• Careless People

    Sarah Wynn-Williams

    As someone who has worked with founders in the startup space for over a decade and a half, the megalomania, the lack of empathy, and the moral bankruptcy in Careless People all seemed familiar. But Sarah Wynn-Williams’s first person account is about arguably the biggest phenomenon that has hit culture in the last decade and a half – social media, and specifically, the biggest player in it – Meta (then Facebook). She worked at Facebook from 2011 until her termination in 2017, the time when Facebook went from infancy to a full-blown global power base.

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  • Andrea’s Brasserie

    Andrea’s Brasserie happened because sometime in August we figured that Bangalore was done with the rains and we could safely visit Phoenix Mall of Asia without carrying swimming trunks. There are quite a few other options there, but many of them were also present in our suburb Phoenix, and we weren’t in the mood for Asian. (though my nieces had Bubble Tea and Korean snacks to prepare their appetites!)

    The place is fairly compact, but I liked what they did with it – the peppiness of the decor and the comfortable seating made it seem more expansive than it was. We chose a cosy, corner.

    Andrea's Brasserie, Phoenix Mall of Asia, Bangalore
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  • Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution

    Cat Bohannon

    There is a choice we make when we use the word ‘mankind’ when we should be using humankind, or even better, humanity. ‘Eve’ is a good reminder, and the sub-heading – How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution – is exactly what the book is about. Cat Bohannon gives us a lot of insights into the pivotal role of the female body in the evolutionary story, in a sweeping and provocative narrative that questions the ‘male bias’ in science and medicine at large, and offers the story of human evolution as told through the female body.

    The book is structured chronologically across 200 million years, and drives the story through the story of specific body parts, processes, and mechanisms. ‘Eve traces the evolution of women’s bodies, from tits to toes, and how that evolution shapes our lives today.’ In that process, we get insights on why women live longer, why they menstruate, are female brains different, and the very interesting question of whether sexism is useful for evolution.

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  • Szentendre

    The original plan for a day trip from Budapest was Eger, but thankfully D did her research and replaced that with Szentendre. The little town is a melting pot of several different cultures, almost like a mini version of Budapest itself, and that makes it quite perfect for almost every taste – churches, museums, cobblestone streets, varied cuisines, galleries, picturesque Danube river views and so on.

    How to get to Szentendre

    And all you need to do is take a < 1 hour train ride, on that cutesy HEV thing below from Batthyány tér, which happened to be a short walk from our hotel. No changing trains, but you essentially get two tickets for it – one for the city limits which you validate by punching it in the machine inside the train, and the other for the ticket checker (yes, this person exists) for the portion outside the city limits. The ticket machine at the road level makes all this a breeze.

    Batthyány tér train to Szentendre
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  • Budapest

    We had heard many good things about Budapest from friends who had been there, and it didn’t disappoint at all. We flew from Warsaw to Budapest, the flight time was like going from Bangalore to Kerala!

    Where to stay in Budapest

    Buda side for a laid-back ambience, and Pest side for more vibrance. We preferred the former, and thus back in the arms of the Radisson Group in Park Plaza. A bit of checkin time snootiness and a membership flex later, we were in our Danube-facing room.

    Park Plaza Budapest

    …which we chose over the Castle View on the other side of the hotel

    Buda Castle
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