The Weekend - 11, 12 April 09

I was in Delhi this weekend. A quick summary would be

Train - Mathura - Agra - Fatehpur Sikri - Traffic Jam - Delhi - Home - CP - Home - Cyntax - Amar Motors - GK II - Select City Walk - MDI - Maggi@GE - Go Air - Meru - Godrej Hillside Colony - Creativeland

And like always, there are details to follow. Lemme see when I get time to talk about em.

• Train - It was sheer luck that allowed me to board the train. I was to board from Borivali station and my rick driver took me to Dahisar. With 6 mins to ETD. And we had a RAC ticket. That meant my friend and I were forced to share one berth for the night.
  
• Mathura - Got down at Mathura. After spending the night sitting, walking in the bogey, remmebering the time table and amount of time it stops at each station, shifting weight, getting down at all the stations, eating whatever came my way, reading The Case of Exploding Mangoes.
  
• Agra - Yes, the Taj Mahal city. I went there and did not see the Taj. If there was no Taj, Agra would have been one of those million little cities in India that no one would have ever heard of and no one would ever go there. Everything from people to government to administration to weather was very average.
  
• Fatehpur Sikri - I dint know that Fatehpur was a UNESCO World Heritage Site. If its one, its been left to rot by the administration. Anyways, the place is very serene. You could be in the middle of a maddening crowd and yet be with yourself. I was hoping for a miracle (I think I am looking for some kind of support to lap onto) but it never happened. May be next time?
  
• Traffic Jam - En route from Agra to Delhi, around the Haryana border, farmers were protesting for something. Collosal waste of time, money, resources and everything else. I have always hated those "strikes". Anyways, I could see all the Munger's mental models in action. From group think to social proof to biases and authority misinfluence to reciprocation.
  
• Delhi - Home!
  
• Home - Maa kay haath ka khana :D
  
• CP - BTW the official name is Rajiv Chowk, its still called by one and all as CP. I too prefer CP. Its the best place to hang around in Delhi IMHO. I make at leat two trips to the place for sure everytime I go there.
  
• Cyntax - Kunal and me spoke about Cyntax. He looks committed to it and hopefully I can make up my mind soon.
  
• Amar Motors - One of the reason I went to Delhi was to buy the bike. Went to this dealer called Amar Motors. For a company like Royal Enfield and a product like Bullet, the dealership was a mess for sure. The brand, product, company attracts certain kind of people and there was no one there to take care of those kinds of people. Guess you can do very well with branding and marketing efforts but when it comes to real life interactions, you have to find a way to manage them!
  
• GK II - No notes. Boring visit to that market. Obviously there were tons of pretty faces. Wish Mumbai ones were like that.
  
• Select City Walk - Met Shubhi and she insisted that we goto Select City Walk. I want to know who are the people who goto that mall and actually buy things from there. Every thing was way out of my reach!
• MDI - Went to MDI. I went to my room (#309), SharmaJi's, Change Masters (its now called IFCI Swarna Jayanti Hostel), Dome Terrace, the loos, the library, Jhajis, Acad Block, CC etc. It was so full of emotions that I could have cried. Somehow prevented it. Anyways, a visit to MDI also reaffirmed my belief that I am most comfortable when I am in a campus like setting. I wrote this text while I was roaming around the CC
  
• Maggi @ GE - When we were at MDI, Maggi at a road side dhaba outside GE's office in Gurgaon was our staple food. For the old times sake we went to this dhaba and got the maggi. I ate it when I was in the meru on way back to home and it was bliss. People miss food from homes, I missed food from this dhaba.
  
• Go Air - Flew with Go Air. Ok experience. Flight was delayed by 40 mins. Once I was inside the aircraft, things were on time.
• Meru - This is where the power of branding was evident. We were going to take a cab home. There were at least three paid AC taxi services available at the airport. We dint even look at them. Without even talking to them, we went to Meru, got in the cab and left. I think this is where Meru does well compared to other businesses. Marketing is ok but the experience that I get as a customer when I travel with them is exceptional. From comfortable rides to courteous drivers to punctuality to electronic billing. Guess
  
• Godrej Hillside Colony - Surfed the web. Slept fitfully for three hours.
  
• Creativeland - Back at work!

I think I like this new way of logging travel. Of course it cant replace the good old travelogue, may be I will write that too but this is convenient for logging in the highlights.

And no, I wasn't carrying any camera and there are no pictures. Vivek took this pic way back in 2005 at Fatehpur. May be an apt place for a ref?

On Del.icio.us

I have woken up to Del.icio.us.

Wishlist / Bucket List

I was talking to a friend and I realized that I dont have one single wishlist. I have blogged about my todo's in past (here, here, here)

Here is my wishlist (aka the bucket list)

1. Get a Royal Enfield Bullet Electra. (Got in Apr 2009)
2. Get a Sony PSP. (Got it in Mar 2008)
3. Buy an iPod. (Got it in Aug 2006 and donated it to my sis in Dec 2008)
4. Publish at least one book. (Done. The Nidhi Kapoor Story in Oct / Nov 2014)
5. Preferably a travel book.
6. Teach. (Done. At EMDI. Two courses. On marketing and planning. Aug / Sep 2014)
7. Bunjee Jump. (Jumped off Macau Tower in May 2010)
8. Bike from Kanyakumari to Leh.
9. And from Rann of Kutch to Arunachal Pradesh.
10. Visit places in my Travel WishList. Visit 1000 cities across the world. 
11. Win a WSOP bracelet. 
12. Run a Marathon in less than 4 hours. 

Funny how I have want so many materialistic things in life!

Update. The initial list had 10 items. The first ten. Added more as I went along.

Last updated on 16 Sep 2016

Origami Crane

I have always been an Origami fan. As a kid I remember folding all kinds of paper into all kinds of shapes. Not that it excited me, it was one of those million things that you do as kids. And then when I stumbled upon Prison Break, I wanted to be able to make Cranes and all the other things that people make with one sheet of paper.

Somehow, yesterday, I started reading about it and decided to learn at least a few things. The Crane was an obvious place to start. Googled and used this image to learn how to fold a crane.
This is the final result. Not as beautiful as the ones Michael (Scofield) makes, but its still a crane. And it can still bring a smile to anyone.


I made two of them. The second one looked better. And while you are at it, you might want to check out this TED talk by Robert Lang where he marries the art and science of origami and creates wonderful objects (check out his website for his creations).

Any more origami aficionados?

And yes, I realized that I need gratification for my efforts. Even if its small. Even if it comes from myself only! I see things like juggling, origami, rubik's cube etc as those small little things that give me that instant gratification I look for.

Mindmaps and Website layouts

While working with Mindmaps it dawned upon me that why can't I do my website design like a huge inflatable mindmap? It would be easier for the visitor to find his way around on my website. It would be easier for me to create it. A quick and dirty website layout that I designed with MindMeister (one of those few free online mind mapping software).



And I realized that WK website is like a huge 3D Mindmap. Done very well. Time for inspiration!

Man About Town

Last night when I was wondering what to do, while channel surfing, I chanced upon Man About Town at Sony Pix. Although I dont watch a lot of English movies, something about this one appealed and I saw it.

Here's a tailor ...



I realized that Jack's life is very similar to mine (mine being lot less successful), he has the same insecurities that I have (although I dont have a wife to worry about), he is skeptic of same things I am of (apart from the fact that he is rich) and he is as confused as I am.

And its a wonderful movie. It enters my list of favorite movies. And I dint know that "Man About Town" meant these.

Autobiography of Ram Prasad 'Bismil'

Started reading this...

Autobiography of Ram Prasad 'Bismil'

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Fiction & Literature eBooks revolution freedom struggle ind

A, B and C

One of the latest pieces of work that has really caught the fancy of the world has been Anurag Kashyap and Abhay Deol's Dev D. It is a story of this young lad, Dev, a rich dad's poor little boy, an obsessive lover, an escapist, disillusioned by the world and in search for something that he calls love.

So much for Dev and his psychedelic life. Let me talk about me and a couple of my friends. Let me call these three people A, B and C. All three have a fairly enviable education background. All are beyond their prime now (28 types).

A works for India's most visionary entrepreneur's prodigal elder son's one of million companies. This company is one of few organized players in India's burgeoning retail market. A is one of the most extraordinary people that I have ever met. Although he doesnt put a lot of time and effort in coming up with insights and ideas but whenever he does so, he comes up with gem. His words are worth their weight in gold and diamonds and platinum. His thoughts are very clear and he knows what exactly he wants out of life and work. He is also one of the laziest people you would ever meet.

B works for a "conglomerate" with businesses ranging from chemicals to locks to rocket engines to foods to retail to real estate to medicine and to what not. If we legalized gambling and prostitution, they would have launched that too. Of course they would have put myriads of hierarchy and long designations for doing seemingly innocuous work. Anyways, B is an engineer by education, manager by designation and Shikari Shambhu by character. His sole aim in life is to make more money than anyone he knows, own the biggest house amongst his reference group and retire with enough in the pension fund. Nothing wrong about it. Just that its a different story that he is not doing anything about it.

C thinks that he hard to understand for most of the people that he knows. Including C himself. Actually that's what C thinks. He is often branded random, frivolous and fickle minded. He is trying to ride some 19 boats at the same time and needless to say, failing at staying on course. He work a 8:30 to 5:30 job and leaves his office strictly at 5:30, goes to his place and stares at the wall and TV for about 5 hours before he sleeps.

So, three of us, our life stream can put any number of Devs' to shame. A typical day for each of us is VERY predictable. We probably are the cheapest targets for detective agencies. Sitting here, in my office, I can tell, with 100% certainty what the other two are upto. For example B is trying to scroll through his gtalk chat list thinking who he can chat up with. A would be out of his office smoking umpteenth cigarette of the day. I can also say for sure if you asked the other two about all three, everyone but A would know what others are upto. A's secretary might have some answers.

Not that we dont try to break out of this monotony, its just that we are constrained by things that seem out of control and we dont even try to move out of the rat race. For A, its lethargy, for B, its security and for C, its, well he doesnt know.

Dev was better. He at least had an outlet in blur of alcohol. We dont.

P.S.: Title changed from "Putting Dev D to shame" to "A, B and C"

April 2009: Goals!

When April 2009 would end, I would have

1. bought the bike.
2. learnt how to juggle 4 balls.
3. finished (or given up) on the twitter clone. This would mean I would know the basics of CSS. PHP and MySQL.
4. restarted blogging on saurabhgarg.com.

Will add more things that I may think of before April begins.