• A Greek odyssey – Day 2

    Continued from Day 1

    The agenda for the day was Lindos and the old town part of Rhodes. We had planned a public bus ride for the former, but I was thrilled to see a poster at the reception – that the hotel arranged a bus trip to Lindos for 22 euros per person. The joy was shortlived, since it operated on every day except Saturday! Such terrible luck!  I asked for directions to the bus stand, thankfully it was only 10 minutes away by walk. All of this had happened the previous night. From the time table, we had decided to get on the 9 AM bus. Despite directions, a map, and 20 minutes in hand, we got a little confused with the route. Thankfully, I spotted the bus station and we hopped on just in time after getting tickets. (5 euros per person) As we sat waiting for the bus to start, we saw an elegantly dressed lady talking to the guy at the ticket counter. We thought she might be a regular and wondered why she was commuting on a Saturday. She turned out to be the driver!

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    The 1 hr 20 mins drive took us through wide roads in town followed by narrow but clean streets in the suburbs, then a countryside complete with goats to finally, an awesome view of Lindos. (you have to walk back a bit for the kind of shot below)

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    A 10 minute walk took us to the city square. Unlike the feel I got at Trip Advisor, the place has plenty of options for hanging around, shopping and dining. The Lindos version of the acropolis is a little climb away, and a popular means of transport is a donkey! The entry (to the acropolis, not the donkey) costs 6 euros per person and the place, as well as the path leading to it, offers fantastic views. At the Acropolis, there are temples to various gods. We walked down to the beach, 5 minutes from the square. It had some good lunching options (with a view of the Acropolis) but we had already made up our mind on Kalypso. On the way back to the square, we did find the way to Kleoboulos’ tomb, but since Trip Advisor had mentioned a 2 hour walk, we passed.

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    The guy at Kalypso was super friendly and when we said we were from India, immediately wanted to know the name of a particular movie. He narrated a typical brothers-lost-reunited 80s story, ending with a googly – a song he claimed was from the film – which turned out to be Aati Kya Khandala! Classified under #WTF. Though he looked genuine, I wondered how many times he had enacted this scene before! The place, and the food was excellent – a fantastic salad, and vine leaves filled with minced meat, washed down with the recommended local beer, and fresh orange juice.

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    Some amount of shopping later, we got on the 2.30 bus to Rhodes, which was extremely crowded. We both slept all the way. On reaching Rhodes, we walked around the port and Old Town, and in the process of finding the Palace of the Grandmasters, got utterly lost in the maze of lovely cobbled streets! But we did manage to locate two of our intended dinner options – Island Lipsi and Socratous Garden – (check) utterly by accident. We then bought me a fake Puma ‘jacket’ for 10 euros and wandered into another maze – this time complete with castles and musicians. We desperately looked around for a main road, and just as we found it, also found a signpost which announced that we had exited the Grandmasters Palace! Lesson – get internet from home! (I could find no open outlets of Wind Telecom)

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    D corrected my sense of direction in time and thankfully found the way back to Old Town and the bus station – only 2 minutes away, it turned out! Some more shopping and we walked back to the hotel. I had a bad headache and slept off, and ended up skipping dinner in the process!

  • A Greek odyssey – Day 1

    In what was a departure from our standard departure, we turned left on the world map this time. The Meru we hired for the early morning (or late night) flight – at 4.15 – had a neat hat tip – an ad for Santorini, Sobha’s version, that is! The driver was in an #F1 mood and we reached well in time, prompting us to take a little nap. That almost led to us missing the flight, and we just about made it!

    Since we were in the middle column with no window seats nearby, the napping was continued on the first Emirates flight till it landed us four hours and a functional breakfast later in our other homeland – Dubai, which we were visiting for the first time. [no transit visa required, unlike Malaysia!]If not the sheer scale, a metro between two terminals was enough to wow us completely, and convince us even more of what we Malayalis are capable of, when we have Arab money and manpower backing us! 😉

    For all the awesomeness, getting free WiFi, even for half an hour, was a tedious task which I gave up on. The Emirates  flight to Athens was at 10.05 and took us about 4.5 hours. Still stuck in the middle column of seating, nap time was replaced with in-flight movie time. I saw Up & Down, a Malayalam movie first, out of courtesy for where we were at, and then watched American Hustle! We landed at Athens at 2 PM in the afternoon (local time) and immediately faced Athenian Hustle in the form of a luggage trolley that cost 1 Euro! There seemed to be quite a few lottery sellers inside, making the place quite like a bus stand, but I could already imagine why they might be popular!

    We had a long wait for our flight to Rhodes – about 5.5 hours, but between immigration, meeting our tour operator for all the vouchers and free wifi for an hour, time passed by quickly. After much research, I had decided to buy Wind Telecom data cards, but couldn’t find them at the airport. The Cosmote pack cost over 25 euros. I immediately felt a disconnect, and decided not to buy! At some point in time, we got hungry and chose Negroni from the range of options available for a first taste of Alfa beer and some souvlaki, watching flights go by.

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    The Olympic Air (recently acquired by Aegean) was tiny and reminded me of Air Deccan. The air hostesses wore a very chic uniform though. I also discovered the species who have been reading mutual fund disclaimers on Indian television ads – Greek pilots. And I’m told Malayalam is fast. Some peanuts and Coke and an hour later, we were at the Rhodes airport, located right next to the sea.  This was around the time I discovered that I’d be carrying our luggage and could expect no help from drivers. When I asked for help, they looked at me like I was speaking Greek. Oh wait…

    The drive to our accommodation – Atlantis City Hotel – showed us what seemed a calm, peaceful, idyllic town, with small well populated and commercial stretches. We wondered if we’d have to travel all this way the next day. It took us only 20 minutes to reach the hotel, and we made our way to the room in the tiniest lift I’ve seen. Wifi was available in the reception and dining area. The room itself was small, but functional and neat, with a little balcony overlooking the street. The location was awesome, and we immediately went out in search of the three restaurants we had shortlisted for dinner.

    Agalma, though more difficult to locate, appealed to us more than the higher rated Kerasma and Tamam. (both were within 300m of our hotel, check this list for options) After beckoning us in, they proceeded to ignore us for a while, but were very apologetic when they brought the menu. I asked for a Cider and D chose the house wine. The cider was great and the wine was a little meh. A Giouvetsi got me victory in the second round too as D wasted most of her salad. But in everyone’s defense, she was quite sleepy and the food took a long while getting to the table, accompanied by apologies.

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    The walk back to the hotel made me realise how utterly unprepared I was in terms of clothing choices. I thought 19-20 C was pleasant, and had an all-summer shorts+ tee sets packed with not a single jacket/sweater or even a pair of denims, and here I was, shivering! My nightmares, understandably, were about freezing to death and becoming history in Greece!

  • The Storyteller of Marrakesh

    Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya 

    The book begins with the proposition that there is no truth, and only opinion. This is a fundamental premise of the book and important from the perspective of its narration. Hassan, the primary narrator begins his story at the Jemaa el Fna, surrounded by his listeners, the motive behind the narration supposedly to prove the innocence of his brother Mustafa, who is in jail for a crime he seemingly did not commit. It involves the disappearance of an exceedingly beautiful woman who tantalised all the square’s inhabitants and visitors, when she made an appearance along with her male companion.

    Though Hassan starts the narration, some of his listeners add their versions of what happened on the night of the event, some contradictory, some corroborative. There are arguments, and debates of what actually happened and truth being an opinion is brought out many a time.

    The narrative shifts gears all the while, as speakers delve deep into their pasts for explanations, and Hassan himself highlights events of his past to give the listeners an insight into his and Mustafa’s lives and behaviour. The prose is elaborate, and vivid enough to be almost considered poetry as the author describes people, places and events in all their textures and facets. It is by no means a racy read nor is it gripping in narrative pace. As Hassan himself says, if that’s the kind of entertainment you want, you’re better off at a cinema. It’s not an easy style to get used to, but no harm in giving it a shot!

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  • Agile @ Scale

    Prelude

    I think I used ‘dis-aggregated social network‘ on this blog for the first time in 2009, referring to Google’s basket of services that were connected relatively flimsily then. IMO, Google has always been that way, even including Google+. (read) I remembered it when I tweeted this about Facebook – around the time news of their Fan Audience Network started trickling in.

    It got me thinking (again) on ‘scale’, a recurring theme here. In a less complicated world, where the trends in the business landscape were significantly more linear, (growth, competition, consumption, economy) scale was a powerful weapon to wield. But it’s a different world now. Artificial Intelligence, 3D Printing, Internet of Things, Wearables  and a hundred other things might completely disrupt the status quo and the need an incumbent brand satisfies. These are the known ones, and then there are the conceptually invisible (at this point) ones. Surviving (let alone thriving) in this shifting scenario requires agility, and it is difficult (though not impossible) to see scale and agility together. I looked to Google and Facebook for an approach towards this because not only are they surviving, they seem to be thriving. Yes, we’ll get to Amazon in a while.

    What does it take to be agile at scale? I can think of four ingredients, the last three repurposed from the title of this post by JP Rangaswami.

    Purpose

    I remember talking about re-defining of scale at the Dachis Social Business Summit. The thrust of the presentation was that brands could engage consumers at scale only if they use currencies that create value for the user in the context of a shared purpose. I have elaborated it in this post at Medianama. Recently, I saw that Hugh MacLeod has brought it out beautifully here. Simply put

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    (via)

    Possibilities

    The purpose need not have one constant rendition. As the landscape changes, a business will need to adapt it to suit changing circumstances. For that, a business needs to understand the possibilities. I saw a very good line in this post about being a maker – the more you work in the future, the less competition you will have. How much into the future a business needs to be working is subjective and depends on its dynamics, but if it doesn’t disrupt itself, someone else will gladly do it for them. (“The Jeff Bezos School of Long-Term Thinking” is a good read in this context)

    Platforms

    While purpose and possibilities are all good at high altitudes, a business also needs strong operational  platforms to back it up. As organisations scale, I have seen two things that affect agility. One, the processes that are introduced to create efficiency @ scale more often than not, become the goal instead of a means, slowing things down and taking away from actual goals. Two, as processes and manpower increase, silos are created. The good news is that it is easy to see technology platforms bringing more efficiency into processes as well as an iterative way of thinking in the near future. It is already happening in marketing. This, and many other factors are also dictating a consumer experience driven approach and are forcing organisations to break silos. As the entire brand/organisation becomes a platform (read) that regularly revisits its context and purpose in the life of a consumer, ‘everything becomes a node on the network‘

    People

    HuffPo had a post sometime back, citing Zappos, calling 2014 the year of workplace reinvention. It is interesting to note that parent company Amazon has apparently aped Zappos’ ‘pay to quit’ policy, even as more and more stories about working there being a ‘soul crushing experience‘ are coming out. Meanwhile, the two points it mentioned for this to happen are purpose and trust. These I’d say are the bedrock of culture. It’s intuitive that a workforce mindful of the organisation’s purpose and their role in it would keep an eye out for the business’ possibilities, be ready to work beyond silos towards a great consumer experience, and bring in others who would help the business scale. This, along with purpose, has to be the glue that holds it all together, enabling the organisation to move fast without cracking.

    While different sectors are at disparate distances from a radical shift necessitated by technological developments, it is, I think, inevitable. In this fantastic post titled ‘Knowledge is faster than mortar‘, which looks at scale through a different lens, the author makes the point that ‘the old mechanisms don’t fit the new social structure.‘ Old mechanisms were built to scale stability, new ones will have to be built to scale despite instability. Anti-fragile, so to speak. Indeed, we will see many manifestations as existing structures try to adapt – internal mechanisms like Amazon’s 2 pizza rule, consumer facing disaggregation like Facebook that have a corresponding internal wiring, or brands tweaking their 4Ps even further for different contexts. But whatever paths businesses choose, this will hold true

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    until next time, the fast and the curious

  • Infinitea, Indiranagar

    I’ve been to the Cunningham Road version a couple of times, and am a bigger fan of its ambiance than the food served. D has not been there and such occurrences (me having visited places that she has not)  don’t sit well with her. Unfortunately, Cunningham Road is a little away from our part of the universe, so I have dillydallied. Sometime back, she triumphantly announced that she had seen an Indiranagar version and that left me with no excuses. So we landed there one Sunday noon. When going from Koramangala, take the left turn after the Domlur flyover, you’ll see the outlet on your right a bit before this road meets 12th Main. Enough lanes around to park peacefully.

    The space is considerably lesser than the Cunningham Road outlet, and limited to one floor, though there are alfresco and indoor seating options. The ambiance retains some of the quirkiness, though this is less of the elegant tea room than the other outlet. But they have done their best given the space constraints. The menu is the same, and we asked for pots of Choco Ginger and Vanilla Oolong. The first one had a chocolate aroma that proved that the way to man’s heart can also be through his nose. The taste though was skewed towards the ginger. The second one had really subtle flavours and D didn’t care for it much.

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    We decided to skip starters and began with a Cream of Mushroom and Chicken soup. It was slightly thinner than we’d have liked, but it wasn’t stingy with the cream, and with a dash of pepper, we learned to like it. For the main course, we ordered a Chicken Tetrazzine and a Baked Fish Parmigiano. The Tetrazzine was a baked dish with spaghetti and a cream sauce. The cheese was strong with this one, but the sauce again felt a tad diluted and bland. The fish dish was relatively better, because there was some tang thanks to the red sauce and tomatoes. This one too was generous with the cheese, and left us with just enough space for a Crillon Cake. Dark, flourless chocolate cake with whipped cream which floored us. Fantastic end to an otherwise average meal.

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    The service was quite prompt, the ambiance is pleasant enough, and the meal left us lighter by only Rs.1470 including service tax and charge. That was quite reasonable, given the location.

    Infinitea, 26, ESI Hospital Road, HAL 2nd Stage, Indiranagar, Ph: 41265258