Who is BSkewl??

I have been following our good old fellow blogger posts. So I googled the name he has posted on his blog and found a webpage which seems to indicate that we have found our anonymous character. He looks like he fits our favourite blogger's profile - same name, graduated from MIT in 1998 (7 years work exp may be in line with W's stats). I, of course, apologize profusely to the person shown in this photo, if he is in no way related to BSkewl... :)-

EDIT: took off photo :))

Just ordered from Amazon...

Decided to catch up on my reading, so decided to buy some books I have been meaning to read for sometime now, from Amazon.

Cheddi Jagan .. who was he?

I recently saw a fascinating documentary on the late Cheddi Jagan and his wife Janet Jagan , considered as the founders of modern day Guyana. The story is magical. A son of a poor indentured slave - Cheddi went onto U.S. for dental studies and later married Janet Rosenberg in Illinois. They then moved to Guyana to form the first political party.

Despite winning the elections 2 times, they were sidelined, first by the British govt and later by the Kennedy administration; who all feared a red state in the west. Cheddi and Janet were socialists, they felt that the country which was formed out of liberation from imperialism, needed a different form governance. However in those days, it was easy to be labeled!

Why am I writing about this little country and its politics and its leader? Because I think in today's era of controlled media, we sometimes lose sight of some great leaders of the world. Just because their beliefs did not gel with the majority, they have been sidelined in history. It is important that we keep our healthy dose of cynicism for what we are told in the media and this applies in today's political scenario as much as some decades ago.

Eventful weekend and more..

Boy, this was a great weekend, despite the constant rain. Friday, couple of my friends (including some fellow bloggers) headed out to Palo Alto for drinks and a bit of dancing. Had a blast at a cool college-y hangout, $5 cover and decent drinks.

Saturday brought some more rain, which meant more episodes of Coupling (now I am really getting addicted). To end the evening, we tried an Ertitrean restuarant called "New Eritrea" in SFO. Modest place, but great food, and really friendly people (they patiently answered my ignorant questions like : where in the world is Eritrea??). The food was really good. The Injera bread reminded me of food back home (some coincidence, considering Eritrea and my hometown are thousand of miles away [EDIT] from each other).

Sunday, we headed out to the Bay Area Unites for Tsunami concert. The concert was really cool, featured Lisa Loeb (remember her hit -Stay??), and others. I just wish the organizers had done a better job with the stage production. Lisa Loeb actually had a mic/sound problem and had to stop in middle of a song. Comon.... its Bay area people, its not like we are short of technology here!! But overall a great production for a worthy cause,... Tim Draper (of VC firm Draper, Fisher and Jurvetson) was a guest speaker who made a notable $500k donation and encouraged everyone to contribute so that the total could reach $5 MM.

My weekend continues.. Tomorrow is a holiday too. Happy Presidents day!!!

Chicago...

More pictures form Chicago. The Millenium park was really cool. Check out this link for more photos (The Kapoor sculpture was closed the day I visited).


Crown Fountain


Pavillion designed by Frank Gehry

Changes in delivery models

On my trip to Chicago, I realised that I had not brought any movies with me for my inflight entertainment (I was flying southwest..). On the way back, I decided to try Movielink - an online movie rental website. You pay anywhere from $1.99-$4.99 for a movie rental, download the movie, and then you have upto 24 hours to watch the movie (the time starts when you begin watching the movie). Very cool indeed!! The movie I rented, however, was not. Please avoid Chronicles of Riddick.

This led me to think: Netflix brought us a new concept of renting movie. Movies at the doorstep. Now, online movie rental websites bring in a new delivery model..you dont even need to walk to the postbox!! No wonder companies like Netflix are joining forces with Tivo and others to innovate on new delivery models for movie rentals.

In the same token, will there be a time when all snail mail will be eliminated? I mean, you can order books, music, movies,... online and have them e-delivered. Does this present a huge setback for the Postal system ?

Donald Jacobs center


Atrium

Just got back from Chicago trip which I had planned to see some friends. I also made a detour to Kellogg to visit and meet people. More on the trip at a later date, best to leave with some pictures.

Innovation is needed in everything!!

Aregon23 pointed out the new beta version of Google maps on his blog. I spent an hour playing the cool interface that lets you pan and zoom from a country to street level. Truly amazing.

This brings up the question of innovation. In the late 90s, Google was a disruptive technology in the then sleepy search industry; they still continue to refine and redefine existing tools for simplifying life, eg., Google scholar, etc. Innovation is needed in creating better products in all spheres - the water tap, the brick, the mouse, the roof, the chip, ...everything!!

This is what Prof. Christensen talks about, when he says that you need innovation to spur growth in markets or create new ones. This article reminds me that I need to read his books ....

Solution?

The last post and Poweryogi's post brings up a good point. Can we introduce fast food that is cheap and healthy? While, I do not know the underlying economics, I wish to bring to attention some other type of foods..

In Bay area, we have a chinese fast food chain called Tung Kee. It is very non-descript type of place but serves dishes for under $5. In fact the article reads: Prices are unbeatable: 12 of the 30 items cost $2.50, nine items are $2.75 and nothing peaks over $4. The food is truly fast food. You place the order and I gaurantee that within 5 minutes, you get your food.. and its tasty, and (I think) healthy!!

There are other ethnic joints, some Indian ones in Sunnyvale, that surprisingly will serve an excellent lunch (with 2 vegetable dishes, lentils, etc) for under $5.00.

So IT is possible to serve food for under $5.00 without resorting to fatty fries and double-cheese double-patty burgers. In fact, of all the FFC, I like In-n-out because they serve good burgers with fresh ingredients.

Now, where is the money that we pay for a meal at McDs go? Very little goes to cover the cost of the food. Most of it goes to cover the advertising, decor, salaries, and so on. The only good thing of FFCs is that one can get the same burger across the country -from Maine to Oregon. For many, that may be a good thing; for me, that represents monotony!!!

LA times

I was in the underbelly (literally) of LA this past week- Long Beach. The name evokes images of sun laden beaches and clear skies. Instead, I saw Urban squalor, and areas which looked like I was in a different country altogether. I was consulting for a manufacturing facility of a major automaker. The factory was in an extremely industrial area- very depressing by the smoke stacks intermingled with sleazy liquor shops and car repair shacks.

Returned home and saw Supersize me - a hilarious documentary about a guy who goes on a fast food eating binge for 30 days. He gains 25 pounds, his cholestoral levels skyrocket, and so on. Thats when it hit me - I had been eating in the same fast food joints (ok maybe not the supersize portions) the whole time in Long Beach. Because there was nothing else than McDs, KFC, Rallys, Tacho Hell, El Pollo Rocco, .. in this city. The coincidence that fast food joints and liquor stores are omnipresent in only economically backward areas is interesting. This means that while affuluent suburbs may vote to deny licenses to such establishments, the economically backward in the cities have ready access to their addiction. And what about fast food - isnt it in the same category as alcohol or cigarettes or even drugs? Where is the social responsibility of companies like McDonalds, Pepsico, Coke, or Hersheys? Arent these companies responsible for the health of their customers?

It has always intrigued me that in this country, the poor people are fat and rich people are skinny. It was completely opposite where I grew up. The rich were potbellied (a symbol of prosperity), while the poor were undernourished and skinny. Isn't that strange?

Why does'nt KFC market salads with their fried chicken instead of biscuits and gravy? Why not fresh juice instead of Pepsi? Economics - plain and simple!! Who owns KFC? Pepsico. No way are they going to share the profits with some fresh juice maker. Where is the bottomline in that???

And who comes up with marketing campaigns enticing little children to eat such junk? and why should the poor (who just want to have a wholesome meal in under 5 dollars) be the one who are subject to such diets? Isnt it time we take some action against such corporations and convince them to change their strategy. While it will have growing pains, it can be something sustainable in the long run...

Of course, fastfood is not the only problem - lack of education, awareness, and medical facilities also contribute to the obesity epidemic. But fast food is one problem that I believe we have a ready solution to. Of course, in order to do that, we need corporate responsibility and ethics ingrained in leaders of such organizations, who should be thinking about the society and not just collecting their hefty paychecks.

Feet signatures

Some of my MBA applicant-bretheren can understand the panic we go through at office when we are in middle of checking b-week forums, blogs, essays, etc.. and someone walks into the office. Kind of embarrasing... isnt it?

Well, I have (kind-of) devised a system. I have learnt to recognize the person by the sounds of their feet and the way they approach my office. Some of them are:

• Manager: rushed, quick, nervous steps. His office is around the corner..2 doors down. Hard, because I have very little reaction time to press close on the browser. But then, he wrote my reccos...!
• Admin: she is a bit on the heavy side (300 lbs), so kind of drags her feet and moves with slow, sure steps. Easy, no problems.
• Co-worker1: heavy steps. Cool and confident. Easy
• VP: never ventures around my office :) Easy
• Co-worker 2: office opposite to mine. Marches into my office without any sort of announcement. At that point, I just let him see what I have been upto. Somedays, I get annoyed and feel like yelling to him "and what the f*** do you want?". Very very hard.
• Office flora watering lady: slow steps, stopping occasionally with the water cart. Easy.
• Janitor: sharp 6.32 P.M. everyday. Easy

Thats about it!! Come to think of it, not too many people visit my office.. which is good, I guess.