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Me & my mom
Living with an octogenarian mother is tough. My mom manages to make my everyday life as complex as [humanly] possible with her constant instructions, which I can never complete in the order she has imagined in her head or at the perfection levels she wants 🙂. This means from the morning till bedtime I face her constant beratement. While all this sucks out the positive vibes a new day brings, I can’t get mad at her and vent out, because I know well all this comes out of her love & care. From her perspective, these are for my “Good”; She doesn’t understand a bit these could irritate and stress…
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Lost without mobile for an hour
I dropped my wife & kid in front of the venue, told them I will park the car and call when I am inside the venue. They walked away, I had driven few metres, when I turned to pick my mobile phone, I couldn’t spot it. It was not in my pocket, not in the dashboard, not in the seat next to me. I looked around to see them, no sight of them, road was jam packed so I couldn’t stop the car and go after them. I began to panic! My mind was playing tens of options on what to do next. It’s not going to be a simple…
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Being secure is common sense
Today the news is about Customers who paid by credit card at 51 UPS Store locations across 24 states in the USA are at risk of their credit card being syphoned by cybercriminals. Last year end it was the turn of Target’s (large retailer) 98 million customers to have their card data stolen. These are not happening only in the faraway USA. In Chennai (India) too, city police gets hundreds of complaints every month on money being siphoned from their bank accounts. As the world becomes more and more connected, payment transactions moving from cash to digital, as individual consumers we too get inadvertently exposed to online security risks. Common…
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Are we all messed up?
We are living in one of the best times in human history, enjoying unparalleled access to wealth of written knowledge dating back 2500+ years. And all this through what Sir Tim Berners Lee invented called “World Wide Web”. The power of Web is its nested nature and links (Hyperlinks) to other resources. At the same time, this nested nature of web introduces randomness to our work and behaviour. As humans, we will need more time for our genes to catch up to this. I can hear you saying “Venkat” why all this sudden thinking?. Just look at this workflow I went through in my work for the last 1 hour.…
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How is Wisdom different from knowledge?
Wanting to have a different evening snack I went to “The Soup and Salad Cafe” at T.T.K.Salai, Chennai. I ordered an El Bandido Veg soup (Mexican spicy) & The Kaamatein High salad (Rajma, Corn, Channa, Peanuts & Potato Chips). The Soup was quite good and the salad was very nice (the potato chips added a nice bit of crispiness). You may ask why am I talking about a restaurant under a title of “How is Wisdom different from knowledge?”. It is because of this nice caption that I saw on the restaurant wall (photo below) which goes like “Knowledge is knowing that a Tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not…
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Is Google losing the shine?
I am halfway through reading the book Googled by Ken Auletta when it struck me and the thoughts have become this post. Reading the book you are awe-stuck on Google’s initial years, the story of how the founders acted, their extraordinary vision & brilliance, and their boldness, which bordered arrogance, are all unbelievable. Though many of us were in our 20s when Google was founded and have lived through its growth, still when you read it chronicled we realize that this is a company that was so disruptive, so unconventional, so transformational in the first years of its life itself. Switching to the present, when I think about Google today…
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Dentist Appointments
For the last 3 weeks, every Wednesday I had to go through this ordeal of a Dentist Appointment. Thank God, with yesterday I am done. I don’t know what it is with Dentist (like any other Doctor they are also in a Noble profession), but majority of the people – Kids and Grown-ups dislike going to a Dentist. In the 3 hours of time that I was staring at the roof with my mouth wide open while the doctor filled my cavities I came up with this thought-provoking list of why we might be disliking Dentists (List is in no particular order): The pain while surgeon is operating, especially the drilling The thought of keep your…
