Fiction Virgin

I never bought or read fiction so far in my life. All the non-fiction I read has been good enough to fill my world with stories and imagination. Sangita reads a lot of both fiction and non-fiction. Off late, she has been reading very good fiction books. We talk and discuss about it all the time.

So, finally I have decided to try out fiction. I have a long list of books which Sang has recommended, but I am going to start with – Paulo Ceolho’s “The Alchemist”. I am already in love with this book. I can’t put it down. I can clearly see the book’s cover which Santiago used to read and also as a pillow. Next few months are going to be some good fiction reading for me.

The Alchemist

Admitting Ignorance

I recently hired a driver through one of the guys whom I know. The driver is a 20 year old young chap who is very active and dedicated to his job. When I asked him about his skills, he admitted he is a very good driver and has been driving for a long time in the city. I asked him to get a copy of his license and he got me a crappy copy of it where I can’t even tell whether it was him in the picture. That’s fine. I was ok with it.

Now coming to his direction and knowing the city skills – here he acts a little shady. When I asked him, does he know the city well – he responded he knows it actually very well. But as I see him driving everyday, I am surprised with the amount of knowledge he has about the city. He doesn’t know anything about the city. He doesn’t even know that when a Traffic police takes down his number it means that in future he might have to pay some “chalan”(fine). But do you think he would admit it? Nope. He would front on me that he knows everything. He is ashamed to ask me the directions. I had to direct him everyday.

The problem for me is that not that he doesn’t know about the city and directions. But he is so not willing to acknowledge his ignorance for once and get over with it. Instead he chooses to go through the painful process of getting embarrassed every day in front of me. He probably thinks that I would get rid of him if I know about his ignorance, but him lying and fronting doesn’t help his case either. It’s actually annoying to me to deal with his lies and also show him the way.

I have seen similar kind of behavior pattern in Software field. Mostly people from Indian origin (Disclaimer: I am Indian). A lot of people who have dreams of going to USA and making it big actually come to US without much experience. There by they become what we call – “The google researcher”. No, they don’t work for Google, but they use google  for all their programming needs. These guys somehow get inside the company that they know a lot about whatever the client needs. Once in, they pretend and front to be experts. Which is probably ok – considering the amount of time, money and energy they spent to get there. But what shocks me is that when I reveal their ignorance – instead of admitting it they front and lie on my face.

The most difficult thing for an Indian is to say is – “I don’t know”. As if by saying that, he/she might cause a big pain to their erudite heritage of India. Instead of admitting and getting on, they lie and keep lying at every point of their ignorance. Once admitted, ignorance doesn’t last. If I admit my ignorance, I am creating a space for learning in that space. But nope – it’s too much to take for an inflated ego to admit his ignorance.

I have worked with a friend who was a poster child for this kind of case. I would see him struggle with Javascript every day. Every frigging day! He would ask my help and in case he senses that I am getting  little restless with his ignorance, he would go and ask someone else. But to our boss he would always say that he can fix things with Javascript. This would make my boss’s job easy, but my colleague’s life was awful. He would struggle every day. I was so pissed off by his behavior that I actually gave him an electronic version of my Javascript book. Not only that, I said we will do the learning simultaneously and finish off the book in 1 month.

You would think that would change his mind. No. He refused to take my help and struggled all the time I was working there. I actually pity him. Only for once, if he could admit his ignorance and create a learning space, he would master it so fast that he would never need to ask for help from anyone. I kinda had a feeling that he liked his pain or he is just plain old moron. Some how he validated his pain with something and was ok with it. The biggest road block he himself created for him was “Admitting his ignorance”.

Ruminal Thread

I try to maintain a healthy habit of meditating every day. I try. There are sometimes during the meditation process I would come to a state where I am totally aware of my surroundings and also in a deep sleep like state. It’s a very difficult thing to explain but I am aware that I am meditating, but at the same time I am seeing things like I do in my dreams.

Yesterday while I was half a way through my meditation – I was in such a state. During that time, for a very brief period of time I was asking myself or the Self the question, “why am I here?” and it also felt like I was asking, “Why are we all here?” Then there for a very split moment I knew. I knew why. It was for a split second and then a word came to my mind – “Ruminal Thread”. I saw a square shaped cloth and it’s threads being unlocked one line after another.

I have never heard that word before “Ruminal”, I was so surprised that I saw that word. By now I am wide awake and totally forgot the answer for my question. I only have a feeling of how it felt when I knew the answer, but not the answer. All I am left with is a word – Ruminal Thread. May be Universe it trying to say something to me?

Ruminal adj. of word rumen – meaning: “The first division of the stomach of a ruminant animal, in which most food collects immediately after being swallowed and from which it is later returned to the mouth as cud for thorough chewing. Also called paunch.” From dictionary.com

Inspired Action

It’s been such a long time, I have been wanting to write about Inspired Action. Sangita arrived and we happily got back to our good old discussions. Earlier they used to take place while we hike Oakland hills, now they just happen when we travel in a pollution filled tar roads of Hyderabad. But never the less, the quality is same.

We were discussing what is the difference between Action and Inspired Action. Lot of people know what Action means. They do it all the time. Their job, work, home stuff etc. We are all familiar with action concept. But is this what defines great people? Why was Mother Theresa inspired to so much work? What makes Narayana Murthi tick? How does Steve Jobs go about his day? Irrespective of what field you choose, you will find some people who are front runners. Not because someone asked them to do so, but they are inspired and driven from within.

Action people wait for some orders to come along. Inspired action people don’t wait for opportunities they are part of the opportunity. They are so engrossed and in love with what they do that they don’t see the part of doing at all. They are just in a state of being. Inspired action leads to being and becoming of what one dreams.

As the auto wallah took a tipsy turn, I talked about my new job and how action and inspired action fit into it. When I joined I was inspired and I was charged. As the days went by and I hit road blocks one after another, I kinda got down to action level. I realized that I was functioning from action mode – where I wait for things to fail and then I go fix them. This works fine and would probably be good enough to earn my salary. But it leaves me with deep dis-satisfaction. I realized that this was also the reason why I didn’t enjoy my previous job. After some time it becomes monotonous and trite. I won’t be able to live my dreams if I function from the place of action. So, during the discussion I realized that how only couple of days of insipid and boring tasks can bring my whole morale down.

So, I realized it and switched to Inspired Action. Submerged inside my project and thinking ahead of the situations kept my head above the water. After doing it consistently now I am beginning to like what I am doing and also not put off my roadblocks. Inspired action is the way to go!

People skills of a butcher

Today, as my mom planned to cook Biryani for all us, I got up early to go to a butcher to buy some meat. In India it’s not like the meat is sold in a store. There is your traditional butcher and usually there is one in your neighborhood. The meat is usually certified by some Govt. organization and almost all of the time it’s Halal – even though it doesn’t make a big difference for me.

At 7:00AM, the place is packed. As usual in India we don’t have any lines or the concept of patience. Everyone there just falls on top of the butcher and is demanding meat.

“Mohan bhai, when are you going to give me my 1/2kg meat? Should I just leave?“, threatens one guy. Another guy, who is chewing pan and stinks says in his loud voice (in the process almost spat on me) “Mohan bhai, take the money first. I have calculated it to be 240Rs and give me the meat“. Employing the age old trick of paying first and thereby inducing guilt in the butcher so that he can get served first. There were couple of old people who stood in silence. You know by their silence that they are very well known by the butcher and also these are the people who buy large amount of meat.

In all this chaos – I was amused to see how the butcher – Mohan manages the whole thing. His public skills are amazing. No matter who asks or yells, he talks in a hurried but nice tone. He calls everyone “bhai”(brother) and treats them as the most important person for his business. He has 4 people under him working and he reveals that he is paying them 300Rs (7$) per day wages. He puts it out as if he has to pay them a lot of money. Playing the guilt card when some guy refuses to pay the price quoted for meat. There is not fixed price. The price is fixed by Mohan bhai and usually it’s cheaper on Sundays as there would be at least 1000 people who buy it from him. 1 kg (2.2pounds) is Rs.180(4.5$), probably cheaper than US. But he is going to sell at least 500kg today – earning more than what a Software guy can earn in 2 weeks.

I got out of my thoughts, as Mohan asked me – “Kitta hona bhai?” (How much brother?). I said, “2 kgs”. As he prepared the meat for me, I was holding back the falling of at least 5 people on top of me. One guy almost poking under my armpit.

The lesson one could learn from Mohan bhai is – Treat your customers with praise and love even though they yell at you. But be assertive when it comes to price.

Being ‘Flex’ible

I have a dream. I am taking small steps to realize this dream. The dream is to build a on demand, online e-education framework. The framework should take care of all the details of running a successful online education/training program. It should be extensible, usable and most importantly simple.

I have been toying with this idea for a long, long time. Sangita is a witness to my dilemma for a long, long time. My main problem/opportunity is that I want to build it using mostly open source technologies. And education/training involves, audio, video. I explored a lot of technologies that would do this. I was a fan of Open Laszlo for a while. But it is not mainstream. I love the employees – I met so many of them when I went for a meeting couple of months back in SF. But the documentation is feeble and mailing list is not that active. So finally today I dropped Laszlo off my list.

I have been hovering around Flex since it came out with version 1.0. But I was never convinced with it as it came along with a lot of bells and whistles which I didn’t need. Even after Bruce Eckel turned into a Flex evangelist, I didn’t go for it because me and my friend Jorge were worried about being locked in Adobe’s proprietary grip.

But today I have decided that I would be a little flexible with Flex and go ahead and try it. I have a 15 day trial version of Flex developer and I intend to learn Flex in these 15 days and create an amazing application which would have never been possible with DHTML & Ajax. Once I do that, I will decide whether I should go with Flex or not. I will keep updating my blog with my new learnings.

Guru Poornima

Today is Guru Poornima.

Sankaram Sankaracharyam Kesavam Badarayanam;
Sutra-Bhashya-Kritau Vande Bhagavantau Punah Punah

I adore Lord Siva, Lord Vishnu, Bhagavan Vyasa and Sri Sankaracharya. I again and again prostrate to Sri Vyasa who wrote the Vedanta Sutras, and to Sri Sankaracharya who wrote the commentaries thereon (Guru Vandanam)

You can checkout the significance here. I also realized that Sri Sathya Sai World Youth Conference have been going on. It never occurred to me when the preparations were going on, couple of months ago in US, to attend this event as I knew that I would be in India. But now, I feel like I should have. Anyhow, I am happy that Daniel got a chance to speak and get close to Swami. 🙂

Daniel in Parthi

e-seva the iTunes of bill payment

Apple has a history of not to go with anything that has to do with streaming. Looks like Apple doesn’t believe in streaming. It has 3 technologies out there, which prove this point.

  1. Music – You need iTunes to download music on to your computer and then later put it on your iPod.
  2. Movies – You still need iTunes and then you can put it on your iTv and watch it on your TV
  3. Communications – You still need iTunes and then you can put stuff on your iPhone

So, it clearly shows how Apple deals with media. And there is a reason why Apple chose that way, it works. Period. This central place (iTunes) to manage all the media is the principle behind Apple’s way of doing things.

Lately, I came across similar principle here in India while paying our bills. In India (at least in AP, I am not sure of other states) you can pay your electricity, water and telephone bills through a service called “e-seva”, which literally means “electronic service”. It’s nothing but a wide set of offices dispersed throughout the city – and you can take your bills there to make a payment. Kinda like one place to pay off your bills. Just like iTunes.

I was wondering why didn’t the people who designed e-seva put the whole thing out there for normal people to access? Why can’t I go to the e-seva site and pay off my bills online? Couple of reasons come to mind –

  1. Internet penetration is not that dense
  2. Online payment requires, some sort of bank a/c or credit card – which is just picking up in India. India is still a largely cash based payment country.
  3. Language could be a barrier. A lot of people don’t read or write English which is most of the Internet is made up of.

But for now the e-seva system works fine. May be once all the above issues are resolved then may be I can make auto-payments of my electricity, water and telephone bills online as I used to do in US. May be once we all get 100MB pipelines to internet, Apple will offer iTunes’ online version which basically streams movies, audio etc. Till then e-seva and iTunes are just fine and work.