Hello, my dear Culicidae

I am back. And I want blood. 

So do you.

My electric bat and highly developed brain vs your annoying proboscis and admirable zest to procreate. 

Let the fight begin!

Time and again, I am proven right.

Yet, it is taking me so much time to believe 100% in myself and go with what I think is right.

I guess it is part of a process and I believe it is a positive process.. Slow and steady..

Too much of a good thing is bad

Suppose you wanted your techie friend to help you set up a website. How would you proceed?

Instinct would probably say
Go to friend, say "Hey can you help me set up a website? Thanks so much" and friend helps.

Most self help books would say "You don't just keep asking people for help.. you should always look for a way to compensate. Or you try to find out what is in it for them"

So, you go and tell him
"Hey you like to do tech stuff right? I thought you would find it interesting to help me set website.." and well, since you put it in his terms, he is more willing to help.

Makes sense, right?

Not always.

Now Imagine yourself in the place of this friend.

What if the person asking you for help was wrong about fact that you would find it interesting to help you set up a website? Or what if you do find it interesting, but you have more interesting things to do? But being the nice person that you are, you wont tell your friend "no I dont like setting up websites.". WHy not? Because it causes a stalemate. You understand that he needs your help to set up a website, you will help - not because it is interesting but because you naturally want to help a friend. And when you do something like that, all you want your friend to do is to appreciate the favour. Genuinely. Thats all.

But when your friend thinks HE is doing YOU a favour by giving you the opportunity to do something interesting, things screw up. There is an expectation mismatch. You feel your friend owes you one and your friend feels he has partially compensated by making it interesting for you. This is when you feel manipulated.

Let me clarify. I understand the intentions are good. Nobody wants to screw anyone. But there is unnecessary complication because of false assumptions that are made. Which leads to an expectation mismatch.

So we need to find a balance between being natural and following strategies to influence people. I believe by nature most people are nice. They want to help. And they will help just to feel the satisfaction of making someone's life easier.

And another important point to note is that if you want to help someone, it is important to realise that what the person wants may not be the same as what you think the person should want. And as right as you might sound to yourself, to the other person, you might sound equally wrong. Be wary of perspectives.
Dont generalise.  If you must make systems, understand that all systems are based on assumptions that we easily lost track of. And these assumptions might not always hold.

Red ants and home food

They love my laptop. I have no idea where they come from but they come.. near my laptop. Strange bedfellows.

Home food. Is awesome.

Thank you!

"My luck was accentuated by my living in a market system that sometimes produces distorted results, though overall it serves our country well... I've worked in an economy that rewards someone who saves the lives of others on a battlefield with a medal, rewards a great teacher with thank-you notes from parents, but rewards those who can detect the mispricing of securities with sums reaching into the billions. In short, fate's distribution of long straws is wildly capricious."

Warren Buffet.

Loved it. Capricious indeed! :)

Warren Buffet on gold..

It gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head.

[Chapter 3- The first walk]

The walk was nice. I managed to find a map. And I decided to walk around.. take in the awesome weather with the cool air and a touch of sunlight. It was a pretty curious place. There were these quaint 19th century buildings. and there were these little “potti kadais” (roadside shop) tucked inside. Sometimes there were even supermarkets hiding inside those buildings. And there were these occasional teenagers who would hand you a flyer and say something in Polish. You would stare amused at the letters on the paper, play a short game of “find the vowels”, give up and throw it into the nearest dustbin.

After I while, I was hungry. I walked into one of those shops in the quaint buildings and picked up some yogurt. I handed the lady a 50 Zloty note.

“Don’t you have smaller change?”
Sideways shake of the head to signify “no”
“Ok then. 10, 20, 30, 40, 45, 47, 47.5”
“Thank you”

All in Polish ofcourse (even the sideways shaking)

The yoghurt was good. But I hadn’t found my converter – so I walked.. till I got lost. Then I took my map, found the place and realized I had no clue where the hotel was on the map. I headed toward the nearest main road and tried retracing my path.

And lo and behold, after a while I end in this awesome place with a large mall, Hard Rock Café and what not. I walked in, went into 4 floors of “Empic” – a stationery chain which didn’t have what I want and finally found a hypermarket. It was Challengers I think. Anyways, I managed to find my converter picked up 2, though it would cost 10 zoltys, ended up paying 40 odd Zlotys, came back to the hotel.

Just outside the hotel, I saw this wall – which reminded me of the country horrific past:



I had dinner at the hotel (Microsoft sponsored) and put my aching limbs to rest.

Problems -> Solutions

I have been getting bogged down a by problems lately. Getting stuck. Complaining. Looking for a way out instead of forcing my way out. I am becoming myopic. I feel myself devoid of the freedom I used to be proud of.

And it is amazing how quickly things move when your mental make-up changes from the caged nature of "Oh no, there are so many problems - this cant be happening to me!" to the freedom of "Assume the worst - solve the problem - move forward."

Assume the worst. Solve the problem. Move on. Dont sit inside a cage.

You are here to do bigger things - solve bigger problems! You cant be wasting time on getting bogged down by your own little trivial issues - they are just distractions.. and shouldnt be eating up so much time!

1 year to go.. no time to waste. Think 1 year. Think 10 years. Dont think 1 week. Focus!

Dziękuję Warszawa, Dziękuję Microsoft! [Chapter 2 – Hotel Microsoft]

I reached Zurich in the morning on the 2nd after witnessing the beauty of the Alps from above. I had 3 hours left my connecting flight, so I decided to step out and inhale the cool Zurich air with Alps providing a tranquil backdrop as I set foot for the first time on European soil. I roamed around for a while, checked out the airport mall, ogled at the German signs and the prices in Swiss Francs, realized I didn’t have Swiss Francs, and finally ended up back in the airport. The departure area was a single long corridor dotted with plenty of chairs and door on either side taking you down to the respective gates. I sat on one of the chairs next to my door (this was 40 mins before departure) and saw just 5 other people. But by the time I had grinned at the lady near the door who checked my ticket and said “poittu vaanga”, 50 passengers had appeared out of nowhere. And so I sat in the 4-seats-row-flight, chatted for a while (yes, I had wifi inside the aeroplane :D), and had the vegetarian sandwich offered after take off.

When I landed in Warsaw, I realized I hadn’t informed Microsoft of my arrival but they had hired an agency to stand at the airport all day and pick up anyone who responded to the Imagine Cup Sign and bring them to the hotel every half an hour. As I waited for my bus to have enough people to justify a trip, I saw some interesting pictures on magazines, realized I could withdraw Zlotys directly using my DBS ATM card, got a SIM card, spoke to a judge who had come and spoke to the girl holding the Imagine cup sign. I also shared the story of the Indian from Singapore who was representing Sweden with the Kenyan press who refused to believe that this place wouldn’t accept Euros. Sleepily, with the jet-lag headache building up, I “read” the unreadable Polish signs all along the way till we finally reached Hotel Novotel Warszawa around 2pm on Friday, the 2nd of July.

There was Microsoft all over the place! We got a free bag, T-Shirt, bag, tourist guide book, and a map at the reception. There was a huge banner which read Imagine Cup outside the 20-storey hotel. The LCD monitors in the lobby talked about Imagine Cup. The whole hotel was buzzing with Imagine Cup! At this point, I couldn’t help but Imagine what the conversation would have been between Microsoft and the Novotel Manager –

"Hi, Novotel? I am XYZ from Microsoft. I need to make a booking"
"Sure, sir.. (sipping some beer) When would you be visiting?"
"1st to 9th July.."
"How many rooms would you like to book, sir?"
"Well, actually, I want to book the hotel"
"(Cought.. Sputter) The hotel, sir?"
"Yes, the entire hotel"
“(Cough) All right, sir. Please speak to my boss.”

And well, I guess a couple of million Zlotys would have exchanged hands after that.

But anyways, I got my card to access the room, realized it didn’t work, got another card, locked myself out, got yet another card and finally flopped into the luxurious bed. Then, I felt dirty, took a bath in the bathtub - I wanted a shower actually but couldn’t figure out how to operate it and made a mess of my hair, eyes.. Actually lets skip the bathtub part. Point is, I took a bath and realized I had forgotten to get a converter for the powerpoint.. So I decided to take a walk and see if I could buy one without running to Hotel reception for help.

Dziękuję Warszawa, Dziękuję Microsoft! [Chapter 1 – Departure]

I just returned from my first ever trip outside Asia – an all expenses paid outing to Warsaw, Poland for a week. It was, as you would expect, a really amazing experience and I felt it deserved a nice long account for 3 reasons.

1) To consolidate all that I learnt and experienced in the trip so I can chuckle over it on my 35th birthday.

2) To have a readymade link that I can point people to when they ask "Hey, how was the trip"?

3) To attain closure and move on with my relatively mundane existence in Singapore.

So, what was I doing in Warzsawa (read WarshAwa)? Representing Sweden (Heja Sverige! {read Heya Sveriya} [wow so many brackets in one line]) in the Imagine Cup 2010.

Sweden? Imagine Cup?

Imagine Cup is the world’s largest student technology competition, organized by Microsoft. The supposed aim of the competition is to tackle UN’s millennium development goals using technology; but I figured it was more of an effective way for Microsoft to rebrand themselves as the friendly and socially responsible corporation which makes cool software – a title that belongs to Google right now.

A close friend who is on an exchange-ish type of programme in Sweden, thought it might be a good idea to repackage an ambitious concept we had been working on to connect banks and villagers, and submit an entry into Imagine Cup. The idealist that I was, I felt we were fooling ourselves. But the great presenter that he was, he talked his way to the top in the Swedish regionals (ably supported by myself of course ;)).

Realizing that we were 3 Indians (another friend from India included) in a Swedish team, we decided to recruit a cool Swedish entrepreneur who was doing his masters. My friend in India sadly couldn’t make it for various reasons, so 2 Indians and a Swede got a trip to Poland to represent CreditMobile in the worldwide finals fully sponsored by Microsoft.

And so it came to be that after a crazy few weeks of juggling Credit Mobile, my internship, random freelance projects and house-shifting, I left on a 12-hour Airbus 380 (double decker :D) SQ flight to Zurich on the 2^nd of July.

RealAcad Learning..

'Bitter-sweet' strategy: Remember the story of how the wise master stopped his apprentice from complaining?

Tired of constant complaints, one morning, the wise master sent his apprentice some salt and asked him to mix it with a glass of water and drink it.

'How is it?' the master asked.

'Bitter,' spat the apprentice.

He then took him to a lake, poured the same amount of salt in it and asked him to taste the water.

'It tastes fresh and sweet,' the apprentice replied.

'The pain of life is the salt. No more. No less. The amount of pain always remains the same. However, the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container we put it in. So, when you are in pain, enlarge your sense of things.' said the wise master. 

This week, let's remind ourselves to stop being the glass, and become the lake

Good one! :)

Polska!

I am sitting in my room Warsaw (or Warszawa (spelt warshawa) as the people here call it) for the final round of the Imagine Cup 2010.
Tomorrow, we present.. There is plenty of work to be done...
I have been going around the city - quaint would be the perfect word to describe it. The place still has stone carriageways in many places and 1900s style buildings. There are trams as well, and the occasional malls. Plenty of cars.. quite a few cyclists. A huge tower stands in the city center - a gift from the Russians (that the citizens not to blow apart). The city was 80% destroyed by the Nazis and it is indeed amazing how they have rebuilt it.
As I enjoy a Microsoft sponsored week in luxury, I think the following "imagine"d conversation sums up the Imagine Cup part of things..

"Hi, Novotel? I am from Microsoft. I need to make a booking"

"Sure, sir. When would you be visiting?"

"1st to 10th July.."

"How many rooms would you like to book, sir?"

"Well, actually, I want to book the hotel"

"The hotel, sir?"

"Yes, the entire hotel"