Year: 2009

  • One of an unkind šŸ˜

    We met an acquaintance when we’d gone for a movie last weekend. During the interval, he bought two largeĀ  colas – one for him and his wife, and one for us. For reasons I considered valid (only one of which was that I considered the thing addictive and didn’t want to tempt myself at the beginning of the summer) I had to say no – a thanks but.. polite no at first to a curt no finally. When the movie ended, he walked out, one cola stilled clutched, and a sheepish smile thrown at us. I felt very uncomfortable, more so because I didn’t really know him and didn’t explain to him why i said no. I had, with my silence, rebuffed, what was a nice gesture from him.

    I hurried back to catch ‘Boston Legal’, and it was as though the cosmos wanted to rub it in. One of the cases under trial in the episode was that of a sorority expelling a member because she was socially awkward. The interesting part was that lawyers on both sides were essentially very nice people…. with personality disorders. Jerry, who appears on behalf of the sorority president has Asperger syndrome, and uses another personality to overcome his awkwardness and Clarence, who appears for the defendant, has multiple personalities, each of which is a defense against more aggressive people. Though I supported the member – Marcie Cooper, who I felt was wronged, I found Jerry’s closing extremely touching

    College is also about preparing students for the outside world. Last time I checked, itā€™s pretty tough out there. Thereā€™s the old adage, ā€œNice guys finish last.ā€ Thereā€™s some truth to that. I happen to know opposing counsel is a fundamentally kind man. Sensitive. He chose to exploit my Aspergerā€™s syndrome to win this case.

    My very best friend, a lawyer I had a case against not too long ago, he, too, exploited my Aspergerā€™s. Heā€™s a very good man, who opted for cruelty as a strategy.

    If Marcie Cooper comes out of this experience thinking that people can be cruelā€”even the kind, sensitive
    onesā€”if sheā€™s learned that she will be judged not simply on merit, or the content of her character, but on how she looks and socializes with others, sheā€™s gotten an education, one that will serve her in life. This is a free society. People get to choose their friends, clubs get to choose their members. Sometimes itā€™s very ugly and unfair. Thatā€™s . . . life.

    And I could imagine how the kind sensitive ones could be cruel. Perhaps its the result of a majority of humanity taking advantage of their kindness and sensitivity, or being insensitive to it, or trampling their kind acts and emotions in the races they run, or laughing at what would be deemed their idiocy.

    And I wondered- in educating children for life, will parents have enough time and patience for teaching their children the importance of being humane, while still instilling in them the smartness that would enable them to know when someone takes advantage of them? Or will they choose the easy way out and teach them to be rude, to unfairly demand, to snatch by might irrespective of right? And create a race of inhuman beings who wouldn’t spare a thought for those who are perhaps not as strong as them – physically, emotionally or in terms of social skills.

    I’m no angel, but i try to prevent my own unkindness. I usually ask myself “how would I feel in the other person’s shoes”, but there are some situations when for some reason, I cannot adhere to my own rule. I feel very guilty on such occasions, because I feel that through that act I might have started a chain. Someday soon, I hope to make it up to that acquaintance, for I am sorry. I truly am.

    until next time, transactions in kind

  • Its complicated

    ..and a bit long šŸ™‚

    What do you do when you can’t buy a service? If you have the capability, you build it yourself. That seems to be what Facebook is up to, triggering of what would perhaps be only the first of the battles for real time supremacy. When you log in to Facebook, you can see the message right at the top “Changes to the Home Page are coming soon”, and the link gives you a preview of what to expect on Wednesday. Keeping in mind Facebook’s history of design changes, its not going to be a democratic process like the TOS incident. Change will happen, whether we need it or not.

    So, what are these changes? RWW has a good post that captures the main features. The publishing bar is extremely similar to Friendfeed – Facebook’s favourite idea shop (the newsfeed, comments on the newsfeed, the like feature are all from there), and users can now publish photos, links, videos from here without going to the application. The homepage will now have the newsfeed in the centre (with better filtering features basis their relationship with friends, groups and even applications) When I wrote about Twitter saying no to the Facebook deal, I’d asked for a twitter like ‘Follow’ feature in Facebook, and now thats happening. Thanks to the updated privacy settings, you can follow a person’s updates without being his/her friend. The cap of 5000 friends is also going to be removed. Most importantly, the newsfeed is going to be real-time. Fan pages are changing too, and can brands/personalities (or whatever you’re a fan of) will now be normal profiles and can update their status, and if you permit, your newsfeed will be updated too. So yes, Britney will tell you, on your newsfeed, that she’s having a concert wherever!! I wonder if these changes will make a difference to the existing not-so-great engagement statistics between fans and their objects of fandom. Lastly, I read on TechCrunch that apps on Facebook will now be able to use the live chat functionality, giving them the chance to make an app go viral faster.

    So that’s what Facebook’s been upto. Sometime back, I read an article which compared Twitter to Palm. To summarise, Palm, which used to be a consumer darling for a long time, lost out when it refused to overcomplicate its products, while competitors solved the issues that had made them unsatisfactory. Twitter, thankfully hasn’t been idle. It has been working on its integrated search for sometime, and is now rolling it out (on a few profiles) with a search bar and a trends button. Meanwhile, there has been some speculation about Google buying Twitter. Google should definitely be interested considering Twitter’s prowess in real time search. As this Adage article says, its way beyond the contextual search that Google offers.

    In the future, searches won’t only query what’s being said at the moment, but will go out to the Twitter audience in the form of a question, like a faster and less-filtered Yahoo Answers or Wiki Answers. Users would be able to tap the collective knowledge of the 6 million or so members of the Twitterverse.

    (In that context, check out TwitterThoughts, its a work of art!! And if you’re the kind who misses the real time style of Twitter on google search, you will love this greasemonkey script. Amazing!!)

    While Twitter has been growing exponentially – a whopping 752% in 2008, Facebook has too – though at a relatively more normal 86%. I remember reading sometime back that Facebook was about 15 times larger than Twitter, and that if Facebook were to stop growing today, and Twitter were to add users at the best rate its shown so far, it would still take Twitter 36 years to catch up.

    Very subjectively, and from a user’s perspective, Facebook and Twitter are not competitors. My involvement with my Facebook friends is quite different from that with my Twitter friends, and I don’t have a lot of overlap. But I know a lot of users who have a huge overlap. I actually share a lot more stuff on Twitter and get a lot more stuff from there too. But I am only one user and perhaps represent a minority of typical Facebook usage patterns. For example, The Inquisitr had a good story on how tweets got more responses on Facebook than Twitter itself.

    I am always on Twitter thanks to the browser plug in, irrespective of whether i actively take part or not, I login to Facebook a few times every day. I have to wonder if real time on Facebook can change that. In Facebook, profiles/groups/chat are the bases of conversations – quite well defined spaces. In Twitter, the stream is the base, you start from anywhere. There are different clients that can be used to log into Twitter, Facebook (with a couple of exceptions) has to be accessed from its own homepage.

    Also, from a new user point of view, Facebook provides more ways to interact than the one size fits all approach of Twitter’s ‘What are you doing’?Ā  When you log on to FB, you most likely already have friends who’re there, and you find more friends (who you know in real life), therefore the context and common interests already exist.Ā  You have a base from where to start. Twitter perhaps works in reverse, since you have to make friends (common interests and therefore conversations) on Twitter. Maybe all this contributes to why you have to explain Twitter to people, and they still say ‘Yeah, but what do you DO there?’, and people automatically take to Facebook. Even if thats not the case, relatively, ‘learning the ropes’ is easier on Facebook than Twitter. Thats generalisation and debatable too.

    Facebook’s redesign and policy changes have sparked off user outrage in the past, Twitter (except for the whale) is smoother, perhaps it hasn’t deviated from the original approach much – even the new set of changes doesn’t affect the user much, only adds value to his usage. Is it a difference of intent – Facebook being pure social networking, and Twitter being on a meta plane – higher? Or are the differences merely a function of time in the market and user base? Interestingly, in a recent research with 200 social media leaders on which service they were willing to pay for, Facebook came first with 31.2%, Twitter was third with 21.8%, behind LinkedIn. (via TechCrunch)

    Users are one side of the story, the other side is made up of advertisers. In the survey I mentioned above, when the same social media leaders were asked which service they would reccommend businesses to pay for, Twitter topped with 39.6%, Facebook was third at 15.3%, LinkedIn separated the two again. Every week, developers bring out a new tool that augments/complements Twitter usage and helps the service cater better to users, and perhaps brands too. Meanwhile, Facebook is working on a combination of Facebook Connect and Facebook Ads, to create a social ad network. It seems quite possible that just like users, brands also will differ in their usage of the two services. Some might adopt the same practices, some might vary, and use each to complement the other. It could also be that they would cater to different kinds of advertisers altogether, just like my friends list. More on that next week.

    until next time, never the twain shall meet?

  • The Legend of Sikandar

    Sikandar is the Hindustani name of Alexander the Great, and that’s the theme of this restaurant in Garuda Mall. Theme, only in terms of the food, not the decor, though they do have a few glass paintings that depict this. The place is usually crowded on Saturdays, so we reserved, got there by about 7.45, and got one of the window seats I have a liking for. Surprisingly, it didn’t have full occupancy at any point during our dinner. Blame it on you-know-what. I wonder if that’s the same thing I should blame for them using a fan instead of the air conditioning!!

    We decided to try a non chicken starter this time, and settled on the Adana Seek, described as “Turkey’s single greatest contribution to the world of street food. Lamb mince skewered on a sword, typically spiced and enlivened with paprika flakes and made the way it has been for eons in the Turkish town of Adana”. Judging by the taste, and the awesome flavoring, it definitely is a great contribution. Highly recommended, the only disappointment being that I expected to see the sword..and didn’t. The mint chutney provided with it wasn’t great though, so skip it.

    For the main course, we ordered a Murgh Siyali Kalimirch. The description in the menu reads ” Housewives in Siyalkot, Pakistan, take fierce pride in preparing their own versions of this dish of tender chicken cooked in sealed clay pots with lashings of freshly ground peppercorn”. We also ordered a Kadaiwala Machchi, “the best example of robust food made from simple earthy ingredients that’s the essence of Punjab’s cuisine. Fish tossed with fresh tomatoes, peppers and pounded spices”.Ā  To go along with it, we ordered an Ulta Tawa ka Paratha – “the copper mahi tawa lends its special flavour ro these griddle roasted saffron flavoured parathas” , a Paneer aur Pudina Bharwan Kulcha, and when that proved insufficient, a roti too. What hasn’t been mentioned in the menu is that the chicken dish is a white gravy one, but that really didn’t matter. Its one of the best chicken dishes I’ve tasted in a long time. Whatever version this one is, I think they should stick to it!! The fish was good, but not in the same league as the other. The paratha was good too, and the only thing that was disappointing was the bharwan kulcha ( I think that has something to do with it not having a descriptor line..hmm)

    D felt that the choice of dishes has been reduced. I am not sure, but yes, there are about 4 chicken gravy dishes only now, so she could be right. The portions are quite large and more than sufficient for two people. They also serve liquor. The service this time was quite tardy though, in spite of the cold looks we gave the staff when they delayed in serving/refilling the water/bringing the bill. All of the above cost us just less than Rs.900. If you haven’t tried the place, you should, at least once. We chose this place specifically for this weekend because its one of our favourite places in Bangalore, and deserved to be the 50th Bangalore restaurant to be reviewed on this blog. šŸ™‚

    The Legend of Sikandar, 4th Floor, Garuda Mall, Magrath Road. Ph: 41252333

    Menu and Photos at Zomato

  • Dogged Pursuit

    He saw her, walking in the park. He knew her type ā€“ haughty and pampered. But he was street smart too, and started playing around with his attention grabbing ticks. He even gave a sound bite, but she ignored it. After a while, he gave up. The bitch obviously didnā€™t believe in bow-wow at first sight.

    until next time, puppy love šŸ˜‰

  • Afterwards

    Jaishree Misra

    Having read both of Jaishree Misra’s earlier works, I was almost given into believing that this was going the same way as ‘Ancient Promises’ had. While the premise and the characters – woman, husband, extra marital relationship and a child are recurring, somewhere down the road, there is a fork, and that’s when it becomes a good book, not that Ancient Promises wasn’t , just that this worked better for me.
    To her credit, the author moves quickly over the part till the fork is reached, and while I’d have preferred some slicker editing after that, I can see how it might not be that way for others.
    A good read that captures the pain of loss, the hand of fate, and of letting things go being the only way to be sometimes.

    (spoiler alert) Special mention must be made of the wonderful way in which the author has captured the trauma of a 4 year old who realises her mother is no more, but perhaps can’t understand its ramifications in her life. I was deeply moved by the three pages that covered this, it gave me a different perspective of a 6 year old I knew once in similar circumstances. Echoes.