Author: manuscrypts

  • Confidence, to wit

    The Book of Life’s post On the Origins of Confidence made me think about the subject in the context of my own life. In the last few years, I have increasingly felt the importance of confidence in my professional life. It’s not so much what you know, but what you project that matters. Perception is reality, as the phrase goes. Hence the interest in the subject. But before that, a detour.

    As far back as I can remember, I have been under-confident. Some of my earliest memories are of stage fright, and since I was into things like singing, elocution etc that are particularly susceptible to this, I have many memories! Despite multiple rehearsals, and prizes that I got over the years, I could never be sure that I would remember the lyrics/lines.

    I preferred spending my time reading, and was very comfortable being alone. Ironically though, my friends from my last years of school as well those from my grad and post grad days remember me for my sense of humour, specifically because it could help people laugh or at least smile even in the worst of times. But if you met me, you wouldn’t figure this. This persona is archived in my mind, but at a reunion last weekend, my schoolmate, who is now the funniest guy in our Whatsapp group, told the gathering how I was his benchmark for humour. Embarrassed me much, but we were all drunk, so that was fine! 😀 (more…)

  • Hoot

    It absolutely was, and it had nothing to do with the food, service or anything that you’d normally judge a restaurant/pub on. Normally, nothing would get me to visit Sarjapur Road, but hey, microbrewery. That, and its photos on Zomato making it look like the sets of MTV Grind! (who remembers?)

    Truth be told, the ambiance was quite good. Poolside would have been perfect, but we were told that the section wasn’t open because there was a rain forecast. We’ll get back to this. We got ourselves a table near the bar. The crowd was extremely mixed – fresh-out-of-engineering-college gawking kids, middle aged families, Sarjapur’s Page 3 equivalent, living ads of  Malabar Gold, probably businessmen, and so on. Hoot 1 – crowd. Not enough children though, so I didn’t have anyone to make faces at.

    As we waited for our friends, we decided to get ourselves some beer. Out of the five craft brews, only two were available. D ordered a Saint Martin Abbey Triple, which was described as “liquid gold served to perfection”. After we tasted it, the only thing I was left wondering was whose liquid gold? Ugh! I had asked for the other available beer – Saint Martin Abbey Dark, which was described as “an uplifting experience”. This one delivered on the promise, only because it is easy to uplift anyone who has tasted that Morarji Desai prescription known as Abbey Triple! Our friends arrived by then, and after tasting both, decided to order wine an cocktails. No Rose wines were available, and no Bira, so the poor souls settled on Tuborg and a Blood Orange & Mint cocktail. My friend described the latter as Rasna with a hint of Vodka. The rest of us missed the hint.  (more…)

  • Scarcity

    Sendhil Mullainathan & Eldar Shafir

    On a relative scale, we probably are in the most abundant era of civilisation. And yet, we struggle to manage with less than what we need. Sometimes it’s money, in other cases time or health, and then there are emotional needs like love and affection. But there’s a common thread that connects all of these – the scarcity mindset. A feeling of having less than what one needs. And scarcity, as the authors repeat many a time in the first few sections captures the mind.

    This framing suddenly brings up patterns that are common across vegetable sellers in India and the authors of this book, two sets of people vastly separated by geography and lifestyles. It then allows the formation of concepts and constructs – bandwidth, focusing and tunneling, choking, slack are a few examples – that offers explanations on how scarcity is created, how it forms its own vicious cycles, and how far reaching its consequences are. Complicated as the subject may seem (and it is!) the fantastic use of examples (tests, experiments and real life scenarios) explains things in a way that the reader can easily grasp. (more…)

  • Bloomsbury’s

    Sometime back, we were super happy to see gastronomic progress happening in a building near the BMTC Depot in Whitefield. (map) Galito’s and Cold Stone Creamery were quick to start reperations, and we now regularly make up excuses to visit the latter! Bloomsbury’s looked very promising but had been holding out, until we began seeing lights inside around April. Side note – I think the same folks are behind all three, because it can’t be a coincidence that outside of Bangalore, all of them operate only in Kerala’s tourism hot spot – Lulu Mall. Though all three seem to be international franchises, I’m guessing that like most good things in life, these ones too have some Kerala connection. 😀

    Bloomsbury’s proposition is a boutique cafe and artisan bakery, but let’s just say that from a menu perspective, you will have enough to choose from. In fact, that is quite a problem because you’ll find it difficult to preserve appetite for desserts. But we’ll come to that in a bit, because the decor is worth a shout out. Spread over two floors, the brick walls with chalkboard and illustrations, the cute teapot lights, the plant holder bulbs,  graffiti and the plush seating, all lend a lively yet cozy feel to the place. The staff do their best to make you comfortable too. For instance, when we asked to sit upstairs, we were told that it wasn’t open yet. Later, one of the other service staff let another party sit upstairs, followed by my cold glares. That last item was caught and they were nice enough to let us take a little tour upstairs, and move our food there if we wanted to. But we liked the area downstairs better.

    collage 1 (more…)

  • Project Happiness

    Our “big” annual vacation typically happens around May-June. But at least six months of preparation precedes it, and my levels of preparation (which D has now been almost coerced into) might be considered way too orchestrated for practical purposes. My defense is that in all probability, this would be the only time we visit the place, so I’d like to make it as hassle-free as possible. Also, the fear of missing out.

    As a species, we are uniquely capable of projecting our future in our own minds. My plan is supposed to make us happy. The expectations are already set. And that means that things can go wrong in many ways. For instance, things might not go as planned because of events outside of my control. Or we see other possibilities once we’re in a place but we’ve already committed to our plans in terms of time/money/emotions! (more…)