Observations as London Goes Past

Imagine going all the way to UK and spending all day with customer or inside the hotel room. Last week the weather in England was miserable. It rained incessantly - almost like tropical rains. So instead of visiting my favourite museums and reliving the past, I opted to observe the present.

And here is what I observed.

1) A Marathi lady, just married, working at a restaurant as a waiter. We talked to her. She wouldn't be caught dead as a waiter in India. So, do Indians learn about dignity of labour only when they are away from India?

2) A Mongolian girl, all of 28, has a 10 year old son in Mongolia. She works 7 days a week. 5 days as a waiter and 2 days in a company where she hopes to join soon since she has completed her MBA. She pines for her son but works hard to achieve her dreams. Some day her son will join her and lead a comfortable life. We can learn life lessons from everyone.

3) Pani Puri being sold at a pound a piece - 5 pounds a plate. In Bangalore, I gobble down 7 for Rs. 10.

4) Corn-fed Chicken seems to be the flavour of the season. I had it twice, once in an reservation-before-6pm restaurant and then in a small bar. I never noticed "corn-fed chicken" in a menu before. Perhaps I was not looking. Or perhaps, it is a delicacy only on Worcester.

5) London Underground is very clean. No empty beer cans, or wafer packets. Even on a weekend! Is it the London Olympics?

6) Blackberry users seems to far outnumber any other smart phone user in London. And before anyone screams bad sampling, I would like to tell you that this was on a Saturday and in non-rush hour. SO it is unlikely that I sampled all office goers.

The Lost Symbol for £0.99

It pays to be loyal. Though I see no reason why customers should be loyal - if the customer is the king, shouldn't the companies be loyal to the customer? I would rather call it patronage.

In any case, this "patronage" resulted in obtaining The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown for £0.99. Now isn't that cool?

How?

I have been buying books from Foyles for some time now. Every time I buy something worth £15 I get a stamp. The personnel at the cash counters are pretty decent. They stamp the Foyalty Card (that's what they call it) even when the cost of a book is £14.50 or thereabouts. Once you get 10 stamps, you are eligible to buy anything worth £15 (basically, 10%).

So, The Lost Symbol beckoned me and I am now following the exploits of Professor Robert Langdon (he always ends up with a super smart lady companion, have you noticed?).

Why didn't I purchase a book of more lasting value, you ask?

Oh come on! Don't be a snob!

Besides, I do not think it would have made for an attention-grabbing headline. Do you think you would have stopped to read a blog titled "Think Twice for £0.99".
That was the other book I picked up :)

Distorted Brain True Images

I have an issue with those who claim that the world you see around is just a holographic projection of what your senses tell you. And that, that is not the reality.

Let's examine this for a little while. Right now - this very moment - what you see, or rather what you do not see is because of your brain's limited capacity to process electro-magnetic radiation beyond the visual range. The sound that you do not hear in that distance is limited by your brain's capacity to process the frequency limited to the audio range. Birds can see more colours than us. Sharks "see" electrical impulses with the help of the sensors that line their sides.

Fair enough. What we see and hear and feel and taste and smell is limited.

But it is not unreal, is it?
Perhaps, a portion or a subset of the reality. But still a reality, nevertheless.

But is the reality distorted by our brain? After all the brain is a product of random evolution that merely helped us survive (some of you may disagree, feel free to do so). So if distorted reality helps us survive, so be it. The brain is not in any hurry to see the reality as is - there is no apparent evolutionary advantage. Or is there?

The Next Nobel Peace Prize Winner

Bill Strickland.

No, he is not a Nobel Laureate.

Not yet.

But if his job training centre and crafts school model is successfully replicated all over America and the World then it wont be long coming. If microcredit can win Prof. Mohammad Yunus a Nobel Peace Prize than why not Bill Strickland?

I am terribly impressed by Bill Strickland's achievement.

He lives The Secret.

Want to know more about him.

Check this book review out => Making The Impossible Possible

Enhance Your Egyptian Experience

Ancient Egypt has a strange attraction to most of us. Many of us yearn to go to the land of Pharaohs. But do you want to be just like any other tourists: been there, done that? Of course not.

Now here is a way to enhance your experience. Learn how to read ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs. Imagine yourself in the ancient rock temples of Nubia, reading the script for yourself instead of depending on some tourist guide spinning stories.

You think I am joking?
Check out How To Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs and tell me if you still think I am.

What? You are not interested in ancient Egypt? Then how about some brain exercise? Learning to read an ancient script is just what the doctor ordered. Check it out anyway.

Think Hard Before You Buy Amazon Kindle

I have been drooling after Kindle since ages. (See here, here and here).
Now that Kindle is available in India, I am hesitant to buy it.
Why?
Because of negative reviews by an Amazon Kindle user who calls herself Gadget Queen.

And then there is this other problem to do with DRM and ownership. Kind of freaks me out.

What of the 1400+ positive reviews?
Valid question; but my approach to any product purchase over Internet closely follows the method used by scientists: It doesn't matter how many evidences you find to support your theory. All it takes is one exception and your theory is history.

I like the idea of carrying 1500 books with me on one ultra light device, but I do not like the idea of DRM.

In the recent past, Amazon has remotely deleted purchased copy of 1984 and Animal Farm for users' Kindle. That is clearly unacceptable. The funda behind DRM to prevent unrestricted duplication of copyrighted material makes sense, but if that means I do no possess the content I buy on Kindle then I would like to think hard, very hard, before buying a Kindle.

Real Life Ayn Rand Character

Remember Howard Roark? The hero of The Fountainhead. The architect who never gave up or gave in in his quest to achieve the sublime?
I always thought he would remain the figment of Ayn Rand's imagination.
Apparently I was wrong. Totally.
There exists at least one such Howard Roark in real life.
Here, read this ...

I stumbled upon another kind of jazz as a high school senior when I participated in, as a member of Mr. Ross's art class, in that memorable visit to Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater. The startling beauty of that amazing house, rising improbably from the rocky ledges in a deep-green forest, stayed with me all my life. Wright was commissioned to build the house in 1936 by Edgar Kaufman ... Kaufman wanted a rustic summer home situated in such a way that it would provide a view of the lovely waterfall that tumbled down over the rocky outcrops on the property. Instead, Wright built an iconoclastically modern structure of glass, steel, and native stone, defined by massive horizontal levels of poured concrete that cantilevered dramatically out from the core of the house and rested on invisible supports. The building seemed to float in the trees.

Shades of Howard Roark? Wait, there is more ...

Whatever Kaufmann's reaction to the design of the house, he must have been baffled by where Wright decided to put it. Because instead of choosing a site for the house that would show off the waterfall view to its best advantage, Wright built the house in the one spot where you couldn't see the waterfall at all - directly above the falls, anchored upon the rocky ledges over which the water flowed.

In fact, Frank Lloyd Wright = Howard Roark.

I stumbled upon the above extract in a book called Make the Impossible Possible by Bill Strickland.