Civil Empire

The next guest post is from my sister, Madhumitha! She is a electronics engineer who blogs at http://cooltwins.wordpress.com/. she loves blogging, photography, dancing, sketching, and reading comics! she also writes about the technological news at http://www.crazyengineers.com/author/madhumita-sridhar/. 

Presenting to you Cooltwins!
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Here I go again : “Chennai Rocks!!!” :) I just can’t say it the other way despite the fact that the temperatures here are killing me and the traffic is driving me crazy!!! But at the end of the day, it my very own Chennai! And we Chennai vaasis love it… :)

You want one good reason? Like how Ash says it in the L’Oreal ad, “I’ll give you five!” :p In fact its just the top five, believe me we are crazy about this superfast city for a million reasons :) But it is not humanly possible for me list them all.

So let’s get started:

The Fifth place is taken up by Mahaballipuram (or shortly called as “Mahabs” :P ). A perfect choice for a day’s visit for a family or even better, a gang of friends. It is the usual hot spot for budding photographers. The beautiful place, statues and the temples are the best for one to kick start his encounter with photography. It’s not just about Mahabs that I am talking about… it’s also about the other Temples in the city. (There is dearth for them). A must visit when one wants to get away from the hustle and bustle of life for at least an hour of peace.

The fourth place is taken up by the collage of arts that the city represents. The cultural atmosphere in the city is an amalgam of different dance forms, singing and music. People from far and wide take the pains to travel to Chennai ( and mind you, just Chennai! :p ) so as to take up a crash course on the art they want to learn. I am a classical dancer and I’ve seen dozens of people approach my dance teacher during the summer hols to get hold of the dance forms. Chennai’s yearly calendar is just not complete with out the December festival where different people showcase their talents in different forms of art during the month long festival. (Do try and make it to Chennai at least once during December. You’ll know what I’m talking about :) )

The long list of festivals that are celebrated round the year are a trade mark of Chennai. And its specialities are the nonbus or fasts and the sentiments that come attached with it. It starts with the new  Year celebrations and Pongal in January and ends with Christmas and new year eve celebration ;) All kinds of festivals are celebrated with equal enthusiasm and of course Diwali tops them all. The really long list of festivals does give the kids a reason to celebrate, of course it the holidays that accompanies them :) For that reson they are given the Third spot :p

The second spot goes to the Shopping and hang out points in the city. The city offers you so much variety in anything you would like to purchase. You want a saree? Feel free to chose from the wide varieties from a cotton saree though designer sarees to pattu sarees. Just hit the shopping hotspot of Chennai ( T.Nagar / Panagal Park) you can never say you never got what you wanted. They have almost everything. And hi-fi malls are mushrooming across the city at a crazy rate. So in short you can not get bored in Chennai. If you still fell so, you are at the wrong corner of the city.

And the coveted first spot goes to FOOD!!! The variety at Chennai from Dosas, Idlis, Pongal to Upma are the standard breakfast items. One can just not stay away from them as long as they are in Chennai. In fact a guy won a Cookery contest in U.S.A I guess (not sure though) by cooking the humble Upma! See how they rock!!! :) Even in a single dosa you can choose between various versions of it.

the above collage shows (in order) the Mahabalipuram, Sky lighting up with crackers,  Mylapore temple, Napiers bridge, rail lines, Express avenue (mall), Lamps lit to celebrate diwali, Margazhi season concert, Bharathanatyam dancers.



See… So in short, “I’m from Chennai and that automatically makes me 10 times cooler than you!” (Just kidding :) ) 

The third guest post is from my friend Anuraadha! She is an enthusiastic civil engineer who aspires to do her masters in architecture and become a professional architect! She blogs at http://coolgirl-anu.blogspot.com/. She loves to sing and listen to songs! :) 

Presenting to you my friend! 

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This is for one of my close buddy who is celebrating here blogoversary on 19^th of September.

She is a crazy civil engineer who is aspiring to do MBA in IIM-A. The viewers of her blog might know her as Civil Princess, but to me she is Niru( that’s how I call her).

She is  pursuing her final year in Civil. I have been knowing her past 4 years and she remains the same. That makes you special, young lady! J She is an intelligent,shrewd,friendly and sweet person. She has all qualities to get into IIM-A. The one thing which makes her special is she spreads positivity throughout. She tries to correct her mistake when told. We have shared all kinds of emotions!! She is one person who has heights of belongingness.

               

Her blog is mostly concentrated on trends in civil, and social issues. One of my favourite article of hers is the tensegrity structures which she posted for the VOICE in crazyengineers.

Capital gate- Abu Dhabi, Khansai Airport, Green terraces are worth mentioning .

Looking forward for more posts.

Happy blogoversary!!

BEST

 !!

cheers!

From the dawn of human civilization, if we have seen an almost continuous development in any science then it is perhaps architecture and structural sciences. If we take a look at the Stone Age houses or Egyptian pyramids, or Assyrian civilization or the Aryan Civilization we might be surprised that every human settlement and every generation of that settlement have continuously added to this branch of engineering in some way or the other. However in saying all this, I am neither praising civil engineering nor do I intend compare it with other sciences. My sole point of discussion is that, it is high time that we try to engage more of civil technology in farming, thereby making farming a sustainable trade for our society. 

There is a concept called natural cooling and climate maintenance. Nowadays we also have many of the buildings constructed that way. Mankind has been making advances in technology in general and every technocrat on this earth knows what the concept of green house is. It is thus evident that we combine these civil sciences with the technology for conserving plants and crops.

The green houses which we talk about mostly range anywhere between INR 15,000 (~$334) to 200,000 (~$4450) that too for a small room sized green house. The total cost of covering a considerable part of a plot, scale up astronomically high. It is thus the need of hour that we construct cheaper alternatives of green houses which can help the countries having agriculture as their satellite industry. It is not even as if we have to invent something new. We already know it. The concept that I am talking about is to find out different materials which can change their thermal conductivity as per the weather outside.

Presently we have green houses located at places where ample sunlight is available. Moreover, the coverings on them are mostly limited to plastic glazed coverings, the reason being they transmit photo-synthetically active radiation effectively (PAR). While normally people do not go for glass glazed coverings only because of the cost factor involved. As a counter measure, Fiber reinforced polyester is used, but we can still have better varieties of green house coverings and a very little is being done in this field. Due to lack of research our choice is narrowed down to five prominent materials namely Acrylic, Polycarbonate, fiber-glass Polyethylene film and polyvinyl chloride film.

We do not necessarily have to follow the example of Mr. Chester Baker who donated a green house to University of Missouri. Rather, if we direct our efforts to develop low cost alternatives and widen our existing range of materials we can really help the Farmers and thereby hugely contribute to society. The research of civil engineering out of the normal construction business would probably bring out another green revolution. 

cheers! 

For those who love to stay close to nature, Roof garden may be the closest option these days. In the present scenario where most of the people in urban areas live in apartments, having a garden will seem out of question. The main constraint is the space which the builders claim they can use to build another whole block.

A few decorative items and good choice of plants will make a world of difference. It does not only change the looks of the surroundings but also alters the environment. The gardens can be located in two places. One is the balcony and the other alternative is the roof.

The roof gardens are aimed at cooling the building and reducing the load on the cooling systems and hence making the building green. A green roof is a roof of a building which is covered with vegetation and soil, or a growing medium, planted over a waterproofing membrane. 

The roof gardens/green roof can also be made to serve another purpose. They can be laid at a proper slope in such a way that they provide proper drainage for the water falling in the roof. Thus the water can be put to proper use without many other expenses like the piping for the rain water harvesting and other alternates. This roof garden can also be used to unleash your creativity. You can experiment with potted plants or grass carpet or garden accessories.

The other check points in order to make this green movement even louder is to use terracotta pots instead of plastics, use solar powered lights, use the grey water from kitchens for gardening.

The balcony gardens can be designed based on the size of balcony available. If the balcony is big then we can have rows of plants. But we can have alternate ideas if you have a small balcony. We can go in for vertical gardens in that case. One way of having Vertical garden is to have strong threads connecting the base and the roof. Then the creepers can be allowed to grow on it.

But not all plants can thrive in every environment. Experts have analyzed the plants that can be grown based on the direction of the balcony. They are as follows:

North facing (less or no sunlight) - dieffenbachias, aglaonimas, philodendrons (bushy and climbing) and marantas (suitable for humid climate).

East facing (mild sunlight)-african violets, hibiscus, foliage plants like chlorophytum, eranthumum and aralias.

South and west facing (plenty of sun)- plumbago, bougainvillas, ixoras, button roses, hamelias, gulphimia, clematis.

Use soil that are porous and retain all the moisture which is supplied to it. It is also essential to use the well decomposed manure. With all this and proper water proofing of the floor your house is ready for the roof garden you always wanted.