate increases with CPUC that I am aware of – a surcharge of 3.42% in 2015 (Advice Letter 468), a proposal to increase the rates by 12.22% in 2016, 3.11% in 2017, 5.36% in 2018. A true believer in making hay while the sun shines, SJWC is also proposing drought surcharges of 100% and 200% over and above all these rate increases (Advice Letter 473). CPUC ruling on these rate increases and surcharges is yet to happen as of this writing.

Why do I feel the concept of for profit regulated monopolies is flawed? Not only it is an inefficient system, I also believe it does not work. Let me illustrate by analyzing two applications from SJWC to CPUC.

Per Advice Letter 468, “The CPUC authorized SJWC to establish MCRAMA to track the revenue impact of mandatory conservation upon SJWC’s quantity revenue resulting from mandatory conservation instituted by the State of California and Santa Clara Valley Water District. As directed by the CPUC’s Water Division, the increase will be recovered via a surcharge on the existing quantity rate for a period of 12-months from the date of the CPUC approval.” In this example, CPUC asked SJWC to institute a surcharge; SJWC filed an application with CPUC for authorization to do so. I don’t see any reason for CPUC to refuse this, so this whole process was inefficient if customers were going to be charged a surcharge anyways! Why do we need two organizations to go through this charade?

Let us analyze the General Rate Case increase application 15-01-002. This is the proposal to increase rates in 2016, 2017 and 2018 mentioned earlier. This rate increase is due to the systems and facilities being used by SJWC reaching end of their life. “SJWC is proposing this rate increase due to escalating operating expenses related to water quality and safety requirements, as well as significant system infrastructure replacement requirements as the water system ages over the next several years.” I will again point out that SJW’s net income has gone up from $22m to $51m or by 132% between 2012 and 2014. As a responsible customer, I do not have issues paying for required rate increases. What I fail to understand is how much of this will become SJW’s profits and how much will go to fix the issues mentioned. For that matter, why can the operating margins not be lowered to fix the issues mentioned without passing the buck to the customer? If SJWC were not for profit, the operating margins would be low and a rate increase request such as this would never be viewed with suspicion.

What incentive does a company like SJWC have to provide good service? Absolutely none! Do read the reviews of SJWC on Yelp to get a feel for the kind of customer service you get from them. I attended a meeting with the SJWC’s officials on May 28^th in San Jose. This was supposed to be a meeting with the public to discuss the drought surcharges. SJWC conducted it simply as a per-functionary meeting just to go through the CPUC process. The three representatives took no notes, there was no recording done and no transcript produced, and no consideration was given to the public opinion. To even suggest 100% and 200% surcharges simply indicates to me that SJWC’s interest is not water conservation, but revenue generation.

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

Any problem can be fixed if we put our minds to it. Let me explore a couple of ways by which we can improve this specific situation.

Do we really need two sets of organizations, one that is for profit, publicly traded and answerable to Wall Street and another that is a government entity overseeing such a company with the primary interest of fairness and protecting consumers? Can’t we have just one organization that is run in a fully transparent manner setting their rates based on the actual cost of procuring the resource, distributing it and operating costs? It is likely that such an outfit may turn out to be a government entity. A segment of the population will shoot down this idea as yet another way of promoting big government and the inefficiencies that come with it.

On the flip side, why can’t we give customers true choice? After all, with fixed distribution costs, one can argue that customers should have the choice to play in the free market of producing and procuring the resource. The other segment of the population will shoot down this proposal, arguing that water, natural gas and electricity are core resources that cannot be given over to complete privatization.

I am sure there are other ways to skin this cat. It would require strong political will to fix this issue, though.

For now, we are stuck with the flawed system of regulated monopolies that are for profit.

One foot here, another foot there… on a road to nowhere. 

A Bird's Eye View of Bay Area

Climbing an 800 year old redwood tree was not in my bucket list. Still, to pass up on an opportunity to climb one and experience an elevated perspective of the world seemed a foolish thing to do. And so, here I was, 8:30 am on a beautiful spring day in the Santa Cruz mountains with 3 other climbers who thought the same way. 

Tim Kovar, the tree climbing expert and his team were there to help us in the venture. Tim and his team educated us on the equipment used for climbing along with all the safety considerations. Fully geared up, we made our way to the base of the tree.

In retrospect, if I had been 10~15 lbs lighter and/or had regularly done strength training, the act of pulling my own weight would’ve been that much easier. The first 5 feet up was the hardest. I had to focus on the new technique that we’d just learned – adjust lower ascender, stand, pull your-self up, adjust upper ascender, sit in the harness – and repeat. After doing it barely a handful of times, I realized that I was not in a good shape, notwithstanding the regular hiking and all. Like I said, strength training and few pounds lighter would’ve been ideal today! Taking more breathers than warranted, I steadily made my way up.

It was great that after every 10 feet or so, the views gently change and at the same time, the ground keeps pulling away from you. I am glad that I don’t have fear of heights; I could enjoy the scenery unfolding as well as feel a sense of accomplishment as things below became smaller and smaller.

The tree was 200 feet tall, with the climb allowing you for reaching up 180 feet. One member in our group made it all the way up 180 feet. I probably managed 100 feet or so before stopping and taking some photographs. My good friend Reed took a video and photo of me, giving me proof that I actually did the climb! Our instructor Tim took some fancy photos with his GPRO camera – and I will add it to the album once he shares it with us.

Where we stopped, Tim showed me the damage a lightning had done to two redwood trees in our vision. It was interesting that the lightning scar stopped abruptly on one tree as the lightning jumped over its neighbor and blew out the top and capping the growth there!

For my rock climbing friends, no, the ascending motions are quite different from those used in rock climbing.  However, descending uses nearly identical techniques. In a short order of few minutes, I found myself back on the ground while the climb up took 90% of the time we spent by the tree.

Our instructor, Tim is an arborist and is the founder of Tree ClimbingPlanet. We were also joined by Cameron, a guru caliber person on redwoods and trees in general. All in on, a wonderful experience, well worth every minute of the time I spent on this. 

Not in bucket list doesn't mean that once completed, you can’t add an entry and check it off... :)

Here are more pictures from the climb, including the short video of the climb from a good friend who also did the climb!