text:
A wannabe polymath's page
Hey there, thanks for stopping by!
I am just another mediocre person trying to break the shackles of mediocrity by doing a bunch of things - Well, it has been over 3.5 decades but still no real improvement seems to be visible. But try one should, ain't it?
Over the years, I have developed an interest in a few disparate areas through my work, reading and by generally by having lived for more than three and a half decades.
Areas as disparate as -- (all branches of) Psychology, (any kind of) Philosophy, Life Hacking, Human Development, Cognitive Biases, Behavioral Economics, Media, Story Telling, Personal Finance, World History, Indian History, Right Vs Left debates, Buddhism, Stoicism, Business Strategy, Disruption Theory, Product Management, Consumer Behavior, Experience Design, (Information) Technology -- interest me, some more than another at any given time of the day.
(Oh sure, I have listed down some sub-branches separately - like Stoicism, even if Philosophy exists already - but that just means I like it more)
I hope & believe that someday I will be able to connect these dots (create a latticework, if you like complex words) and do something useful with those. Whether such a day comes or not, I hope I continue this pursuit like a Sisyphus. Not out of any motive to serve the humankind - just because it gives me a (however false) impression that I am breaking away from the shackles of mediocrity.
Sometimes I try to codify what I learnt and offer my own perspectives through some writing as well. And before I forget, I also claim to be a bit creative & humorous (& generally surround myself with people who agree with me on such matters) and indulge in some far and few between creative writing.
As a product of my times, I have done most of these writings on most of the popular Internet services.
What you find in these pages is an aggregation of all those. Nothing more.
If you are interested in my Professional life, just go to LinkedIn on the side menu.
If you are interested in my Personal life, I am an INTJ in Myer Biggs. Need I say more?
This is a well summarized note about the Indian market on several aspects! A few more thoughts (added as comment there):
Vroom opens 'Virtual Reality' centers for used cars:
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Good write up this. I believe companies like "Blue Apron" would work well — Wonder why no one has attempted it in India as yet.
Found this article in Medianama today:
Excellant visualization/classification of bots & messaging by Vision Mobile. Kudos!
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This blog has a new home at Medium.
Please visit: https://medium.com/@techynotions
I had a sort of funny experience with PayTM recently. Which also gave one good lesson around product design.
(Okay, if you came here looking for some serious thing, sorry. This is for fun - not silly though).
I have long been religiously switching off the 'location' feature in my Nexus. I switch it on only when needed by an app desperately. Or when I need it desperately - like using Google Maps. At all other times, it is switched off. Biggest (rather only) reason is the battery consumption - My own estimates puts it at about 20% more time the charge lasting without location on. That is, if I charge every 18 hours without location, I need to do it 15 hours with location turned on.
Even with apps like Shifu or IFTTT that use location in smart ways - location based reminders, I have been uncomfortable using them regularly.
Now - I have changed my mind.
I now have a "killer feature" for location that I am happy to trade off my battery usage. And happy to charge it again.
It is - SMART LOCK in Android.
CREO secures $3M to build an India centric smartphone OS (Source)
I usually get excited hearing some news about India centric stuff, more so about language. But this time, I feel it is a lost opportunity. Do not really know how language would be brought in to (standard) Android, notwithstanding the likes of Reverie.
I would like to be proved wrong.
Here is a new experiment towards the end of the year - at Podcasting.
I intend to do interviews with product managers in several companies in India, large & small over 2016 (on what else, but product management). This is the first.
If you want to quickly jump to the interview, just scroll down & look for the link in big fonts. What follows in the next paragraph is my experiment.
Well, since I have no clue on how to do podcasts (& lazy enough as of now to learn), I just did a recording with my phone's voice recorder, converted it into MP3 and that is about it.
And then I realized that it is a lot of hard work:
"3D Touch" is the new "Force Touch" (Craig Federighi slipped at one point, saying "force" before correcting himself.) I've seen concerns that this overcomplicates the iPhone's UI design, but I would argue the opposite. It's the multi-touch equivalent of keyboard shortcuts on the desktop: shortcuts for tasks that can all be accomplished without it. To use the old parlance, 3D Touch is for power users.
The taptic feedback feels great. Apple calls the two levels "peek" and "pop". They definitely feel different. Peek is like the half-press on a camera shutter to auto-focus, and pop is the full-press to take a picture. Pop feels stronger. And, for 3D touch UI elements that only have one level, you feel the pop right away, giving you haptic feedback that you need not try pressing harder, because you're already all the way in. The taptic engine also serves as the vibrator for notifications, and I suspect that's going to be a big improvement over the rinky-dink vibrator in every iPhone since the iPhone 4.
Jobs smiled and replied: "Your thumbs will learn."
An article on iPhone 6s says that it is going to have a 3d touch screen - where a user can tap, press or deep-press.
Available Here: http://9to5mac.com/2015/09/05/iphone-6s-3d-touch-screen/
First up, deep-press is sort of unintuitive, ain't it? Back in my Multi-Function Printer (touch & even non-touch) interface days at Samsung, we used to call it 'Long Press'. No tap per se, press and long press. Simple tapping gets you nothing on a button.
Leave that, let us just hope it does not grow in newer versions to be deeper press, deepest press and so on, such that your finger will be seen on the other side of the phone. HaHa.
New to the Force Touch experience, a user can look up a point of interest in the Maps application, and then Force Touch on the destination to immediately begin turn-by-turn directions. Currently, if a user wants to start navigating to a destination, she must search for the point of interest, click the navigation logo on the map view, then click another button to actually start navigating. In this case, the Force Touch gesture will skip two steps.
In the Music application, a user can Force Touch on a listed track to be presented with some of the most commonly used actions. For instance, if a user deep presses on the listing for a song, a menu will appear to quickly add the song to a playlist or save it for offline listening. This Force Touch gesture would act as a substitute for clicking the actions button on the right side of each track listing in the Music app.
Another feature in testing, according to one source, are shortcuts that appear after Force Touching an app icon on the Home screen. For example, if a user deep presses on the Phone app icon, he could choose to shortcut directly to the Voicemail tab. This could also apply to deep pressing the News app icon and being taken directly to either the Favorites or For You tabs.
Some of the Force Touch gestures will come from Apple's latest MacBooks. For instance, a user can Force Touch a link in Safari to see a preview of that webpage. The gesture also works for deep pressing on an address or contact name to see a preview of a map view or contact card, respectively. Similarly, a user can Force Touch a word to look up its definition.With these examples, 'deep press' simply looks a lot like 'Right Click' on a PC ain't it? So what would be others?
Several times, mid way through the reading of an article (within a browser), I tend to 'Save to Pocket'. When I open the same article in Pocket, it opens from the start - so I get confused if this is an article that I have finished reading & still have not archived it (to share with someone over email once in office / pick up & drop an insight to Evernote for future planning etc. before archiving) or if part of it is still unread.
This is not to be confused with what happens when I read it within Pocket and leave mid-way. In such cases, Pocket remembers where I left and opens it directly there when I get it to it next (just like how Kindle remembers the location you were last reading). What I am talking here is the reading I did before it went into Pocket. This means the Chrome Extension / Bookmarklet should have the intelligence to know which part of the page I was at while saving it. Pocket could directly jump to that section of the page when I open it, leaving the top portion collapsed (& allow me to expand) or just let scroll up if I need more context.
Another useful feature within Pocket would be to add a short note to a saved article on why it is saved there (apart from reading, that is, haha). I can use it for adding little notes like 'Share with xyz, Pick-up abc insight & implement on your product etc.
I have used Instapaper and Pocket, both do not seem to have these. Know of any service which can handle this?
Why is there no standard 'Undo' action in Android, like in a PC? I mean, like the 'Control + Z' action. I am aware that a lot of apps have 'Undo' action as part of their 'Toast Notifications' (I use it all the time with Pocket when I accidentally Archive something) but even that is for a brief while.
Read this first:
The point claimed in the article is perfectly right. That is, though Micromax has gone with Cyanogen, every service in it is Google. And that Sailfish does not have any Google Service.
However, the question is - Are there enough players in the Indian ecosystem to provide the services that Google does? The article mentions Times Internet & Snapdeal. They are good for Content (more so Entertainment) and E-Commerce respectibely. How does everything else offered by GMS get covered? At the minimum: Email, Apps Store, YouTube & Maps.
These are areas where the Chinese players like Xiaomi are at an advantage in their local market - Such services are already available in a good form & shape. Google is virtually non-existent there. We do not have as good services in India, do we?
And to the point about India is a virgin market and Google has not penetrated. Fair enough, but the actual virgin portion of India does not understand English. Which means we need to first develop an OS in other languages, make it popular and then add services to it. Are we really up to it?
On Android, why is there no facility to DISABLE 3rd party apps?
I disable all the pre-installed, un-uninstallable bloat-ware anyways (in spite of owning a Nexus, there are indeed a few bloat-ware, like Google Playbooks).
However, I want to disable a few 3rd party apps too - though they are uninstallable.
Your question - why don't you simply uninstall them, is valid.
Here is my use-case:
I have 4 taxi booking apps. My use of them is not daily. It is more like once in a month or once in 2 months. When I need it, it helps to check all 4 for availability but then their notifications (which I block) / updates (which I try to ignore but Google Play keeps bothering me) annoy me. Then comes their battery sucking aspect, which irritates me. Why can't they all just shut up till I open myself instead of trying to do something in the background?
I use quite some Apps Stores and Video related (in general Content related) apps as part of my work. These are also not used daily - May be one or two of them in a week. On an average, I may use each of them once a month or so. Again, notifications / updates / battery sucking.
Why not let me DISABLE these and ENABLE them when I need? If I (forcibly) need to update them when I want to use, please ask me to and I will be happy.
Recent experience of mine using THE HINDU app provided these insights:
(1) If you are a content focused app, you want the user to be in your app for a long time so you keep showing things like 'Similar Content', 'Recommended for you' and so on. However, it is important that the main content loads first. Before that, if you show 'Similar Content', it gets annoying!
(2) Your 'Similar Content' & 'Recommendations' better be something worthwhile and interesting - Otherwise, it gives a sort of irritation that might get associated with your overall app. It builds up over time but it definitely does.
(3) "News from Around the Web" might earn you some money. But most of the times, it is irritating. Your user might not really be interested in knowing "15 most beautiful women in the world" all the time
(4) When your user presses BACK button from any of the pages, be very graceful and come back to exactly the same page/position where the user moved from. If you do not come back to the same page/position, it is annoying. What is more annoying is the whole page loading again and the position goes somewhere else. In case of THE HINDU, if I go from Home Page's Opinion section to read an article, I come back to see that the whole Home Page opens again and it goes to the top of the page. Needs 4 scrolls down to come back to the Opinion Page. This does not happen all the time - It happens if I come back to Home Page within a specific time period.
One of the behaviour I noted in myself is that any article I go into, if I find it read-worthy, I immediately Add-to-Pocket since reading it there might screw up my home page return experience. So I do not even read the article I want to, within THE HINDU. Forget 'Similar', 'News from around the web' and so on. I get petrified at the thought of going 2-3 levels deeper.
(5) If you introduce a new section in the home page (which is customizable to start with), provide an easy option to remove it. And you remove it right after that "season" is over. Example: In THE HINDU, "Delhi Assembly Elections", "World Cup 2015", "IPL 2015" kind of sections come in automatically - I am OK with it. But to remove it, I need to go to Settings/Preferences and remove. No way to immediately remove. And this section continues to remain even after the season is over, till I remove
Needless to say, I just picked up on THE HINDU here. It could (& does) apply to any content based app, including some that I have been part of developing/managing!
One of the oft-repeated things we hear is that "Users do not read manuals..."
Which is very true. That is, 99% of the users, 99% of the time. What about 1% of the users, 100% of the time AND 99% of the users, 1% of the time?
I wonder if it is just laziness that causes us to say that "users do not read manuals so we will not make it" than accept that it might be useful somewhere.
The original argument was made to convey that you should not hide under the cover of "it is available in user manual".
But I suspect we end up neither making the product intuitive enough that a user manual is not needed, nor do we provide a user manual for the user to figure out how to use (even that 1%).
PS:: This is after some frustrating attempts with installing some new products (primarily physical) in the last few months.
Picking on the previous post, I wonder why there is no "Discovery API" for Google Play (and App Store). I see only APIs for developers who submit apps. None for someone who wants to showcase apps from Google Play! (Refer)
Is that not an easy way to let 3rd parties become your discovery agents / resellers? The solutions I know of (like Quixey, XYO etc.) do screen-scrapping / crawling of Apps Stores to get details.
Or are there APIs available? Let me check... Hold on. (WIP...)
Quickly for you to box me into something: I do tech products in the mobile domain that manifest as apps & websites. Extremely passionate about product management & consumer behavior, with ambitions of marrying these domains to put a dent in them. Managing product at Eros Digital currently.
Now to details:
I have been working in the technology products space in Bangalore, India since turn of the millennium. During this period, I claim to have built experience in management of what I call 4Ps : Product, Partner (developer!), Project & People.
Before Eros, my last day job involved bringing in new mobile data services for emerging markets. To be specific, I managed Vodafone's Apps Store & Developer Program, Video & Cloud based products in emerging markets of Vodafone - Asia & Africa.
Previously, I was into various product management, project management & software development roles in Samsung Electronics R&D & Wipro Technologies (with Toshiba as the client)
Beyond work, I blog on technology, write stories in English & Tamil and am a (passive) member of the Bangalore chapter of Mensa.
On & off, I have been a reluctant and unsure member of an otherwise vibrant start-up speaker circuit - TiE, NASSCOM, MoMo chapters, YourStory, CSI, Silicon India, Java One, India Product Management Association etc. Recently, I started doing some writing as well for YourStory & NextBigWhat tech blogs.
I have also done guest lectures in IIM Bangalore in the area of Consumer Behavior concepts applied to Product Management.
Do visit http://www.carnivas.com to get a feel of all things I do.
Platform, Partners and beyond.
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Read a super article recently:
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have given. Or worse in one of the stage plays we did in college :)
Haha, I thought only Somasandrapalya was a victim of this! Glad to see even cities in the US going through this issue.
At Somasandrapalya, HSR Layout, there was a planned road that connects 27th Main (a wide road) to Haralur Road (a wide enough road). But a big builder built the play area of their apartment in that path. As it usually happens, it is now getting difficult to get them remove those structures. That connecting road never got built.
However, the need for the connecting road has grown multi fold - So many vehicles including big buses of VIBGYOR school go through narrow lanes of Somasandrapalya and they get thoroughly choked in the morning & evening hours. Thanks to the constant digging of roads by various agencies (recently notorious for multiple digging is GAIL), the narrow lanes only got narrower. And then the rains.
It is just a case of a road not being built and other roads being used, right? How is this related to Waze et al and the story linked above? Read on.
(Image Courtesy: One India)
During a recent protest in Hosur Road by garment workers, these roads suddenly got choked even in the afternoon, even worse than mornings & afternoons - And the culprit was Google maps. As Murphy would have it, it was a day when I had taken off in the afternoon and was coming back from office.
Even as I was stuck there that afternoon (5 mins away from my home but could not leave the car & walk), I noticed a few people in other cars, who all were glued to their Maps app! Google Maps has smartly diverted all incoming traffic from Koramangala side into HSR so that they can avoid the garment factories and directly reach Kudlu, which is further down the road. Sigh! By the time Google Maps would have started showing DARK RED for this route too, enough damage had been done.
I was astounded to see a Tamil Nadu State Bus going to Salem in that road. The driver is either Google Maps savvy or he had a bad advisor in a passenger.
And just as the article says, quite some people 'learnt' these internal routes that day and have started using it regularly. Even after Hosur Road became normal, traffic in these roads continue to be more than usual.
On a larger note, I pity the plight of the 'original inhabitants' of such places (that is, people who have lived more than 10 years back) when they were just villages. First comes gentrification.. And then the flow through traffic too!!
You may see some parallels in this article (though you do not have to read that to continue here)
We Indians (at least the ones in the middle class) have been good clerks throughout our (recent) history. Well, at least from the times of our great grand fathers (when British rule became direct). May be even before that but I really have not done any research. This could as well have some caste related aspects here - about some castes (say Brahmin) being more suited to this than others. But let us not go there and simply generalize this as the middle class. And becoming this clerk was an aspiration to people below the middle class.
For the purposes of this discussion, we can consider a clerical position as something where the job description involves executing a codified set of tasks. It could be less in some cases and more in others. And in some instances you could add value by enhancing the codification. However, you do not face a challenge every moment on what is to be done next. It has been codified by your employer.
The 'Top Professions' talked about in the post linked above is essentially a clerical position, not necessarily a 'Profession' where you get entrepreneurial and run your own stuff. Entrepreneurial stuff was for other classes - the ones above the middle classes did out of their own volition while the ones below out of compulsion since they could not get into any clerical work. Again, there could be caste connotations but we are not going to get in there. Remember, this is for entertainment and is not backed by
serious research of any kind.
So, if we briefly look at what have been the greatest clerical work that we have done, these come to mind.
Now you may wonder that this is a new India with a great entrepreneurial set of young people doing great start-ups all over the place. Oh well, but what if I say these are also clerks who are executing ideas codified by people in the Silicon Valley and that their employers are the Angels & VCs? You really think a lot of the founders have full control over what they do?
Remember, any job that is considered the 'Top Profession' of its day had a certain amount of prestige. Don't you have an uncle who was a proud bank manager in the 80s and a cousin who was a proud employee of IBM in the 90s? Start up founders of the time 2015-2025 may just be the same. That is all I am saying.
They say that there are 2 things that are inevitable - Death & Taxes. I would like to add one more to it - Password Change.
Given the amount of digital services you use, Password Change is going to happen for one service or another that you use, pretty soon & often. Even if you have a fairly complex password and do not want to change it often, in some cases, you will be forced to change it by whoever runs the service - it could be banks & financial institutions or even your office IT security people.
On the last part, it used to be that I would be forced to change my Windows Domain password every 45 days or so. Now, they have started forcing me to change my mobile's lock screen password as well, once in those many days, thanks to Airwatch app, that I need to be able to access emails.
And I am one of those people who cannot stand notifications and change the password the first time the notice appears - It starts appearing 10 days before it expires. Therefore, the life of each password is 35 days for me, instead of 45 days for people who can put up with notifications.
After changing my Windows (after 35 days) & Lockscreen (after 6 months since this is a new policy now) passwords in quick succession, there are several things that I have noted:
These typically are the steps involved in the process:
Based on these thoughts, I have framed this law, which shall be called 'Carnivas Law of Password Change' henceforth
Sooner you change your password, sooner your fingers forget them.
This is truer for passwords used more often.
So if you wish to be a human and want your brain to be used often (instead of the muscle taking care of all you need), do change your passwords often. And yeah, there are productivity benefits too by avoiding the wrong password entries all the time.
As my daughter starts to learn typing stuff in my laptop (& struggling to find out where which key was), I was wondering why are we even teaching alphabets to children in the usual order of A…Z. Why not Q…M?
First I thought this would be a funny post to put in Facebook / Tumblr. After all, there should be some serious reason why ABC is in that order, right? Just for keyboard reasons, we cannot be changing all that. So it indeed is silly.
After all, the Indian consonants (Tamil / Hindi) of Ka, Cha, Ta, Tha, Pa actually produce sounds from the throat to the lip in an order. Like that there should be something about ABC as well.
Turns out, there is nothing like that. Or nothing that we know of.
See this Mental Floss post:
So if there is no reason why it is in that order, is it not high time we change the way we teach? We can as well change all the ABC, Phonics songs to suit QWE.
Sing with me - QWERTYU… IOPASDFGH… JKL… ZXC… VB… N & M… Now I know my QWE… Next time won't you sing with me!
If we do not, I am telling you, we are going to look silly in front of our future generations!
You have been warned.
About a decade back, 'Garamond Regular 12 Size' used to be my font of choice. So much so that my friends / colleagues from that period identify me with that and think I would still be using it. This was when the default font of apps like MS Office used to be Times New Roman (Or was it Arial).
But Garamond has gone out of favour in my head for a while now. So much so that I cannot even think of using it now - it looks ugly.
Then it was Tahoma/Verdana for a while and then with Windows 7 / Office 2010 combo, I settled for Calibri. Even though Calibri is the default and used by everyone, I was OK with it.
While I still do not think it is ugly or something, I have been experimenting with other fonts. The other day, a colleague sent a mail in Times New Roman (14 size) and it suddenly looked beautiful. TNR with 12 size still looks ugly though.
I wonder what is it that causes this preference and change of preference in me - Does not look like fad / fashion / bandwagon effect. There is something more at work here. When I get to do some serious research on that, will do a post on it on Medium.
They say an intrepreneur is like an entrepreneur but works within a company. What is the equivalent of employee then? Is that imployee? Are employees those people who work (even) outside the office and imployees are people who work (only) inside? Or do we call imp-ishpeople that slack at work (like Wally of Dilbert strip) as "IMP"-loyees?
Last week, in separate conversations with two friends, I learnt these from their observations:
First friend/conversation/observation: This man travels a lot. Which means he uses public toilets a lot. His observation: Even the smelliest loo (where you really feel like puking the moment you enter) starts to get bearable once your own excreta flows into it.
Second friend/conversation/observation: This man has been part of a volatile product development team with a lot of team changes in the past year. His observation: Even the worst critic of a product / project / process starts to accept that it is not all that bad once he becomes a part of the project & has been part of a few decisions.
See the connection?
PS:: Though two consecutive posts are of similar nature, there is no real attempt in making this a toilet humour related blog. Trust me.
Whenever we wish to replace one habit with another, we are unnecessarily bogged down by the pressure of -
Over years, I have learnt that the best way to handle this is to mentally acknowledge all the problems, take a deep abdominal breadth and keep your inner child at peace. Then take up one concern after another and address.
Hope this experience was helpful to you.
Wait, why this self-help BS here? Fits neither the blog nor the author's personality, ain't it? Was this not supposed to at least try to be funny? Wasted a few minutes of my life. And what is the shit about 'cleaning' that we see in the title?
Exactly - It is coming:
If you are regular follower of this blog, you would know that I started using this product in 2013. Given the Indian culture of using a mug or a faucet, this was a difficult habit to switch to (even if restricted to travel). I went through all the emotions mentioned above.
Nearly two years and 5 travels later, I can attest to you that none of them exist and I have successfully switched to the new habit. As outlined above, I always keep the old habit as an option (for the reassurance), fears of physical/mental pains have vanished and with respect to more resources, I can vouch that even my reliance on the product is diminishing day by day, though not completely removed.
Now the title makes sense, no?
The apartment complexes that I have lived have all had a not-so-great ratio of gym equipments versus the number of households. Rather, the ratio of "working" equipments versus the households. Given the quality of equipments provided by the most generous and trustworthy builders, anywhere between 40-60% of the equipments would not function at any point in time. During the first few days after an AMC renewal, you would find them all working. Then one after another stops functioning till the long term average of 50% is reached, in a few days.
This would be status quo till the next renewal happens after 2 years (yes, the 'annual' renewal is done every 2 years, usually with another vendor, at a higher cost, nudged by a newbie in the apartment). Unlike say elevator maintenance, the job of the companies that do gym equipment maintenance is easy - Just visit a couple of times with a proposal, then collect money, that is all. No one would bother unless all the equipments, nay all the treadmills (the only equipment regularly used) break.
This aspect extends to other devices as well in the gym, like wall clocks, weighing machines etc. They function for a few days in a year. Batteries of weighing machines get changed whenever a resident does an air travel and suspects his luggage is heavier than allowed. Needless to say, right after checking, the original batteries are put back. So if you need a chance to check your weight in the gym, wait for such a short-burst of time when the machine has working batteries.
Coming back to the original story: In spite of the ratio being low, it is usually not a great concern. You think this is because there are not enough people interested in using the gym. Right? You are wrong. It is because of a clan-ish organizational culture at display there, that follows the Goldilocks principle. Let me explain!
It is not that people are not interested - There are two times in a year when there is a sudden rush in the apartment gym. This is January and in May-June. As you easily guessed, January is the time when many new year resolutions happen and many people start hitting the gym. May-June is the time when a lot of tenants vacate and new tenants come in (academic year closure/beginning). The new tenants always want to explore everything in their new apartment complex/locality and gym is not an exception.
Now, why does this rush not continue to the rest of the year? What happens to these people? You would be right to think that boredom hits people, people are inherently lazy etc. so as days go by, their new year resolutions get diluted, their curiosity about the new place recedes, and so on. However, those reasons are not all of it. The primary culprit is elsewhere - It is because Gym users follow the Goldilocks principle. Will you now allow me to explain please?
Before that, let us try to classify gym users. They come in 3 types:
"Heavy/Power/Serious" users, "Moderate" users and "Low/Naive/New/Timid" users. The names are self-explanatory so I will not get into details. If you have monthly running statistics of the number of users who hit the gym, you will find that 'Moderate' users are in a constant number throughout the year. While the number of Heavy & Low users would be high in January/May/June than the rest of the months. To confirm your previous belief, you would think that this is obvious about "Low" users - They get in due to euphoria that follows a new year or when they move to a new place so they automatically drop off. You may be slightly confused about why "Heavy" users as well leave but may conclude that it is because of the lack of good equipment. You are indeed right, but only partially. Then? I better explain now!!
It is because of the clan-ish behavior of the 'Moderates'. They are moderates only in their usage of their gym. In their behavior towards others, they are extremists. They consider Heavy users as maniacs and consider Low users as idiots.
Here is how they get rid of them:
If there are 2 moderate users operating together, it is indeed very tough for others to handle. The wry smiles, the glances etc. can wear down even the thickest skinned Heavy.
Over a few days (worst case, in a couple of weeks, slowly may be, but surely), the extremism works. The Heavy guys find the nearest paid-for gym and join that. The Low guys (who already suffer from a case of laziness and the euphoria wearing off) feel threatended to go to the gym and continue with their sleep. The ones who stick beyond that time are then accepted into the Moderates club and they now become part of the clan! And then they are mentored, nurtured and very good cooperation exists, typical of a clan.
This is how the Goldilocks principle gets restored every time!
PS: Do go to your apartment gym and observe the principle in action, season after season.
PPS: And no marks for guessing what sort of a user I am.
If a meeting is scheduled for 18:30, I am usually afraid of my cognitive bias kicking in. That is, I may look at '8' and consider it as 8.30 pm. So I am cautious and tell myself not to fall prey and be clear that it is two hours before 8.30 pm.
Meanwhile there is another process running inside the head which is doing the same thing.
So I come to a conclusion that the meeting is actually at 4.30 pm.
Two hours get reduced two times!
Then something feels wrong and I then waste a few brain cycles to reinforce that it is actually 6.30 pm.
More worryingly, I recently realized that it is not about the 8 in 18 but something beyond that as well.
A conference call had been scheduled for 20:30. I wanted to ensure that it is not 10.30 pm but 8.30 pm. (Did you see that there was no 10 in the original time but still something happened). All well till then.
Suddenly, the second process also did something and I was severaly worried that it was actually 6.30 pm but my brain has fooled me into thinking it as 8.30 pm.
Got it double checked with a couple of colleagues on the actual time. Thankfully both of them told the exact time as "8.30 pm" and did not say things like '2 hours ahead of what you think'.
Else, I would have joined the meeting at 2.30 pm. Sigh!
Do you face this too? If you say No, let us simply conclude that you are too busy to notice these. OK?
PS:: Not sure if the image rendered properly above so one more time, here you go:
Queued? Something new in gmail.
Respect my privacy, really? HaHa.
[This image has nothing to do with the post but people more knowledgeable than me have told that every post should have an image]
This morning, I made a list of places where ToDos hide:
So what if it is already 10 days since the new year began? I am still allowed to write something that was planned for 31-Dec-14 :-) Right?
So, here are some random notes on what I did in 2014.
Like our irrepressible Calvin said once, "A day passes by, by just avoiding doing things of importance". I can straight away say, "Another year passed by, by just avoiding doing things of importance".
PS: Daily Diary was very helpful in pulling a lot of information that were not top-of-the-mind. Well, half of it was from OhLife but then they shut down abruptly and I moved to Daily Diary & started paying them!
This post may sound cheesy but I am anyways going to put it down.
I have started noting that emails we write have attachments. Well, not the ones you do by clicking on the "clip" icon but in the tone of your email. Depending on your own emotion of the moment (mix of confidence, arrogance, anger, negative, positive etc.) the words you use cause a tonal change in the whole message and that affects the recipient's reaction to it.
I have been noticing this time & again with many people - boss, colleagues, business partners and so on. This affects even the closest of the people - friends and family.
That is why it is important to write certain emails when you are in the 'right frame of mind' so that the 'emotional attachment' that it carries creates a positive response.
Many smart marketing people have called this "messaging" when it comes to ad copy and the like. But it occurs even in everyday interactions, is my (valuable!) opinion here. You have anyways wasted a few minutes reading this so waste a few more by thinking about it.
Also, this is beyond the jokes around how you ask questions matters!
PS:: By the way this post has been written in a slightly negative tone with self-deprecation and all, I believe. Quite ironic for a post that was supposed to be on the lines of "Think / Act positive", me thinks.
You know you are 35 when you notice some of these changes in you:
This list is to be updated with more changes that I note in me/people around me… Keep 'em coming if you have more!
Every generation has its own "top profession for the middle-class"
In the past century or so, successive generations in India have seen law, banking, chartered accountancy, software, investment banking as the "top professions for the middle class". My father's generation had 'banking' as the top profession while mine has 'software development'. Anyone who has been in the marriage-market recently would have noted that several would-be-fathers-in-law were 'bankers'. I bet that in 10-15 years from now, people would see a lot of 'Software Developer' fathers-in-law. (Before you ask, my father was not into banking and I was not in the marriage market recently - these are just observations!).
Okay, marriage is not the point of the post. That was just to establish the fact that every generation has a top profession for the middle-class.
Moving on, the more savvy/sincere/lucky people of the generation (Category-1) move into the top profession. For those among them from the lower echelons of the society, life changes forever. Not just them but their family as well. Note that I am still talking about the continuum within the middle class when I mean lower echelons. I am leaving out the rich & poor. This is all about the middle.
Several people (Category-2) also get a sort of 'mobility' by moving to this profession: from rural to urban centers, from one country to another and so on (typically offering a better lifestyle). For such people life undergoes significant transformation over time - They do not realize what is happening (insert frog in boiling water example if you like) and suddenly, they cannot fully relate with their older selves. Typically they struggle to cope with the country-mouse/city-mouse dichotomy for a while before settling down.
By another generation things move beyond measure. That is when "inter-ethnic" marriages begin to happen. (Like say a second generation Indian American marrying a second generation Korean American).
Think software people & the US as a recent example. Closer home and a bit into the past, you could consider Tam-Brahms settled in Mumbai.
Some people (Category-3) go even further and undergo even more drastic changes within their life times. These are the people who were enterprising and went to various parts of the world through the British after 1860s - some of them out of desperation as indentured laborers but many purely in search of opportunities. Even the indentured laborers should be considered more enterprising than their counterparts who died of hunger in their village. I see quite some people of this kind in my visits to Easy & Southern Africa (thanks to whom, I get vegetarian food there).
The rate of assimilation into the adopted country depends on their existing class in their home country which continues into the adopted country. I see several "Indian Group Parties" happening in South Africa and marriages happening only within the community - these are typically from the lower class. Upper classes have already assimilated into the mainstream of the adopted country.
The next and the even smaller set of people (Category-4) are ones that achieve realization through movement from home base - Think Mahatma Gandhi.
Having categorized all of them, let us now let us qualify on how the family benefits. For starters, they have more money and lead a better lifestyle (better food, better commute, better dressing etc.). I have noticed that even the gender discrimination goes lesser and lesser, the farther and farther you go from your base. Seeing Gujju aunties in ultra modern outfits in modern gymnasiums in Nairobi, I wonder if they would have had as much upward mobility had they continued in rural Gujarat. When you see South Indian ladies in their late 30s and 40s living in the US posting stuff in Facebook, you wonder how their life would have been, had they not gotten married to someone in the top profession of the day. (By the way why is it that people always add location to Facebook status when they move out of their home base?)
Thanks for listening in, People.
In short, I think the hypothesis is - Get into the top profession of the day and move as far away from your home base as possible. This is what will provide upward mobility to you and your family. If you cannot do, at least be aware of which Category you are in and what you are missing! (Before you ask, I have moved only 303 Kms from my home base - Pondicherry to HSR Layout!).
We could compare people in current times and argue that the salary levels are comparable, gender discrimination is a thing of the past with double income families becoming the norm in India as well and so on. But it is too early to say anything concrete - there will always be exceptions and we are talking about the aggregate here. Anyways, let us discuss that in 2025.
If you already belong to a class to whom none of these matter, you are likely not reading this.
Fine, why this post now? Just felt like writing something more serious than PJs and "Pun"ny posts. That is all. If more such posts come, let us call it "Things to think about" series.
Good delight offered by Vodacom when I was in South Africa recently! I had forgotten to add the country code. They added it, completed the call and then notified me :)
Sorry Google. My colonial past made me think of a different UK. My bad.
I had a contact (an old friend from high school) in Gmail/Google with the name Stephen and his email ID as firstname.lastname@example.com. Did not have his phone number. When I visited South Africa recently, I added a driver's contact into my Android phone with name as Steve and phone number as +27xxx
In all its infinite wisdom, Google thought they were same people and added Steve's phone number into Stephen's contact (remember, Stephen's email ID had steve in it)
I could not believe it but as an apologist (in Alan Cooperian terms), I thought may be I had done some mistake somewhere!
Until the second story happened, that is.
My last first and my father's first name are the same (obviously, to the South Indians). Both of us have Google/Gmail IDs. For people that have both of us in their Gmail contact list, their Android phones show my father's profile picture (a picture with him and my mother on the day of his 60th birthday) as my profile picture too!! Crazy that is.
Since one of these 'common' people is my wife, she told me about it. But I brushed it aside saying she did some mistake somewhere (again playing the same Cooperian apologist)
When another friend asked me why I had suddenly become such a parents-loving person who even has his profile picture as his parents, it stuck me that there is a real problem somewhere. More worrying is that this friend does not even have my father as his contact anywhere
I have since changed the profile pictures of my father and me in Google. Things look OK in my wife's phone but do not know what the larger world sees.
To all of you who still see my parents' photo in my profile, please be informed that I do love my parents but am not keen in impressing you with that fact by having my profile pic as theirs :)
Do read the link. What Scott Adams argues for the US might hold good (even more) for India. No?
In Indian channels, every time an ad break appears, there is a frame that appears with concentric circles, right? With yellow / blue color circles?
I guess it appears between any 2 ads as well so it might get difficult to track
A lot of then ring true already for me, though I still believe that 8 glasses of water is essential for me ☺
2014 election campaign has begun!! Start music..!!
By the way, I know me and we rhyme but is it not wrong grammatically? It should be "I and we" OR "me and us"
TLDR; "Wish you a happy new year 2014".
And the longer version, just to kick-start the habit of blogging again and to provide a review of 2013 for myself:
The beginning
The year did begin in style with the little one arriving on the 25th of January, setting up an "annus mirabilis" for me & my family (though, a few diaper changes did make it feel "an(n)nus horribilis", if you know what I mean haha! Sorry won't repeat such jokes again).
Social / Life
Given my "anti-social" nature, as such my social activities have been limited but the arrival of the little one to Bangalore in May reduced it to zilch. It has been a year of being at home most of the time with little time for friends, parties, vacations, movies and so on. Again, in online social life as well, I have not been so active like many but Zucky has done a neat job of doing a year in review for me on whatever I did at FB (you need to be a friend of mine in FB to see this).
I have been wanting to post more on FB but have been really lazy. To top it, some posts of mine (so called jokes - like this) are not even understood by people so I wonder why bother posting! My social (FB) capital as such is less to receive "likes" by the dozens. When I posted some photos of my daughter, I had to tag my wife in it to generate some "likes" lest my daughter question me in the future! I resolve to build my social capital this year by LIKE-ing all sorts of sh**ty posts that appear on my newsfeed. Oh No, did I lose a few more friends by saying that?
Office has been pretty smooth this year with some improvements in the nature of work and stuff. With 4 international travels, travel was a bit more than I would have liked with a little kid at home. However, every travel had some learning for the historian/anthropologist hiding in me so no complaints there! Over the past 5 or so years, I have noticed an increasing overlap of work & personal time. It has not been possible to do strictly office work while in office and personal work while at home. This year kind of cemented it deeply. So much so, that in some weeks, I wondered if I did more personal work at office and more office work at home. :-)
Child Care
Taking care of a kid is such a breeze actually. I will tell you the secret - Just ask your wife to take a break from work and outsource it to her haha. Having said that, I think I did spend a lot of time at home (I know at least one person who will disagree. Yes, I mean you, my dear wife!).
All my pseudo knowledge in psychology / early human development was put to use in bringing up my daughter. At every instance when my daughter cried and behaved in a certain way, I applied a theory of Piaget, Erik Erikson etc. on psycho-social development and so on to analyze why. Promptly, my wife, mother-in-law, mother did simple things like a diaper change, feeding her etc. and more importantly taking her away from me etc. to resolve it.
Whenever I took her to a doctor, I notice that they do "Ear in Review" just like I am doing the "Year in Review" now. Sorry, I know this is a poor joke.
One last note on this - Every child's mind is a "tabula rasa". So you should not keep "rasam in a table" without adult supervision. (Oops, Sorry, this is the last joke!)
You would have expected me to have read lesser books this year with a child at home. But surprisingly, the number of books I read was probably more than last year & the year before:
- Hooked - On how to create habit-forming products
- Land of Seven Rivers - The history of India's geography
- Anti Fragile - How to live in an uncertain world
- Volga to Ganga (re-read) - The migration of Aryans from Central Asia to India
- 4 Steps to Epiphany - Very popular book on start-up product development
- Barbarians at the Gate - About the bad bad world of LPs in the late 80s
- Positioning, Battle of the mind - On the marketing concept of positioning
- Conversations with God - Oh forget it!
- Don't make me think - On UX design for building good websites
- Design of Everyday things - The seminal work on design
- Nudge - On the psychology of making people do what you want
- Influence - Same topic as Nudge but a more popular book
- Conversations with Maniratnam (different from the previous one on Conversations with God haha),
- Daily Drucker - Nuggets of wisdom from Drucker
- Intelligent Investor - A very popular book on investing
- Buffet's Bites - Nuggets of wisdom from Warren Buffet
- Being Slightly Evil - Collection of articles on being "slightly evil" in everyday life
- The Wave Rider - Story of Rediff.com
- Thinking Fast & Slow - Very popular work on psychology (somewhat similar to Nudge & Influence)
- India Unbound - About license raj since 1947 and how India's economy changed in the 90s
- Inmates are running the asylum (re-read) - The book that popularized the concept of interaction design, personas etc.
- Steve Jobs (re-read) - You really do not know?
- Woody Allen Complete Prose and
- a few other stuff I read as PDF files that I forget.
I am not giving any Amazon / Flipkart links here since anyways you are not going to purchase through this and give me any affiliate commissions! Just Google yourself ;-)
To be fair, I did not complete all of them. I would have read three-fourths of them fully (100%) and the rest would be anywhere between 20-80%. And there are books like Intelligent Investor, Anti Fragile etc. that will be read and re-read many times over.
I think I should thank JustBooks, Kwench service at my office and my own reduction in frugality (yes I did buy a few of them). Plus the travels I did in Bangalore-Hyderabad trains in the first few months to meet my daughter helped!
In spite of all these, I kept reading and re-reading over the last few months just one book. By last count, I just finished reading it the 1378th time. It is - "My First Book of Words" that a relative gifted to my daughter. She would just not let me end my day without reading it aloud some 20 times. Last heard, my wife's corresponding number is in 6 digits haha.
I just listened and listened to a lot of classics this year after many many years of not listening to them. See a sample list below
- Mary had a little lamb
- Anil-um Aadum A-Aah vaam (Tamil)
- Georgie Porgie Pudding & Pie
- Old MacDonalds had a farm
- London bridge is falling down
I know these songs so well now that I have started re-writing the lyrics and localizing them to my needs of the day. ;-)
Other Reading
The saddest news of 2013 should be the demise of Google Reader that I have been a "power user" of since 2009. However, Feedly / Pocket / Instapaper have more than compensated for that. Glad with these now. I have become very strict in 2013 with reading that I spend only about 180 minutes in a day reading online news (compared to 3 full hours earlier). In spite of using Pocket only since October, they said I was in their Top 5% of readers.
Yes, I read a lot and share good stuff too over Flipboard. Check out my channels on Good Reads, Technynotions and Banuvasan.
Android Family
I continued to be the greatest Steve Job's fan who has never bought an Apple product. The year began with a Galaxy Ace that I bought for my wife in January. I bought a Nexus 4 for myself in July, a Nexus 7 for my wife again in October and finally a Galaxy Star Pro for my father in December. If Jobs were alive, he might first go thermonuclear on my family! We are so deeply entrenched into the Android ecosystem now! Or so you think. Tell Google to start charging for their services and we will all run to other platforms haha!
The Close
For the first time in my work life, I took a vacation during the year-end. I did end up doing office work for about an hour or two every day but that was OK. I spent a lot of time at home and did a quick trip to Chennai as well to meet my parents and brother's family. It would have all been good but for Etihad airways who made my travel back from Kenya to India in mid December a difficult one and to top it, delayed my baggage by over a week (thereby not letting me plan anything). They should ideally be renamed as Eti-Bad airways.
They had overbooked their Bangalore flights and redirected me to Delhi through Jet Airways. They were so cool about it and no word of apology was given. In contrast, they way Jet guys handled my flight to Bangalore from Delhi was so commendable in spite of me having had to file a complaint for the lost bag and having only 20 minutes to board the flight. I am afraid what would happen to Jet after their merger with Etibad.
The New Year
Here's wishing you a wonderful 2014. May all that you legally, morally and ethically wish for come true!!
If you believe in God, pray well to achieve everything you want. If you do not believe in God, may God bless you to achieve everything you want.
Friends, I recently started using Kara Babycare Cleansing Wipes and believe it is the best of its kind. Hence this recommendation.
Some of the benefits I have experienced:
I got to really thank my Egyptian colleague who recommended this to me!
PS-1:: Hope you understood who the baby in question is
PS-2:: These days most of my jokes are not understood by people. Hence PS-1
PS-3:: Some smart guy might mention that if you need to tell someone it is a joke, it is not one. Hence PS-2
PS-4:: No more PS
Why me Google?
Why would a daily sheets calendar guy do this? For the uninitiated, this is a Tamil daily sheet calendar in which there is usually a sheet for each day. Usually means, really usually - This is the first time I see such a sheet.
Is this for cost-cutting? Come on, 1 leaf in 365 is not going to make a difference, does it? In fact, the design costs would have been more. No?
Or is this simply to troll the viewer a day before the April Fool's Day?
This is an article preview but that conveys what the gist. I too have been a fan of Prahlad's theory about the poverty premium (not necessarily on profiting of it but in the fact that poor pay more than the rich for some essentials). This gives me a different perspective but I do not agree with it fully.
As I see it, if the rich (okay, the ones in the middle class) want to buy stuff at a lower price, there are so many 'deals', 'discounts' and so on available to them. Such stuff are not available to the poor. For example, to buy groceries, I can go to multiple stores in HSR Layout (like MK Ahmed, MK Retail, More, Safa, Food World and so on..), look for discounts and buy large quantity packs (like 10 Kg aata for lesser price). In contrast, someone who gets weekly wages and buys half a Kg of aata every week cannot afford to do this. He would buy only from the neighborhood kirana store and that will be at a premium. And with services like ZopNow making things even less expensive for me, the gap will only widen.
In the whole process, we are not even talking about the quality difference in what the rich & the poor buy.
So, while I agree that it is not always the case of poverty premium, it does exist.
Found this mail in spam folder today:
Email account hack as a proof we will send email from that mail id to your mail id 100 usd
We provide website as in 100 usd per year
Contact for ticket booking any country to show clients per ticket 50 usd
Sell and Buy Liberty reserve
Crew visa for australia 100 usd
Use any country phone number wherever you are just per month 50 usd free receive calls any country
Use other person phone number as a your caller id just in 50 usd
Visa verification any country 50 usd
Invitation verification any country 50 usd
Fingerprint clear from the singapore immigration record 300 usd
Passport photo and fingerprint change from singapore immigration record 600 usd
Passport photo and fingerprint change from malaysian immigration record 200 usd
We provide all kinds of duplicate visa copy agreement per clients 50 usd
If you want to receive money in indian bank account we want 30% commission in whole amount
Contact for cyprus duplicate ENTRY PERMIT VISA rate per person 100 usd
Bank guarantee from Nepal India Sri lanka India and Bangladesh reputed bank commission 2%, 1% in advance
And if you have any kinds of illegal services need you can tell us if we can do we will provide you
We request you please don't ask contact number and also we don't have time for chat
We are doing fake work so no need to contact us we can touch you by mail only
All works will done after clear payment only if you can't clear payment don't bother us and we will not entertain any people here
thank you
I think there is a good soul behind this initiative! :-)
I googled for 'Carpenters in HSR Layout' and got led to here:
Home carpenters in HSR Layout are enhancing the standard of livelihood by helping its inhabitants furnish their residence with state-of-the-art woodworks. Such decorative services not only ensure a classy comfort and style but also boost an element of sophistication to the setting of any home or commercial interiors. The home carpenters in HSR Layout work on the implication of home architects and interior decorators as well as at the sole direction of the home owners to custom blueprint the relevant wooden piece and offer them inimitable looks to fit precisely in the architectural structure with in the given four walls. It is only the furniture and fittings which give the final touch to any home or office and the carpenters here are highly skilled and practiced in giving the best designs. Now many carpenters and interior designers are serving the inhabitants of HSR Layout and carpenters from Bengal and Bihar have proved their workmanship.With rise in realty at HSR Layout it also made a very busy schedule for the home carpenters in HSR Layout and taking advantage of the situation many has influx to serve the best carpentry as per the requirements of the clients. It offers all range of works relating to wood crafts to decorate any private or office space.Many a times to cope with the outmost furnish of the consumers some overseas units are also invited to lay their hands for the best satisfaction of the client and it makes more competitive growth among the varied house of carpenters to show their best skill at HSR Layout. Clicking on www.propertykhazana.com one can avail more details on home carpenters in HSR Layout.
Amazed. Stumped. What to say!! Could not control the urge to search for 'interior decorators' and found another gem:
To devise the atmosphere of comfort and luxury within the four walls of a house, it is the best use of one's skill and inspiration for the part of interior designs and decorations. With growth of the realty it also paved way for the interior designers and decorators for a better living in a dream house. The current trend of interior is marked on calm and sharp colored features inclusive of Vastu compliances with varying age group of the society.At the same time the paints, paintings, monuments and further stuff of interior accessories are carefully selected so as to match the custom and taste of homeowner. To put more professionalism in interior designing and decorations one should have inventive and artistic taste and good stimulation apart from regular training and education in the field. The large number of institutes, which provides the dimension of interior designing courses in the city, is on fast growing for acute commercialization.A wide range of interior services are now available here at HSR Layout to serve best purpose of inner decoration with varied range of budget and schemes. Visit www.propertykhazana.com to get more information on interior designers and decorators in HSR Layout.
No words. I have heard of content marketing and on the fly creation of web pages. But never expected this! :-)
I happened to talk to a mini-celebrity recently who had this to share::
God, can I have some privacy please? These guys always surround me. While I certainly need this adulation and have gotten used to it, sometimes it gets really annoying. Every movement I make is made news and every smile towards someone considered important. Several times, I wonder if these guys are genuine at all or is it just herd mentality. One guy thinks I am important and everyone just follows him.
And then these photographs!! People keep clicking them wherever I go and whatever I do. There is not even enough courtesy to seek my permission or show it to me. God knows where all they publish it and what all they claim. I get very irritated when they do this while I am a bit groggy. But a simple frown and attempt to wail is enough for these guys to shut up. They would then rush to my help. That would also be overdone but then I cannot help it. I need these guys!!
Okay, I spoke with no celebrity. But if my daughter is any snarky as I am, I am sure these are her thoughts.
Came across a quote attributed to Lincoln thus: I do not like this man, I should get to know more about him.
I could fully appreciate that. There have been several instances where a person I have hated has turned out to be not-all-that-bad once I got to know him/her better. After I start working such with a person on a project (usually due to unavoidable circumstances), it has turned out that so many opinions I had on that person were actually stories in my head.
The dynamics get funny when more than 2 people are involved. There is a person (let us call him Democratic Republic of Congo - DRC) whose sight used to annoy two of us (a friend called Snake Shanmugam - SS, and me). It so happened that SS and DRC went to Japan together and worked in a project for a few months. When they both came back, they had become friends (SS got to know more about DRC, as Lincoln would say) while I was still the same. SS found it difficult to manage both the friendships!
As I think more of it, the opposite also seems to be true: I like this man so much, I should get to know more about him.
If we like a person so very much & think they are our alter ego, once we get to know more about them (warts & all), we soon realize that it is not all hunky dory and we better stay a little away. This has again happened with me where I have started to work on projects with friends (who were great till the time the relationship was restricted to cribbing about others and generally having fun, without any productive output), and figured that they are not all that great (and I am aware they would have felt the same).
This second phenomenon is what happens in most (non-arranged) marriages as well. During their courtship period, it is less likely that the girl would be aware of the nasty nose-picking & farting habits of the guy. Right? (No personal experiences from my wife's life told here, really!)
Very true.
In fact I judge people based on how they laugh, how they pick their nose in the washbasin, how they choose the slot to pee (it is an art, you know?), so on and so forth.
A colleague of mine in the UK (a Brit, I think) was deeply disappointed with me because of an email I wrote to a partner. I had told the partner to send a proposal post which my colleague would take a call.
My colleague wrote to me saying not to write such mails to partners without consulting him. I said OK but was not too happy as well because he is the guy who can actually take a call on that. What else am I supposed to! Later, he sent a mail to that partner saying - Send me the proposal and I will decide on whether to accept or not but I really does not have time to 'take a call'.
That is when it struck me: While I meant 'he will decide' by saying 'he will take a call', he thought I meant 'he is open to receiving phone calls'..!! I clarified it with him later and we had a good laugh :-)
I am not sure if it is an India-only usage but my Googling points to such a possibility. I am yet to take a call on this.issue ;-)
Thanks to the brief bout of sickness that made me come home early, unable to sleep, I sat & read 'Animal Farm' today - it is just about 50 pages anyways!
And I was surprised that I could understand most of the allegory there! (Old Major = Marx, Napolean = Stalin etc.). I did miss a few. I thought Snowball was Lenin but not. Snowball was Leon Trotsky (whose name I had heard earlier but did not know much about until today). Lenin had been mixed with Marx and shown as Old Major.
Overall, I think it was the significance of wanting to put down USSR during the Cold War that made the book a success. Otherwise, it is a simple story without too much of depth that one will be able to finish even while sick.
You can download the PDF version here.
Physical exercise and me have a long checkered story together… That is, it has only been fiction, no real stuff ever. It is widely rumored that I started walking only at the ripe age of 5. So forget running or other stuff..!! And it did not stop just there - Even when I learnt to cycle, my parents & brother had to make a 5 year plan because I took so much of time. Again, it is rumored that kids who were born after I started to learn cycling started cycling and I was still learning!!
Same thing happened when I learnt to ride a geared motorcycle. My friends had almost given up on me and I was planning to buy a Honda Activa. But then, a lady in a neighboring team at my office in Wipro bought a Fiero (a high end bike back then, yes I am getting old). And a lot of my friends said they would disown me if I buy a gear-less scooter. I was forced to buy a Splendor (still no Fiero though - too heavy to push) and learn to ride. Silk Board junction saw quite a few accidents post that - though not involving me. Whenever I would move to first gear and roll the accelerator, my vehicle would move up by 45 degrees creating a loud noise that poor souls around me would collapse onto each other creating accidents. I anyways bought an Avenger in 2008 and though I struggle to push it still, it has been OK-ish.
About my car driving - I first failed in the driving test and the next time, the inspector took pity and gave me the license.
In terms of sports at school/college, I have been fortunate enough to have never been part of a place where physical education was enforced. I used to spend the PT classes at the corner of the ground passing remarks on others - what fun! I have been a scorer in some informal cricket tournaments and helped fix matches by moving the score up/down as need be, when no one notices.
With respect to running, I have run 1 marathon in life. That is a total of 42 Kms in the whole life. 42 Kms in 33 years with a little too many breaks.
So friends, such a character participated in a 5 Km run today at IIM-Bangalore and surprise, surprise, even completed it..!! A lot of Karthik-watchers in the world widely believed that even if I complete, it would be a case where I come the last and the organizers get bored and hungry before I reach the finish line. But then, I managed to finish in about 34 minutes. Not bad, I hear. No?
A panel discussion on this topic was held at IIM-B yesterday (15-Feb-2013) evening with Ravi Subramaniam, Aroon Raman, Shashi Deshpande and Usha K R. And yeah, I was in the audience (hence this post).
There was a stark difference between what SD & UKR stood for and what RS stood for. AR was somewhere in between. They had differences in most aspects of what they spoke - in terms of 'topics to choose for writing', 'being ruthless with marketing the book', 'the language to use', 'popular versus literary fiction' and so on.
As you would imagine, SD was more towards 'Write what you want to say and the rest will take care of itself', 'do not play to the gallery', 'use good language (using SMS-ese is like grunt of animals and not speech!!)'. 'your job is only to write and it is the publisher who should sell' while RS was more towards 'Write to an audience (which is why I always write about banking', 'use simple & easy language', 'marketing is your important job' and so on!
I have not read RS's books but people who have read have not given a favorable impression (not those pseudo-foreigners, even who like Chetan Bhagat). It was kind of evident in his speech as well. He is an ultra-smart guy, no doubt, but even in this session, he was unnecessarily playing to the gallery (which spectacularly backfired in some cases) and using stupid analogies (writing a book is like wooing a girlfriend - bah!). Overall, he sounded immature. There was also a bit of arrogance when he spoke about his successes (250,000+ copies), how he along with Chetan & Amish Tripathi are great story tellers, how the game of publishing has been changed by them, how 7 of the Top-10 popular authors of 2012 (according to some list) are MBAs, 6 of them from IIMs and so on. He had a foot-in-the-mouth moment when he uttered something as condescending as 'Oh it is great that you women also publish books - I can understand how much more effort you need to put in'. SD & even the audience gave him back nicely by boo-ing.
SD's & RS' speech was the most relevant of the lot (given the topic). UKR's was more like a lecture. Aroon's speech sounded like he is an interesting uncle to talk to once a while. To be fair, his speech was the most humorous and having published his first book, he looked more human than others.
End of the session, I felt like agreeing with SD on how to write and RS on how to be street smart to get published & sell well.
An interesting article. Reproducing the comment I made there:
First I thought I was going to disagree with the entire article but after reading more about voiced/voiceless consonants, retroflex consonants etc. (from here & here), I agree with the fundamental premise of the article which is
"It's common for Indian English-speakers to substitute retroflex ʈ and ɖ where Western English-speakers use [t] and [d], which Indian languages don't have. This substitution is part of Indian English's special sound."
I understand this as: When a word like 'Tin' needs to be spoken, while native English speakers produce the 'T' sound by placing their tongue on the tooth (dental), Indians tend to place their tongue on the roof of the mouth (palatal).
However, what I do not agree with is this: That Dravidian languages contributed this to Sanksrit. As one of the comments mentions, the base Dravidian language, Tamil, does not have several retroflex consonants in it. So, it is more like Kannada received them from Sanskrit and not the other way. In fact, I have noticed that Kannada words with roots in Tamil do not have the aspirated sounds in them. It is only the words with Sanskrit roots that have aspirated sounds. Which is why, Kannadigas (& several South Indians) write 'th' in places where North Indians would write 't'. For example: Names written by North Indians as Namita & Kartik would be written by South Indians as Namitha and Karthik.
One more Q I have is: If other Indo-European languages have a dental 't' & 'd', why does Sanskrit have only retroflex 't' & 'd' and not dental 't' & 'd'? Even if we assume that the retroflex was influenced by Dravidian languages, what happened to the dental ones?
Super List.
I suffer from all of them. :-(
Received this over email about 7 - 8 years ago. Author Unknown.
1975 Jan 1
It was about five in the morning. Father (I am not bothering with names) woke up with a start. Many years had passed since he had founded the orphanage. He had named it 'X-Orphanage', a rather funny name. But looking back, everything about his life seemed funny now. Hearing some noise outside, Father decided to have a look. A child lay there in front of the orphanage. It was a girl. Seeing her abandoned like this in the cold morning, Father felt a sense of anger for the merciless being who had thrown her away like this. He took her in his arms. He would raise her like his own child.
17 Years Later
The girl had now grown up. She was now staying at a hostel. She met a man and fell in love with him. Soon she got pregnant.But the man disappeared. She was thrown out of the Hostel. Father came and took her back to the orphanage. She gave birth to a girl, but the baby was mysteriously stolen. Unable to bear all this, the Father committed suicide.
5 years later
Due to some serious health problems, the girl went to see a Doctor. The doctor having examined her, said with a sad expression on his face, "Adrenalo Sytosis, a serious case of hormone imbalance" . An operation was performed in which the doctor had to change the sex of the patient. The girl was now transformed into a man. The man was very depressed because he had lost his child, his father had committed suicide, his lover had betrayed him, he had to change sex and so on. He eventually took to drinking.
One day he saw that a new bar called 'Kaalachakra Bar' had opened in his locality. He went in. He saw a bearded man to whom he related his sad tale. The bearded man took pity on him and told him that he had a Time Machine and that he could use it to change his past. He accepted the gift from the bearded man. He decided to go to the past (to the year 1992) and started the Time Machine.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The man arrived with the Time Machine in the year 1992. There he met a girl and fell in love with her. The girl got pregnant. The man, unwilling to marry her, left the town. He went to another city, earned some money and five years later came back to the city where the girl lived. Wanting to conceal his identity, he grew a beard. He started a bar named 'Kaalachakra Bar'. One day a man came to the bar and narrated a sorrow tale. Out of compassion, he gave the Time Machine to the man. The man started the Time Machine and went back to the past.
Suddenly a man wearing a mask came into the bar. He pointed a gun at the bearded man. He said that he had a Time Machine and forced the bearded man into it along with himself. Taking the bearded man with him, the masked man started the Time Machine. When they reached the past, the masked man suddenly gave the Time Machine to the bearded man and ran away. The bearded man found himself in front of X-Orphanage. He went inside and found a woman lying there with her new born baby. It was a girl. Since the mother lay unconscious and there wasn't anyone else nearby to take care of the girl, he took the girl and started the Time Machine to go to the past.
1975 Jan 1
The bearded man arrived with the girl. Thinking that it was the best place for the child, he left her in front of X-Orphanage. He joined a college, studied hard and became a doctor. One day a woman was brought to the hospital. He examined her and found that it was a serious case of 'Adrenalo Sytosis'. He performed an operation in which he had to change her sex. One day, fed up with the complexities of modern life, he started the Time Machine and went back in time.
1968 May 12
He arrived at a time of great famine and suffering. Seeing all this, he decided to become a priest and serve the people. He started an orphanage and named it 'X-Orphanage'. Years later, he found a girl lying in front of the orphanage. He took her and brought her up like his own child. Many years later he heard that the girl was pregnant and was thrown out of the hostel. He brought her back to X-Orphanage. She gave birth to a girl and fell unconscious. The father desperately searched for help, but since there was no-one nearby to help him, he decided to bring a person back from the future. He wore a mask, took a gun for protection and started the Time Machine. He materialized in front of 'Kaalachakra Bar'. He went inside, found a bearded man and forced him to travel with him to the past.
Reaching the past, he felt very guilty about forcing the bearded man to come with him. He gave the Time Machine to the bearded man and ran away to see his daughter. When he reached there, he heard the sad news from his daughter that the baby was stolen. Unable to bear the sorrow, he committed suicide.
Read this book recently, after several recommendations from various blogs on psychology & personal development (particularly this). I should say I was a tad disappointed - I was expecting a more serious book but it ended up as a pop-psychology book (like Gladwell's books) with several anecdotal examples thrown in. Due of this, I could not capture a lot of insights from it (a lot of them are indeed there in it).
Nevertheless, here are the 6 areas that Cialdini says with which we get influenced / can influence others. He calls these as 'shortcuts' our brain uses to decision making but which go wrong several times. He actually goes deep into each of these with lots of examples.
This simply says we have a huge urge to 'reciprocate' when others do us a favor. Watch out when a potential partner of your company gifts you something for the new year / your birthday etc. or an IPL ticket. You may not feel so consciously but you will have the sub conscious urge to provide the next sales order from your company to this person, without regard to other things of importance. You can extend this to any context - The book provides an example of how people from ISKCON first greet you with a flower and then ask for donations. Blatant, but it still apparently works. While those are only mildly harmful, these are a lot of cases where it is more harmful and ends up unfair - 'Less' gift given now can be milked for 'more' later.
A related feature is this: We create artificial 'Obligation' to make a concession to someone who has made a concession to us earlier/to whom we have said 'No' earlier. After a car purchase, if someone comes to you with a 3 year AMC plan for maintenance and say 'No', if he comes back to you again with a 1 year plan, you would likely say 'Yes'. If he had started with a 1 year plan, you would not have taken it at all.
One way to avoid the urge to reciprocate is to be the first person to offer something in an exchange, putting the other party at your mercy since he would need to reciprocate your favor. Or in cases where you cannot offer first, simply refuse the offer or stay away from such situations. Reciprocity apparently works over time & distance. So do as many favors as possible - they will come back to you! :)
When something is scarce, we want more of it. So salesmen create artificial scarcity all the time. Do not fall for the bait. We do not just look at the benefit of something but also what is UNIQUE about it and what we stand to lose by not buying something / choosing someone. Everything we see about 'Last few pieces/days left' to 'Only a few people around the world own it' fall under this.
One way to avoid it is to simply postpone the decision the moment you get aware that something is scarce and you are being pushed into it. How well we get 'aware' at the moment is the most important thing :)
Needless to say, when you want to influence the other party, create scarcity and close the deal before he gets aware!
A related aspect is 'Contrast' principle that real estate brokers apply: Show high priced bad houses first and then show high priced good ones. The latter look like a 'deal' to us though they are high priced.
Simply put: We follow people who appear to be experts. The important aspect being 'appear to be'. Which is why we have dentists (rather models dressed as dentists) talking about which toothpaste to use, even claims about 90% of dentists using a particular brand and so on.
Way to escape? Only to first find out if someone is really an expert!
Commitment & Consistency
We apparently want to be true to what we said / did earlier. More so, if the commitment is made to appear voluntary, is active over time, is made public and is in writing, we simply do not want to change from that. We want to be / appear consistent to what we said / did earlier. So the tactic of the manipulators is to get commitment that can be used later.
A positive example: People who signed a form that they support safe driving in their locality were more inclined to put a safety-banner outside their home even at some inconvenience. Negative example: American soldiers captured during a war by a communist regime were forced to write a note in their own words about some positive aspects of communism. This turned them into sympathizers of communism even after they were released and went back to the US.
We say YES to people we like, as simple as that. In particular, we like & say YES to people (a) Who are similar to us, (b) Who pay compliments and © With whom we cooperate to achieve common goals.
This is probably more dangerous than what we think. While it is OK to be 'exploited' by friends/family who we clearly like and who would not cause damage to us, it gets dangerous when we start saying YES to people who look similar to us or simply who pay us handsome compliments.
Consensus (Social Proof)
We look to actions of others (more so similar people - Refer 5) to determine our own (particularly when we are uncertain). Not just look to actions of others but also accept is as the correct. This principle of social proof operates most powerfully when we are observing the behavior of people just like us. Even "Pluralistic Ignorance" is a part of this: It is a situation where a majority of group members privately reject a norm, but assume incorrectly that most others accept it.
Manipulators simply do this: Remove 'uncertainty' to people and they would help/act as you want. This is what happens when we go for financial investments, buying real estate and so on. We may know that it is a bubble out there but when several people like us buy a particular stock, we do too.
Cialdini shares a quote of someone (Oscar Wilde?): 'Civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them'. While we perform these operations without thinking about them, we also need to be wary of manipulators!
If you ARE the manipulator, these 6 principles should provide great ammunition.
I recently read a tweet somewhere about who uses :) and who uses :-) (with or without the hyphen!). That tweet said old people use with hyphen and young people use without hyphen.
In my usage, I realize I used both. So it is a question of 'When' (Who being the same). In more formal contexts, I tend to use :-) (example: to someone who is a colleague). In less formal contexts, I tend to use :) (example: to a friend). Note that I said 'more formal' and 'less formal'. You can make it as 'more casual' and 'less casual' if you want. Because the way I see it is - Using a smiley might not be formal at all. So in the continuum from formal to casual, both of them lie somewhere closer to the casual side.
Further, I see when I use ;-) (a wink) or :-p (whatever it is called - I call it cheeky), I always use a hyphen. But the paradox is I would use them only in more casual cases.
With this contribution today to the world's research on smileys, I smile off, sorry sign off and expect you to share your thoughts :)
Super Article on morality in animals. Forget scientists and philosophers, I agree with the author that animals can be "moral" (and no, I do not have pets)
Insightful answer. Even more thought provoking is the statement that in the next 100 years, India may actually be a dozen countries. Looking forward ;-)
1. A person who uses or operates something, esp. a computer or other machine.
2. A person who takes illegal drugs; a drug user.
During a Square Board meeting, our newest Director Howard Schultz, pulled me aside and asked a simple question.
Did Alan Cooper not raise this comprehensively in 'Inmates are running the asylum'? With respect to design, he said "Users are not 'elastic'. Usage of the word 'user' causes trouble because everyone thinks different things about the user. This will cause 'lip service' and the developer will code as he pleases. So always use a name – a specific individual – a persona"
You may argue that was for 'design' but what Jack Dorsey says in internal meetings would also likely be about design of the product. After it is sold, it is anyways a 'customer' always. No?
Had a great insight today!
In Tamil, to refer to 'loose motion' / 'diarrhea', we say 'வயத்தால போறது', literally translated as 'going/flowing through the stomach'.
Like a moron, I was cursing my ancestors for such usage of words!! Till today, that is.
Early this day, I was wanting to write the word "diarrhea" somewhere and was looking for the correct spelling (it is one of the most difficult words to spell, IMHO). And chanced upon the Wikipedia page for diarrhea. And guess what, it is made up of two words that mean "flow" and "through" - Flowing through!!
My God, such geniuses my ancestors have been - to actually even specify where it is flowing through!!
And I seriously believe this would come up as one more case of relationships between Tamils & Greeks. No?
I have been included in MoH&FW (I assume this means Ministry of Health & Family Welfare)'s SMS list. I wonder why it happened but the kind of messages they have been sending are funny (or should I say scary?).
Last week, I got this message 3 times::
"If you have suicidal tendencies, please call our helpline immediately"
The first time I received it, it was funny. But when it came the third time, I started wondering if there is some problem with my life and I should seriously consider suicide!!
This week's message::
"Marry at the right age, delay your first child and ensure enough gap for the second child"
Thanks, but no thanks. Would you please quantify these, Sirs? 'Right Age', 'Delay' and 'Enough Gap'? And would you please clarify what solace do you offer for those who have already done the damage? Should we read the previous week's message?
Update: Here are the messages received after the original post::
A surprisingly balanced article at Outlook…!
It is a term that comes from the operator (Telco) world - On Deck & Off Deck content used to be the thing.
On Deck means it is available within the "walled garden" of the Telco - Like Airtel Live, Vodafone Live etc. typically available only to users of that Telco. Off Deck means it is available outside of these walls and to all users, irrespective of which Telco service they use.
Extending this, Apple and Google have their own "walled gardens", the App Stores for users of their OS. App Store for iOS and Google Play for (Google certified) Android. These are the On Deck App Stores. Off Deck means that they are available for anyone outside of these ecosystems as well, like GetJar - which can be accessed from any Android phone, irrespective of it being Google certified or not. For that matter, Get Jar would have apps for other platforms too, like Blackberry, J2ME etc.
For iOS and Windows Phone, one needs a 'rooted / jailbroken' phone to be able to access these 3rd party (or Off Deck) stores.
Providing a generic answer:
Product Roadshow is essentially a 'Business Development' effort - Depending on the context, it could be for any of the following reasons
Product Roadshows involve detailed 'demos' to participants about the product, 'panel discussions' / 'speeches' on industry trends (& how the product in question is going to address the industry's needs), distribution of brochures/white papers and so on. Not to forget - these are 'socialization' events so add a healthy dose of networking opportunities through dinner/drinks.
I have heard that MagicBricks (www.magicbricks.com) uses the "Mock Press Release" model - I have not worked there to be sure of that.
Well, what if I say, both could be true? Sanskrit borrowed from Tamil and vice versa too.
I have read quite some articles (some scholarly/some popular) on this topic but then, I am not a researcher and have not kept detailed notes. So, I am not even going to try & add 'proofs' here. Look elsewhere for that.
My own mental account is as follows:
Once again, let me reiterate that this is through some random readings by me of books like 'History of South India' and other scholarly/popular articles and does not constitute an authentic view, by any measure.
Therefore some/all of these points could be false. They help me in scratching my own itch when trying to understand some historical aspect, that is all.
The answer by Athi Sundar is very well written and echos my frustrations of a long time :) I first wrote a reply there but then it went too long that I decided to write a full length answer :)
I do not think the translations are done by software - I believe they are definitely done by humans (who may use software for specific words) but by people who could have their mother tongue as Thamizh but grew up elsewhere (say Mumbai). So their choice of words, their pronunciation etc. are pathetic. I have so many friends who grew up in Mumbai, Delhi (or even Bangalore, sigh) that try to literally translate things - with a verb at the beginning, for example - and screw up.
Overall, I think it is just a question of not enough attention being given. With all creative efforts consuming most time & energy, this localization would be considered only as the last (unfortunately unimportant) step left to juniors.
I am not from an ad agency background but I have seen this happening in several software development projects - String Tables are created at last with translations done by people who are not-so-good in that language. So much so, that people would just go ask the fellow sitting next who speaks in 'South Indian' (without bothering if that 'South Indian' is Tamil/Telugu/Malayalam/Kannada etc.), driver/janitor/security guard for a word without much context. They would try their best but without context of where it is to be used, it is usually wrong. That is why a lot of software on phones (even ones that have native support) are horrible and simply cannot be understood by an English-illterate local language speaker.
By the way, just in case you have not noticed, Chennai based brands that have presence in Bangalore, Hyderabad etc. do the same - Shoot in Tamil and dub in Kannada & Telugu. I cannot comment on the quality of the translations but the lip sync is so horrible and looks alien. Why don't they shoot again in these languages, I wonder.
Funnily, I have seen several posts by ad-makers themselves on this topic - People like Lakshmipathy Bhat and Ramanujam Sridhar (both veterans in this space) have written a lot about this - See here, here, here, here and here.
What is the solution? I guess there is none unless companies/brands start seeing India as an European Union of sorts with multiple cultures/languages co-existing. There should be Regional Heads with autonomous ads to do. If they see India as just one market and have a common team/agency etc., this is just bound to repeat, again & again.
First up, I assume you want to know about stores other than the big ones - Apple Appstore and Google Play (and the second rung ones - Amazon, Windows Phone, 9apps, Opera and so on... or may be FOR the second rung)
For simplicity, let us take the case of building an App Store for Android (devices which support Google Play - not the rooted / forked one). Here are the factors to be considered (a mix up of all elements you have mentioned - engineering, features, security & promotion).
Unless you are a large organization (Telco, eCommerce provider, browser maker or so), let me tell you - it is very very difficult to run this for long. :-)


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