Year: 2012

  • Book values

    Sometime back, a colleague excitedly pointed me to Bookshelf P0rn, and I remembered bookmarking it a year back. The room with massive bookshelves has been one of the key attractions of the ‘when we buy our final home’ thoughts. (‘buying homes for life stages’ is another post 🙂 )

    Yes, I’m still one of those who religiously visit Blossoms on Church Street, and get a high when I walk around shelves that house a musty smell of old books, when I run my hand through ridges and pages and discover stories within stories, when I read words that reach out to me from across time and space. And yet, with the reader and tablet explosion, I wonder how long these books will be around. Even if I stubbornly resisted e-books, would there be a market to support it? The economics just might not work out. These thoughts crossed my mind when I read this wonderful article on the process of book publishing – its past, present and future.

    On Brain Pickings, one of my favourite sites, I caught these words from Carl Sagan that completely resonate with me

    What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.

    I’m just getting familiar with the idea of a book community thanks to Goodreads. The idea of reading books and seeing annotations left by those who have read it before me, ‘browsing their thoughts’, including, probably the author’s, and thus ‘traveling’ across time and space does seem fascinating, something that is provided by the current form of reading only to some measure.

    In the interim, I wish someone would build a white label e-book, that looks and feels just like a real book, one which I can really bookmark, flip pages etc, but one in which I can download a book and it would automatically change the cover, re-paginate and bring in all the benefits of technology. Best of both worlds to help me evolve! Maybe it already exists. 🙂

    until next time, booking the future

    “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.” (Bill Gates)

  • First Darling of the Morning: Selected Memories

    Thrity Umrigar

    Its difficult not to like a book that starts off with a reference to ‘The Sound of Music’. After all, for a generation, there are so many memories attached to that movie. It serves as a good snapshot for what the book holds in store, a ‘Wonder Years’ kind of nostalgic trip, one that I could immediately identify with, and one that supplies many lump-in-the-throat moments. The book is billed as ‘Selected Memories of an Indian Childhood’ and has done an excellent job of it.

    We are with the child when she discovers how the world has different rules for adults and children, when she thinks that she would never grow out of Enid Blyton, only to switch loyalties to Mills & Boon years later. We see her move on to Herman Hesse and becoming obsessed with Van Gogh. We are with her as she grows up and realises that the people around her existed long before her, and are part of stories she never knew.

    Though the story is primarily about her growing up, the author manages to cover a lot of other ground and link it very well with her life. The story of a city that was united across classes by cricket, the story of a middle class that is mostly in denial of the poor that surround them, but also makes unwritten rules for transactions with them. The story of the various strings that pull us, some visible, some not so.

    As she looks back on her life after finishing college and realises the paradoxical importance and unimportance of her relationships with the various people and things in her life – music, books, politics, parents, teachers, relatives and friends, and slowly tries to put them in perspective, I saw a story that could in many ways describe most of humankind and the lives we create for ourselves. And that perhaps would explain why I consider this a must-read.

  • OpsBuds

    Opsbuds seeks to go beyond CRM and help organisations create a better customer experience. In conversation with co-founder K K Cariapa.

    [scribd id=92462729 key=key-8yqfrhzom9iyhazecy5 mode=list]

  • Baliday – Days 6,7

    Continued from Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

    Breakfast at Tanaya consisted of a sandwich. They alternated between a muffin + croissant  + roll/ sandwich/ chicken sub as part of the package. Not too heavy, it managed to always set the stage for a more elaborate lunch. The breakfast area overlooked the street and we watched the road get ready for a regular day even as we ate our last breakfast in Bali.

    We had asked the guide to skip the Sukawati Art Market, so we started out a bit late, straight to Sanur beach, which has played a part in Bali history. We found it quite desolate, save a few tourists and boat operators who tried to take us to Lembongan, with its marine walks (saw something about a unique helmet that allowed to walk under water) and other attractions. We skipped that too, and went ahead with our regular lazing on the beach routine. When we got back and asked the driver/guide about the beach being quiet, we were told that it was mostly popular with the locals on weekends and with older tourists.

    Lunch was Babi Guling – suckling pig, whose ads you would see all over Bali. I had this vision of an entire pig brought in front of me and had shared it with D many times. When they said it would be delayed by a few mins, it just seemed to consolidate that vision. D smirked as the dish was brought. It was a normal looking dish – the same rice, sambal, with the pork, fat, and masala replacing the chicken/duck earlier. The best part of the dish was the soup like thing which we weren’t sure whether to drink or mix with the rice. We drank. 🙂 A grease bomb of a dish, but it was tasty too. The other big blunder was Tehbotol, which I had assumed to be local cola! Should’ve guessed tea, and a rosewater flavour added! Ugh. As always, D got lucky with her Fruit Tea! We had now developed a little bit of an aversion for the rice + combo.

     

    We got back to Kuta to explore the Kuta, Seminyak beaches, but diverted ourselves to finish some last minute shopping! A sling bag, a travel bag, and laughing at the non-telecom simPati possibilities later, we stopped at ‘The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf‘ for some thirst quenching. The very friendly staff also gave us a complimentary berry juice which was a competitor at a Barista championship. The beaches, meanwhile,  reminded me of Calangute and Baga for the stretches that just went on and on, and for the fact that these were the tourist favourites, despite incessant hawking of everything from tattoos to pedicure on the beach! The perspective on Starbucks was worth a shot. 😉

      

    Next up was another spa visit, but this one – the Kupu Kupu Mas spa, was extremely good! On the way back, we decided to check the menu of Ketupat, a restaurant that was on our shortlist. Quite an amazing menu – Javan and Sumatran cuisine too, and a wonderful ambiance, but a combination of the rice aversion and distance from our hotel made us decide against it. We got back to the hotel, and walked slowly along Legian, shopping a bit, and gazing for the last time at the Ground Zero monument, a memorial of the 2002 Bali bombing.

    We had thought of returning to Batan Waru for dinner, but as D got into yet another shop to do her last minute purchases, I discovered a restaurant that was on our list. Amazingly, we had been walking in front of it all these days, but thanks to it being inside a tiny lane (next to Made’s Warung) we had completely missed Uns! They had some excellent Ravioli with a Bali twist. We also had some house wine, after they served us a complimentary drink and a cutlet! The Ravioli Uns (with a hint of coconut) and the Ravioli Carousel (six kinds of fillings from across the world) were both awesome. We finished the meal with a subtle and smooth Creme Catalane and a delicious Chocolate Mousse. Serly, the lovely girl who took and brought us our order, reminded us of an adorable cartoon character. 🙂 Uns had a buzz to it that indicated a crowd comfortable with the place. The music, the decor and the ambiance made it seem like a place that had somehow gotten time to stand still. This one is a must visit if you’re in Kuta. (it also has Indonesian food) The perfect last dinner @ Rp.276342 🙂

      

      

      

    The next day dawned early – another 3.30, and Tanaya also gave us a breakfast box – we just had to tell them the night before. Our driver-guide arrived on time and also brought us a farewell gift! The lethargy of early morning travel was rattled by an adventure that D created. A sad and silly ending was averted by our guide who was extremely helpful and went out of the way to make our experience memorable in the right way! In the rush, I also managed to get a chocolate pedicure, thanks to a half filled cup someone dropped on the floor! The sunrise was the perfect backdrop for our departure from the ‘Island of the Gods’.

    A few hours later, we were back at LCCT. This time we got seats and slept in the ‘traditional way’ – legs on the luggage trolley, during a 7 hour wait. Despite some Boost juices, we were massively hungry by lunch and decided to hog at Marry Brown. Fish’n’Chips and Chick-a-Licious with pepper sauce and a Mi Kari Ayam Goreng, that turned out to be slurpy good!

      

    From super cute Japanese babies, we quickly moved to spoiled brats in the boarding area, and had a fair idea of what to expect on the flight. But the kids went even beyond that and several times, I had to give them a piece of my mind as they rattled seats, opened window shutters, and did as much as possible to make everyone around uncomfortable. Air Asia’s tagline is “Now, everyone can fly”. I add “unfortunately” to that, and wish there was a way to transport some kids/people as check-in baggage!

    The airline magazine gave us clues on a potential next holiday. 🙂 Though the flight had taken off close to 5 PM, the sun blazed on and refused to set, as I read Paul Theroux’s consul tales from a geography that used to be part of the empire on which the sun never set. After touching down at Bangalore, as I climbed into the Meru, I mumbled a thanks to Indonesia for maintaining a platonic relationship with us and not screwing us over despite the earthquakes at its other end. We were home!

    For those interested, our tour guide was Astrawan. If you are not into reading about the places beforehand, you should ask him for a driver who will be with you and is able to explain landmarks. We customised our tour as described, and without dinner, it came to Rp 4100000 for 2 people. Tanaya cost us close to Rp 3400000 for 6 nights. Despite the Day 1 a/c disaster, I’d recommend it. A rough estimate for the trip, including everything would be Rs.1.5 lakhs.

  • IMO

    image via @SherlokSH on twitter

    #UnfollowSachin – that was the trending reaction on Twitter to Tendulkar’s Rajya Sabha nomination. (and acceptance) It reminded me of a couple of excellent related posts I had read recently.

    First, Seth Godin’s post post. Could also be titled “Why I have comments disabled”. Ok, that was just jest. I’d rather he focus on writing these than fighting trolls too. 🙂 He uses two simple parameters to disqualify a person from being listened to – lack of standing, and no credibility.

    The other post, which in many ways could be seen as quite complementary to Godin’s post is from what’s quickly becoming one of my favourite sites for some daily makes-you-think posts. I’ve not completely watched the video here, but the quote that connects is “Stuart Firestein’s insight on the importance of ignorance in exploration and growth”

    In our culture, not to know is to be at fault socially… People pretend to know lots of things they don’t know. Because the worst thing to do is appear to be uninformed about something, to not have an opinion… We should know the limits of our knowledge and understand what we don’t know, and be willing to explore things we don’t know without feeling embarrassed of not knowing about them.

    A fallout of not adhering to this is opinions on everything. Self publishing has made this almost a norm. (Is that an opinion right there?) Godin’s framework works well for brand management. But social platforms and brands’ nervousness towards it make the implementation difficult. Theoretically it should work well in organisational decision making as well. But it doesn’t, probably because organisational decision making is rarely objective. It leads me to my earlier post on empowerment. Between the noisy crowd and organisational hierarchy, what’s a brand custodian to do?

    until next time, any opinions? 🙂