Month: April 2010

  • Mani, where the mouth is….

    The joy of eating, when someone else does a review 😉

  • Say when….

    Those of you who’ve been reading the blog the last seven days would know that we’ve finally completed the Sikkim series. (pics) (for those who haven’t, here’s a guilt-edged invite, hmmph)

    Its time to move on. Away from the stalk-aided twitter environment, and the web in general, I had enough time and inclination to let my mind wander. I am not a regular viewer of ‘Prison Break’, but a while back, i’d tweeted a Theodore ‘T-Bag’ Bagwell (played by Robert Knepper, who you might know as the awesome Samuel Sullivan in Heroes) line, which I came across quite randomly. It goes “We are captives of our own identities, living in prisons of our own creation.”

    The vacation, and its ups and downs, expectations and comparisons in general, perceptions formed and set, until its one big clouded piece of baggage, they all occupied the mind. Every time the mind wanted to break free, there was a resistance. I wondered about the blog, myself and ‘prisons of our own creation’. The limits I have unwittingly set for the blog- which in a way, mirrors life too, the possibilities that might have been disrupted by diligence. You too, perhaps? Of what kind of things you like to see here? Maybe the transience of this entire exercise is something I’ve yet to come to terms with.

    But it’s funny when you think about it. Us. You and me. There are probably less than 10 readers of this blog, who I can claim to have met, or even spoken to, outside of the web’s confines. The only thing that connects us is perhaps the words here, the thoughts shared, and the images we have created of each other.

    Come close and then even closer
    We bring it in but we go no further
    We’re separate, two ghosts in one mirror, no nearer

    But I guess that’s okay too. I look at blogrolls, posts, comments, and I have more than enough reasons to be happy with the time I spent on this blog. There’s a reason that I’m looking back at all of this.

    Those of you who’ve been reading the blog for a little longer , about seven years, would know that today, we complete that too.  🙂

    Thanks for reading.

    Some of this was here before us
    All of this will go after us
    It Never stops until we give in, give in, say when….

    (Say when, The Fray)

    until next time, seventh heaven 🙂

    PS. New design and the FB like button implemented. So next time you like, and you’re ok with the ‘Like’ showing in your FB activity stream, click on. It will prompt you for logging in to FB

  • Early Bird Rewards

    At least two major virtual happenings, one that has massive implications on the future of the web, and the other, slightly more subdued, but not lacking in potential. The latter – Twitter Annotations, announced at Chirp, allowing developers to “add any arbitrary metadata to any tweet in the system.” You can take a look at the various possibilities here, here and here. The former – Facebook’s  Open Graph, unveiled at the f8 conference, and aimed at making itself the centre of everything that happens on the www. A  combination of  plugins, developer tools, new markups which can make the user experience on any site that plays along increasingly personal, social, semantic, from plain hyperlinks to layered information. Already, one small manifestation can  be seen at the bottom of this post – a Facebook ‘Like’ button, which will carry your liking of this post into your activity stream on Facebook. More and more data, not just what you do on FB, but outside as well, across the web. From what I read, smells like Google, perhaps worse, because the flow of information seems possible only through the Facebook conduit. A good round up of implications here.

    When I returned from he break, and read up on these developments, my first thought, which i also tweeted was

    1

    And that’s the point of the post. During the break, the only network I was hooked on to was Foursquare. One of the things that happened, thanks to long waiting times in the Kolkata airport was that I became mayor of the neat CCD outlet just outside the airport complex.

    CCD has completed the re-branding at this outlet (unlike the one inside the airport) and has done a decent job at establishing ‘conversations’ as the prime focus area, in terms of in-store design. The feedback posters, ‘snippets’ at each table and the ‘quotes’ design on the roof were nice touches. When I got back, I found a CCD account following me on Twitter. Seemed like a more synergistic effort after the earlier snafu.

    It made me think once again about how alert brands need to be in such a dynamic scenario. If CCD were an early adopter, would they have braved the earlier storm better? What if they become active on Foursquare now, experiment with the new services being built on top of it – friendticker, snacksquare etc, still in their nascent stages. Or at least acknowledge their outlets on Foursquare and engaging the users. “@xyz congrats on becoming the mayor of our abc outlet”, and then build on top of that relationship. Won’t that help them gain some crucial evangelists in a new medium? If not evangelists, at least someone who will listen to their side of the story when something nasty happens? Wouldn’t they get a headstart on ‘authority’ by being an early bird?

    Even the era of quick responses being a reasonable expectation seems to be blurring by fast. Perhaps brands are now required to have an advance scout mechanism, to test out new services, features, changes, understand the implications and see whether/how business and objectives needs to be realigned. Page Rank, Social Platforms at consumer and enterprise level, Social CRM, Location based services, tools and platforms keep shifting. Early adoption and balancing objectives with diverse ways and platforms of engagement may become an imperative. Multiple options, two way communication manifestos, its all changing real time. Hold on tight.

    until next time, service level disagreements

  • Sikkim Day 7 – Up & Away

    One more monastery before we left. We bade farewell to Mintokling and left for Enchey monastery, located within the town. It followed the same pattern as the other two we’d visited, the only exception being a lot of sleeping beings we found – a foreigner, a few dogs. The monk in charge was pretty rude when we almost stepped into an area inside the sanctum, we weren’t supposed to. We didn’t bother to point out that they should ideally cordon off that area, since there was no way to put a sign. Buddha really wouldn’t have minded.

    As we reached the limits of Gangtok, I wished I could take a snap of the CCD outlet with arguably the best view among its kind. We left for the 4 hour drive to Bagdogra, and there was a sense of finality as we passed familiar places and checked them off, like a countdown. – Ranipool, Singtham, Rangpo, and then into West Bengal – Malli, Teesta, Rambi, Sivok, and finally Siliguri. We stopped at the newly opened mall for lunch, actually still under construction, but with a restaurant, a multiplex and a few shops operational. We thought we’d try the food court, but the elevator wasn’t working and climbing up 4 floors (still under varying degrees of construction) didn’t really appeal. The loos worked, but were also victims of rigorous testing by the construction workers. Prakash, our driver from the first 2 days, claimed that the legendary Pawan Chamling owned the mall.

    The sudden shift from all the cold mountains to the stifling plains was very depressing, especially as we passed shanties and huge mounds of garbage as we continued from Siliguri to Bagdogra, in typical city traffic, where we shift to cm/hr measurements.

    We’d been sent a message the previous day, asking us to report 2 hours in advance owing to congestion. They were right, the baggage check queue almost went out of the airport. Bagdogra airport was a revelation as far as standards went. International check in times, aside, this was one of those heritage airports, from the time IA/AI planes ruled the Indian skies. Utterly ill equipped, the staff seemed to be always paying homage to that era. Their security checks were indeed pertinent – one visit to this place and you’ll be very tempted to you-know-what-mentioning-which-could-get-me-into-trouble. The railway station ambiance was topped with a bunch of women, exceeding their baggage quota by 216 kgs (!!) and then shifting bags to cabin baggage/ putting them back like veg shopping. We sat waiting, and I got bored enough to check my mail. The place was so crowded that I stored this in my drafts “‘Opening a secure connection. Content cannot be seen by anyone else’ does not include the guy looking over your shoulder.”

    We finally took off, about 20 minutes late. Our plans to make a quick dash to the Howrah Bridge from Kolkata airport were dashed, as the taxi operators weren’t sure of getting us back in time. So we sat in the CCD outside, and drank in the airport sights at dusk, quite an ironical finale to a vacation, as though helping us make the transition to routine.

    1

    Sikkim proved a decent trip – for me, vacations are in the mind, and a different setting can only help. Despite a few niggles, there’s no reason to follow the advice of one of the drivers ahead of us, on the way from Gurudongmar.

    14

    The single biggest thing for me was regaining the motivation to continue that book, for whatever it’s worth. But for now, we  seem to have developed a 3M fatigue – momos, mountains, monasteries, so maybe its time for a break from that. Like I told Mo, we were carrying the Leh baggage, and it will always be a difficult gold standard to measure up to. But having said that, there was a coincidence that seemed to me like the Joker character introduction in Batman Begins. The first chapter of the book I was reading was set in Tibet, at the exact same place mentioned in the first bottle of water I got during the journey.

    1

    Maybe, someday



.. 🙂

    PS. For those interested, we customised a tour with Yak & Yeti

  • Sikkim Day 6 – Sikkim Pop and Zero Point Someone

    The room did have a nice view from the window, but it was better from the balcony. The only snag was reaching the balcony, as the door refused to budge. I remembered my erm, MBA education days when I jumped out through the window (we did that during a few lectures) and opened the door from outside. It was worth it, as always. 🙂

    1 2

    3 5

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqT3gUvxs-s

    We left the hotel by 7, after a hurried breakfast, to see the famous rhododendrons in Yumthang, and to visit Zero Point, where all roads apparently ended.  Yumthang was only about 25 kms away, and as we climbed further towards Yumesamdong, the flowers changed their color from purple to red to a pale pink. Apparently there are about 10 different versions. The driver made us listen to Sikkim pop, and even a Nepali song, the latter reminding me of early 90s Bollywood.

    7 8

    We finally arrived at Zero point well over a couple of hours later. It turned out to be the Himalayan version of Kumbh Mela, with potential participants of music reality shows belting out everything from Shammi Kapoor to SRK hits, and generally going crazy at what perhaps was their first encounter with snow. Alcohol is freely available, thankfully so is coffee, though it stays hot for less than a couple of minutes.

    9 10

    11 13

    The driver said that there was a proposal to build a road from here to Gurudongmar, but the Lachen guys stopped it with a petition. Tibet is less than 50 kms away. We returned, and stopped at Yumthang for what appeared to be the driver’s brunch, and watched while people irritated a yak and almost got gored in return. We made a brief stop at the hotel, and after a quick lunch, started our trip back to Gangtok. The driver estimated a 5 hour journey, which actually turned out to be 6. We also saw this interestingly named place on the way back to Chungthang. Sometimes life does seem like a

    12

    We passed the tourist points we’d halted at earlier, but thanks to the rains, they had absolutely no crowds. The driver, to our irritation insisted on following another driver, who was painfully slow. He also educated us on the pitfalls of shared cabs, as each passenger had his own tastes and harassed the drivers on where to stop, and not stop. At Naga falls, he seemed to give up on his companion, and told his passengers that he had seen their driver drinking. If we weren’t in a hurry, I’d have loved to stay and watch.

    We hurried because though the rope way seemed a lost cause, we thought we’d roam around Gangtok a bit more and maybe drop in a Lal Bazaar again. The driver, though, was glued to his mobile, after having been out of a network for the last couple of days (the network is practically non existent long before Chungthang) I think he let all his near and dear ones know we hadn’t done him any harm, though the chances in those last few kilometres to Gangtok were pretty high. A Buddhist with a liking for Hit beer, our driver.

    We finally reached Gangtok at 7.30, and after getting dropped back at Mintokling, decided to check out the last place in our list, for dinner. Arthur’s, on Tibet Road, another place recommended online, almost opposite Cafe Live & Loud, turned out to be a near replica of Allen’s Kitchen, but a few rungs lower in terms of character. While we waited for the food, we heard the owner tell a friend of his who had arrived just then, that if she’d come a few minutes earlier, he might have left immediately, because there was a large group of South Indians. Meanwhile, we leafed through magazines and found one with Charukesi’s Sikkim article, as the owner came over and asked us where we were from. 🙂

    The chilly pork was quite good, as was the Chicken Thupka. The article too. Prices are very reasonable. We decided to pay another visit to Baker’s CafĂ©, found it closed, and went to our backup option – Cacao. It had only one other group, and we sat watching the street on our last night in Gangtok. Peaceful.