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Next DimensionThoughts of a restless mind on all that is seen and unseen ...
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June 17 A Bar Bouncer's Words of Wisdom on Boldness and DumbnessThis weekend was great. I explored a couple of pubs in the downtown area. And I saw someone
getting bounced by a bouncer. In super civilized Seattle this is a rare ( and a pretty entertaining sight ).
If I were a barman what would I advise the guy who wanted to prove how tought he is by fighting
with the doorman ?
It was the first time I was seeing this and all these thoughts came into my head as I watched the
free show. Ah, if only I had seen this a few weeks before and had given my words of wisdom to
one of my very best friends who ended up losing a couple of thousand bucks to bail himself
from the cops' clutches for the very same reason ...
My sympathies were surely with him. But then maybe if I were a patron at the pub, I wouldn't like my Friday night fun coming to an abrupt end as a driven-out-customer. And of course, if I were to be the bouncer, who wouldn't like to have some fun ? March 31 Bangalore no more : What's in a name - a lot at timesMy seemingly endless non-stop 14 hour flight from New York to Mumbai was coming to an end.
For the entire flight, I hadn't even cared to glaze into the digital GPS screen to know where
exactly the flight was. Because when you're on a 14 hour flight, most of the time you're still
thousands of miles away from where you want to be. But now that I knew that it'd be touchdown
soon I couldn't have been more excited to see my plane zoom into the destination on the GPS
Screen. But when I looked into the screen, what I saw , didn't make me happy at all. And it was
nothing related to the flight or its landing.
For, what I saw on the screen, was another ridiculous instance of 'rebranding' staring in my face.
Bombay to Mumbai. Madras to Chennai. Kolkata to Calcutta. And now ... Bengaluru.
So, here was India's map staring at my face, with something missing & replaced , and that
something had pretty much got India onto the Worldmap in the first place, the recognition of
Technological power and education - and finally a reason for us to be known as something
beyond a cowshed. Bangalore was gone.
I think the immediate fuel for my irritation was the fact, that just a couple of days ago,
I was riding in a Bus in Seattle - half a planet away from umm .. Bangalore ... and a few
passengers and the bus driver, started asking me stuff about Bangalore, the tech companies
over there,and why I'd still need to go outside my country to work. It made me quite happy.
After years, there was finally a brand name which India had contributed to the world.
Make no mistake about it. Bangalore as a brand is something positive, the very fact that
companies like Google,Microsoft,Yahoo--all have R&D offices over there is something to
be proud of. But Bangalore as a city -- the government doesn't seem to have anything
better to do with taxpayers wealth other than the latest mission they've embarked on -
repainting all sign boards to Bengaluru . Building roads, infrastructure, airports -- seems
to be nowhere on the checklist.
Bangalore was harldy known by the world for being an Indian city established by the Brits.
It was known as an Indian tech hub. This seems to be entirely misplaced wave of nationalism,
to restore the 'past glory' of the 'local people'. Something way more constructive would be,
to build a new city called Bengaluru right from scratch and try to make it an even bigger
brand than the existing Banglore.
Another 'renaming' which amuses me is the renaming of Victoria Terminus to
Chattrapati Shivaji Terminus. The victorian architecture, arches and the general
ambiance of the place hardly make it feel like the great Maratha legacy. A more
constructive approach would have been to create a new railway station and name
it CST. Mumbai is a city of 17+ million people, and there's not a single major
railway station over here which wasn't built by the Britishers. It could do with
a lot more 20 platform Railway terminuses.
Construction , building , rebuilding ... these should be in the agenda of action.
But Renaming ? Are we battling with History ? Or do we really get something
in this 'conquest' of planting a flag on our own land ?
And if you're a software engineer from Bangalore, do you feel the way I do.
Feel free to leave a comment, I'm just curious to people's reaction to this.
The pic, I know is fuzzy. But that's the best I could click in a hurry :)
March 15 In memory of the forgotten ....
After an unusually bright and cheerful forntnight with the Sun smiling from above, the clouds of Redmond decided to get out of hibernation and made a switchback from slumber to thunder. So on Friday, I got up to see the usual overcast skies without the smallest crack in sight to let a single sunray bless the place. Now overcast skies are something I have kind of learnt to live with, so thats nothing unusual. Yeah its a bit irritating to get wet and get your shoes mucky early in the morning, but anyway, I dragged myself to office. It turned out to be a nice day. Another Friday. Another Party at office. This time the party was a very REAL party. There were more than a 100 people around and much noisier and merrier than the last few parties. Lots and lots of beer. Now when you drink, you think. And I entered the party when I was sober enough to really appreciate and enjoy the conversation of the drunk.
And on a rainy day with not a single ray of sunlight to disrupt their flight, where were the Vampires ? The poor things collapse in Sunlight, why didn't they immigrate from Transylvania to the Seattle area ? At least they could enjoy Daytime and actually see something without having to battle with the Sun. And Seattle - the city, the people - seem to be very warm,polite and welcoming to people from all over the world ; I'm sure the welcome would extend to those from another LifeZone . They are truly forgotten heroes. They make more interesting subjects of movies than most moviestars do and yet never show their face. And in fact, I think there are more movies about Vampires than heroes. Oh how I wish you were here ......
March 11 The Next BRICThe BRIC Acronym is something which I've been constantly hearing for the past five months from
the perspecitve of software sales expanding in the BRIC Nations - Brazil,Russia,India and China.
I did know about this acronym ( for maybe the last couple of years ) but had never paid much
the deeper implications of it. I did some research on it for a while and found information about
the BRIC idea quite interesting (and encouraging , specially to me , being from the I of the BRIC ).
For those who are curious about the BRIC idea, here is a link to info right from the horse's mouth:
This is a Goldman Sachs report first published in 2003 which identifies the 4 nations as fast growing
economies, and their combined GDP will exceed that of the G6 nations by 2050. This report is turning
out to be the basis for large Multinationals in determining their sales and marketing policy in emerging
markets ( this is something which I can see and understand first hand ). What I found most
encouraging was a 2007 followup of the paper which re-evaluates India's growth potential and
corrects it to a value higher than what was initially forecasted. The two reports put together,
made me wonder where India would have been had we been freed from the cage of communism
couple of decaded earlier.
On a self-critical note I wonder how I ended up missing the deeper details behind this acronym.
Last, I worked at the office of a famous investment bank, and in India itself ( the I of the BRIC).
I was working as a developer, and maybe I was just too busy churing out programs faster than
a typewriter, to go and do my own study in the principles of economics and finance from a broader
perspective ? Or maybe I wasn't reading the newspaper enough.
Googling for BRIC shows it as an acronym in widespread use amongst modern day economists,
as well as the sales and marketing teams of major corporations. This seems to be international
economic reality as important as it can get, to anyone from the South-asia subcontient.
And I became more aware of this after coming half-way across the planet, and after leaving
a financial powerhouse. Hmm. Maybe I should try to keep my eyes not just on Google News
but also on the Bloomberg news channel to get a better idea of what's going on in the world.
On a positive note, I feel happy about the fact that I took up a job and worked in India
immediately after my undergrad instead of heading straight to the US for a Masters degree
or a Job. I have interacted with Indians in US who headed here for their Masters immediately
after their undegrad and started working here without ever having worked in India. While most
of them do have half a mind about returning at some point of time in the undefined future,
they end up wondering about whether they would ever be able to survive back in India,
or whether they would be able to a job which could use their education and skills.
After working in India ( I can only speak for the tech industry ) I could see for myself that
the skillset and education level required for jobs is pretty much the same on both sides of
the Atlantic. And okay, while life may not be as cozy and calm as in a place like Redmond,
people who are unsure whether they'll be able to 'survive back home' are, in my honest
opion, nothing but absolute weaklings with nothing to be proud of if they're unsure of
their ability to survive in the place where they spent the first 20 years of life.
Also, its an exciting time to work in India, and the aggressiveness, zeal and level of ambition
you get to see in the workplace ( which gets captured in the overall economic growth )
is something you might probably not see any where else. If you've just finished your
BTech and are pondering over whether to accept an admission for a Masters or a good
job in India I'd not think twice before advising you to chuck your admit :)
I think I've deviated significantly from the topic I started off with - but now coming back
to one of the statements made by Jim O' Neill - the economist to whom the BRIC report
owes its existance is - Its important to realize that we ( people from different nations )
are all different - and we don't have to be like each other. How true. I've seen people
from the sub-continent who've come here and changed their accents, their way of living ,
basic preferences etc. in a desperate attempt towards cultural assimilation and
success without the basic understanding that such exterior transformations are meaningless
and not required. If more people realized this statement neither would anyone require
drastic cultural transformation, nor would people face a sudden culture shock on arriving
in a different land.
Anyways, [yawn] ... enough thoughts for the day .. time for me to sleep I guess .. zzzz....
March 10 My Latest Aquisition ... No not Yahoo :)Its one of those times when I feel the urge to buy something and I do. This wasn't *THAT* hasty a purchase though its something I had in
mind for a long while and I finally went and bought it - a brand new bicycle which I can use around my home or on bike trails and paths
which are in plently in the Redmond/Seattle area. Two months ago I had this urge to buy umm something bigger -- a car -- but good luck
prevailed and the sheer paperwork required to purchase a car ( which is something I really don't seem to require in Redmond ) turned
out to be better for my bank balance. I had a rented car for more than a month and after a few weeks of zapping up and down on the
freeway from Redmond to Seattle ( and a few aimless rides into the hills ) the excitement soon died out and it doesn't seem to be
worthwhile to buy at least for a while.
So here is my bike.
So this is my latest 'aquisition'.
I took it on one of the trails quite close to where I stay, and it was quite an interesting cycle ride. For one,
I was riding a bike after ages. Next, it took me a while to figure out which of its 21 gears I should be using
at any point of time. Third, it gave me a much more interesting view of Redmond than the cut and paste
repetitiveness of the surroundings which blaze past me during car/bus rides on the freeways.
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