Month: December 2011

  • Hearing Laws

    His wife was shouting, again, but despite being at the receiving end, he knew he couldn’t fault her. They tried healing it themselves, with no success. A few days later, as they sat with the professional, answering her questions, her voice was still ringing in his ears, or so it seemed. The doctor diagnosed Tinnitus.

    until next time, a heard mentality

  • Thulsi N Thyme

    Kyunki sauce bhi kabhi herb thi. Two can play at that game eh? But seriously, a restaurant with a name like that does manage to grab your attention. I’d been seeing the name a bit at my regular online haunts, but this was one time when one column led to another. Well, almost. I was covering Poshvine (if you’re a foodie in Bangalore, you should check it out) for my startup column, and seeing Thulsi N Thyme listed there, went ahead and reserved a table via Poshvine.

    TnT (from now on) is located on 100 feet Road, Indiranagar, after the 12th Main signal when going from Koramangala, (map) above Touche and Cream Centre. For now, only the 4th floor is open though they plan to expand to the next soon. The resturant has, what they call an Indopean theme, in terms of the menu. The alfresco section, with the tree canopy around, did manage to provide a wonderful ambiance, despite the mild rain and strong winds that played havoc with the menu card. In a wonderful display of un-snobbery, one of the service staff even quipped that they should probably look at heavier menu cards. Nice 🙂 The plan is to provide some kind of screens soon. On to the menu (there is a beverage menu too, and they seem to have a decent collection of wines, cocktails, mocktails….)

       

    (click for larger image)

    In addition to the Indopean menu, there was also a pure North Indian 2 pager. We started with an Asparagus and Red Capsicum soup. A deliciously thick soup, and presented well. The red capsicum portion hit the spot but the asparagus portion disappointed slightly, and the hard garlic bread didn’t help either. We then tried the Burrah chop Lazeez, which was reasonably good. The meat was tender, and the char grilling only a couple of notches below perfect. There seemed to be a cardamon twist to the mayo(?) that came with it. Quite good, as was the tapenade.

    For the main course, we asked for the Stuffed Chicken Makhani and the Baked India Salmon. The fish was wonderfully cooked and the only small let down was again the bread. The stuffing in the chicken was goat cheese, which together with the subtly flavoured risotto, ensured that we were stuffed too. 🙂 Unfortunately that meant we couldn’t try the desserts. 🙁

    The thing that works for Thulsi N Thyme is the balance they maintain between the Indian and European constituents in the dishes, and yet manage to bring out both. It’s quite a fresh take on the dishes we’re used to. Well worth a visit, and if you want to make it a bit more special, go back to the top, and get there the same way I did. 🙂

    Thulsi N Thyme, 4th & 5th Floor, #762, 100 Feet Road, Indiranagar Ph: 25271555/666

  • Thrillophilia

    An offbeat travel experience based on the concept of eco-tourism, that is Thrillophilia’s offering. In conversation with co-founder Chitra Gurnani Daga

    [scribd id=74579995 key=key-gkecel742reji8p0nrv mode=list]

  • Social+

    Consumption and curation. At some point I can still remember, I consumed newspapers, magazines and all other mass publishers (across platforms) and expected them to curate for me. Curation for a large mass, when linked to their kind of production process and business model, got tits first whiff of trouble when the internet only models came into the picture. In the early days of content abundance, an algorithm came into our lives and changed the way we found content on the net. A bit later, I was introduced to a different kind of curation courtesy the service then known as del.icio.us.  #youremember I would put Google Reader in the same category too.

    Then came Facebook and Twitter, and RSS died several times if we go by the blog posts. Facebook for me has been and is a social graph. The only way my interest graph has crept in (in terms of content discovery and consumption) is in the form of pop culture. Can that change? I wouldn’t write it off. Twitter started out as an interest graph, but when it scaled, it began flirting with social graphs. For me, it’s now both, and I find that difficult to work with. It’s probably a bit of my laziness too – curating who I follow, making corresponding lists etc erm, not done. Anyway, my discovery and sharing on that network is minimal now. So, in that respect, the curation I expect on these platforms is minimal too.

    Purely by activity, it would seem that I am more active on my interest graph networks now. I wonder if I am alone in not being sure of mixing my interest and social graphs -Delicious, Foursquare, GoodReads., and until recently, (generically) Reader. The curation is by a set of people I trust in that domain, and any ‘social’ that happens remains ‘by the way’.

    Google didn’t even see the social boat IMO, and when they did, it was too far out. Wave, Buzz: crash, silenced. But while writing the WT5 column late last week, I found that Google+ has been creeping in everywhere – search results, news, Reader (I haven’t forgiven you, Google) and building in features like Mutual Circle Chat and search options.  I was thinking about this when I received one of my best sources of curation these days – the weekly Only Dead Fish newsletter (email, how ironic 🙂 ), and that’s where I saw this excellent post titled ‘From destination social to distributed social : why Google+ is the Trojan horse of the social web‘

    That’s exactly what Google seems to be doing. Unlike Facebook, which built THE social network and then tried to link consumption on other sites in an ‘oh, okay, fine’ way, Google is playing a balance act, and to its strengths. By giving me the tools to build a social network on Google+, and simultaneously being present at my points of consumption, Google is making me play curator to both social and interest graphs. If all goes well, I think Google will not only collect data, but also build several social networks based on interest graphs. Google’s cash cow still doesn’t have much to do with all this, but once the networks are built, Google will have better contexts for AdSense, based on a really smart social algorithm.

    I have always believed that Android is the next Google. Still do, but now I think that Google+ is a contender too. Or maybe the social OS will be built by them together.

    until next time, evil graphs 🙂

    Bonus: A Google Ventures backed app on iPhone named Stamped – very relevant in this context.