• The Old Fashioned Bar

    I have now figured out the right time to travel cross-country in Bangalore – long weekends. So when it was clear that shopping would take us to Koramangala – shopping the good old fashioned way that is – we decided to mix it with our other favourite pastime – eating (and drinking) out. Choosing a place in Koramangala, especially when the number of restaurants in the neighbourhood is inching closer to the number of people living there, wasn’t an easy task. But I liked the name ‘Old Fashioned” and a quick look at the food menu gave me enough choices to suggest it to D.

    It was only on the way that she informed me that they had more than a dozen kinds of Old Fashioned – my favourite drink! She also had her eye on a special Christmas menu they had. They have a typical old-school pub set up – plush seating, dim lights – and unfortunately, a hat tip to current times in the form of a giant screen. I know, I sound old! 😐

    The place has two floors but the upper one would only open at 9, we were told. Towards the end of our visit, we did go upstairs to use the restroom. A few tables were occupied, and it was hardly 7.30! We did get a nice, small table overlooking the road though. Meanwhile, D was miffed because the staff seemed unaware of the Christmas menu (which was on Zomato!) Thankfully, the menu had enough options for us to still make a good meal out of it.

    After much deliberation, I chose the 1881 Old Fashioned. D’s original choice – Buttercups – wasn’t available, so she went into Hulk mode and asked for a Gin Basil Smash. D had told me that the 1881 was the strongest Old Fashioned they had, but my first drink was fairly mild. The second one (thanks to a Zomato Gold 2+2 on drinks) however was strong. D’s drink had lime juice in addition to the obvious ingredients and packed a punch.

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  • AI: Artificial Instincts

    In Regression Planning, I wrote on whether we could re-learn the skills we have outsourced if events force us to. I read The Book of M recently, and it led me in a different direction on the same subject. The book is fiction set in a dangerous future, where people lose their shadows. What starts as a curiosity takes a dangerous turn when they realise that with the shadow goes memories. All kinds of memories – from their life thus far to the knowledge that they have to eat to survive. The extreme case is forgetting how to breathe. Imagine feeling suffocated and ultimately dying when all that’s needed is to draw a breath. Yes, it’s extreme and yes, it’s fiction. And isn’t that just instinct, you would ask. Yes, again.

    Yuval Noah Harari writes in”21 lessons from the 21st century” about how in March 2012, three Japanese tourists in Australia drove their car into the Pacific Ocean, thanks to their unwavering trust in the GPS. Apparently it kept saying it would navigate them to a road! You could shake your head and quote Einstein on the infiniteness of human stupidity, but I don’t think it’s that simple. A better question to ask would be why they didn’t trust their intuition.

    We all have intuitions and intelligence that we develop over a period of time. We become smart, or that’s how it’s supposed to work! But is that really so now? The smartphone was only the first step. Devices and even ambient environments are becoming smart. In a few decades we have moved from machines that help in physical tasks to systems that are taking over cognitive tasks, something Kevin Kelly has written about in The Inevitable. We’re increasingly outsourcing intelligence. The silver lining is that we’re at least trying to ensure it stays comprehensible to us!

    Instagram, Facebook, Tinder, Spotify, Netflix, Amazon – everything is a feed of recommendations, whether it be social interactions, music, content or shopping! Once upon a time, these were conscious choices we made. These choices, new discoveries, their outcomes, the feedback loop, and the memories we store of them, all worked towards developing intuition. Beneath the cognitive skills we display externally is the wiring, and as the saying goes, Neurons that fire together, wire together. I think we’re now in the process of firing intuition and outsourcing it to algorithms. I don’t know what will happen first – advances in cognitive neuroscience, or the outsourcing. The hope is that they will happen in parallel and we will make choices about them after conscious reasoning.

    Intelligence, intuition and instincts. The journeys in the first two are what have gotten the third hardwired into our biology and chemistry. When we cut off the pipeline to the first two, what happens to the third, and where does it leave our species? What is the organism that has artificial instincts?

  • Never Let Me Go

    Kazuo Ishiguro

    This is only the second Kazuo Ishiguro book I am reading. But I found at least a few parallels from The Remains of the Day. For starters, both books left me incredibly sad. Some of it is for the plight of the characters, and some of it is do with the other commonality in both the books – the awareness of what could have been. Another thing I noticed is how the principal characters of both books develop a different perspective when they drive through the English countryside.

    Barring this, the books are quite different. (mild #spoilers ahead) This one is set in quite a dystopian future – humans are cloned for organ harvesting, raised in environments that don’t allow a lot of interaction with the outside world, not really made aware of their future, and are not even considered to be real humans capable of feelings and emotions. The focus of the book, though, is on three characters , their relationship with each other, and the world around them.

    It doesn’t really start off with a lot of intensity. The beginning, though it alternates between different phases in the narrator’s life, has a very Malory Towers feel to it (I thought) with different teachers (guardians), the institution and its myths and norms, and the relationship between them and the students, and between the students themselves with their friendships and rivalries. But even that early, one can catch the difference – a clear one being the exhibitions and the “gallery”, both of which are a forum for the students’ creative expression – and this does turn out to be an important theme in the book. The book then traces the life of these students as they step out into a different environment and progressively take up their prescribed roles in society.

    It left me thinking on quite a few things – these humans cannot have children of their own. Is their art supposed to be a means of immortality? But contrast that with how the author dismisses the value of art a couple of times. What are the ‘carers’ and ‘donors’ an allegory for? Is there some sort of parallel for our roles as children and parents, and how both of them, in a way, contribute to us not being a version of ourselves that we could be if they weren’t in our lives? And to end, the bittersweet irony of humans without emotions becoming carers and donors, and exhibiting a complex set of feelings that are on par, if not rival that of the humans they are ‘serving’.

    This is one of those books that drew me in, and without a lot of fuss and theatrics, engaged me in a deep way. Loved it.

  • MeMo

    It’s been a while, but that’s the way it always has been with us. I am posting this on a day when I know I’d have heard from you. Some years you’d call, some years you’d WhatsApp, and the last couple of years, you took to Twitter just so you could needle me.

    Twitter was our playground. We had our own language, I remember people getting irritated by it! I was always in awe of you, and your sublime words and ideas. It didn’t begin on Twitter though, it began with a comment on a blog. But it did end on Twitter, and it speaks about how out of touch I was, that I got to know when someone added me to a conversation.

    On that day, many people reached out to me, asking me if I was ok. I was, but I wasn’t, and ironically, I felt you’d be the only person who could understand what I was going through.  But I went through the motions – I tweeted about you, retweeted those posts about you, and signalled normalcy. (more…)

  • Wanderers

    Not all who wander have lists, but we do. It was Oktoberfest and we had decided to visit as many breweries as we could. So off we went to Kalyan Nagar, which as I’ve said before, is a place we enjoy visiting. This time, we also got to witness the famous (or infamous) “white topping”, because 7th Main, where Wanderers is located, was being subjected to it!

    We found the ground floor a little too closed, despite the landscape drapes! The next floor was not yet open, and so we sat on the rooftop, which we quite liked, despite me being underdressed for surgical strikes. A pedestal fan and mosquito coils helped.

    We began with Cauvery’s Bliss and Erica. The first is a Pilsner style Lager. Crisp and slightly bitter, it was medium hop and went down smoothly. But we liked the latter more – Kölsch style ale, again medium hop. From what seemed an elaborate menu then, we asked for Assam’s Ghost Chili Balls. The filling was chicken spiced with chili beans and tossed in soy sauce. This was a very good beer companion though it took a while getting to the table.

    Zomato had a 2+2 offer on drinks, so we ordered another Erica and a Wanderer’s Weizen, which was essentially a Hefeweizen.  The Jamaican Pulled Pork Sliders weren’t available, so we tried a Liver Peppers. That’s when we first encountered the curry leaves fetish. At first, it didn’t bother us. But it hit us hard in the Coorgi Pork, which was a replacement for Australia’s Meat Pie, another dish that existed only on paper. Check out the images below, those two dishes are practically twins!

    For an artisan cafe, the desserts were pretty standard, so we skipped. After all, we have our own artisanal fare at Bloomsbury near home! The bill came to a little less than Rs.1550. The service was quite friendly, though a warning on the twins would have been nice.

    Wanderers, 7th Main, 1st Block, HRBR Layout, Kalyan Nagar Ph: 25455225