The last time I visited the bay area, it was fleet week, and the navy came visiting to San Francisco. It was the works. Couple of them warships docked close to the wharf for the public to see. The blue angels and their fantastic aerial show.
Month: December 2007
hack yourself?
I just found this article out at getrichslowly.org. The article is titled “Hack yourself“.
A brilliant piece of work – extremely inspirational. A lot of it seems to have parallels to the hindu teachings in the Gita.
The best piece that I found in it is:
Don’t “remember to breathe” — just breathe. It’s a Tao thing.
Read the full article here.
2 oz of ideas and 1 oz of courage
.. is the recipe for enterpreneurship. Just ideas are not good enough. Just courage is not good enough. You need both. I happened to read the following article on cookingmoney blog. The blog entry says that it is an exerpt from the Times of India dated Jan 22, 2007. I am pasting some exerpts from it here.
Abrush, a bucket and an idea came together. Sandeep Gajakas knew it was an inflammable mixture. He was on to something. He would start a laundry service for shoes. His father did not like it, but Gajakas, 26 then, was beyond being dissuaded ….
He quit his job and started distributing handbills asking people who wanted to clean their sports shoes to contact him. The response was tremendous. The Andheri resident would get calls from all corners of Mumbai. He would then run to their houses, get the shoes, scrub them clean in his bathroom and deliver them for Rs 100 a pair. That was in 2004. Today, Sandeep is 28 and owns a business called The Shoe Laundry. He doesn’t need to wash Keds anymore. Nine boys trained by him do that now.
The article goes on to give two more examples. One is a firm that cleans large glass facades – one would think of it, in hindsight as a no-brainer – with so many IT and BPO firms housed in large classy glass facade buildings. The other is a wierd idea – home cooked dog food – which apparently is a big success in Mumbai. Well, it confirms one supposition, Mumbai-me kuch bhi chaltha hai (anything is possible in Mumbai).
Read the full post here.
Bangalore blues
I was torn between titling this post “Bangalore blues” or “The blue elephant walks in”. The above won. 🙂 Pic taken on Saturday. Mayawati, supremo leader from Uttar Pradesh is slated to visit Bangalore this weekend. Her party’s symbol is an elephant on a blue flag. The whole city had a blue look in the weekend.
Just a little bit here .. and there …
Getrichslowly.org has a link pointing to a great NYT article, on how the little spending stuff does add up. My take on this is that, it is not that, the little spending should be avoided – defenitely not. But we should budget for that.
I am quoting exactly the same paragraph that getrichslowly quotes:
I [totaled] the extra and unexpected costs that had cropped up throughout the year: $4,900 for new windows, $3,100 in co-payments for my appendectomy and $1,500 in car repairs.
I deducted those chunks from our total income — and was horrified to conclude not only that some money was missing, but that someone had apparently absconded with $10,000. There was no way we could have spent it.
Was there?
I ran through the numbers again with my husband, and he reached the same conclusion: approximately $10,000 was missing in action. That was the vacation we didn’t take, part of the new roof we might need, some terrific wine we didn’t drink. Now we really wanted to know where that money went.
It wasn’t long before it showed up. After sitting there for a while at the kitchen table, stunned, my husband said, “Thirty dollars.”
He explained his theory. One day, we were about to visit friends and had offered to pick up dessert and wine — which came to about $30 . The next day we had a birthday to attend and a prescription to pick up, and we spent about $30. We took out the calculator: $10,000 divided by 365 is about $27.
It wasn’t that we spent $30 mindlessly every day, but once we started digging for the “we’re not really spending any money” money — a trip to Lowe’s, new shoes for my son, iTunes downloads for my husband, a new work outfit for me — all the little things fell into place.
Check out J.D’s post here.
And check out the NYT article here.
New flat cars
On my way to one of my client offices, I pass through the BEML (Bharat Earth Movers Limited) factory in Bangalore. BEML also manufactures heavy goods rail cars, besides the huge earth movers they specialize in. (I think they are also manufacturing the coaches for the upcoming Bangalore Metro Rail).
This picture was edited using the awesome online image editing website – picnik.com. Go check it out.
Banter inside hospitals
There is one thing that I find very irritating in some hospitals. Doctors, interns, and nurses engaging in fun and frolic behind doors – but within sight of patients. A hospital is a place of seriousness. Patients do not come here for fun. Dont get me wrong. I dont think Doctors are not entitled to fun. But there should be a break-room way at the back – out of sight of patients – where they take their break.
Yesterday R and I were at the hospital. Every once in a while, a door of one of the doctors would open, and you could see the doctor and some interns rolling in laughter, and having some general fun. R had a stomach ache, and we were counting some slow minutes, before our turn to the see the GP (general physician) came. And in these slow moments, it is defenitely irritating when you see this sight of fun-and-frolic behind the doors.
Just my two cents … (for what its worth).
Stress free driving
I recently realized that I felt very tired after driving to and from work. Traffic in Bangalore can be maddening at times, and can invoke inordinate amounts of stress in the body. The result of this stress is extreme tiredness, general sluggishness, and general unhappiness
from R.
For the last 2-3 days, I have been trying out something, that has worked (atleast until now), that has reduced my stress multiple fold.
Imagine you are the driver of one of those super luxury volvo buses. These guys, if you notice, never are in a hurry. And if you have been inside one, you would realize, it is one of the smoothest drives you have ever taken. I am not talking about not feeling the bumps (Good Volvo suspension takes the credit for that). I am talking about, not feeling any surges in power, to get the bus between those 2 cars, or, suddenly decelerating from 60kmph to 0kmph, to avoid that dog/child/oldlady/vegetable cart/cycle that just crossed the road. You do not feel it, because the driver does not do these things.
– He never is above 40-45kmph.
– He never is weaving in and out of traffic
– He never needs to accelerate or decelerate suddenly
– He is never in a hurry
I thought let me follow this. And hey, it works. I do not overspeed these days. I do not weave in traffic. I am always in the lookout for pedestrians/traffic stoppers, and speed bumps. I imagine, I am driving the world’s best super luxury bus.
Here’s to stress-free driving!
Tanks, and planes, that I see on the way to work
Lots of army displays in Bangalore. First photo is outside the Naval Officers Mess on Trinity Road, and the second is outside the Dronacharya Mess on airport road/trinity road intersection. These photos were shot from my phone (sorry for the graininess), when I was stuck in traffic at these areas (which happens almost everyday).
Blue screen of death
The blue screen of death isindeed scary. I have heard a lot about it. I have seen a couple in my friends computers. But the first time you get one, it scares the bejeezus out of you. Wow.
Any one has any idea, what this one means ?
PS: By the way, this awesome photo was shot on my new Nokia 3110 Classic. The cam is 1.3 Megapixel resolution.