Blogging from 35,000 feet above sea level. Flying 2.0 is here to stay.

Even the Wright brothers would have never dreamt of this - people sipping wine and communicating with the rest of world while flying at 35,000 feet above sea level across the American continent in the middle of a night. Virgin America made it a reality for me.

Even though it’s been about three years since Virgin launched its designer airlines in the US, I never got a chance to fly in one. I’m finally sitting in one right now flying to Boston from San Francisco and, you bet, I’m pretty impressed. The experience is only short of being spectacular. I’m amazed with the amount technology and design present in the cabin. From interesting 2D animated safety instructions (remember fight club?) to a sleek multi-purpose personal touch screen, there’s uniqueness screaming all around. This WiFi enabled (powered by gogo) PC friendly cabins make flying in other US airlines (except for JetBlue and the likes) feel like a ride into the past.

There’s nothing new about having WiFi in the cabin (I used it in Lufthansa five years ago). But it’s the speed and reliability of the service along with many functional features in the seat that awes me. One interesting feature I saw is a passenger-to-passenger chat feature on my touch screen. I question the usefulness of it unless you are with a big group or belong to the curious clan. I did manage to find a chat partner from seat 9D for a few minutes though.

We for sure are living in an era of exponential advancements. I continue to wonder what people 30 years from now would get excited about.

A documentary film on just any thing. Almost.

If I were to ask you to make a list of topics for a new documentary film what would the top 10 be? I'm sure poverty, war, politics, culture, aliens and all sought of things would fill the page. But how about a movie on Helvetica. Yes, Helvetica, the font. The ubiquitous font we see everyday on almost everything we read from billboards on the busy streets to the signs on trains and buses.

I'm not a typographer by any stretch of imagination but know about fonts a nano bit. And I never thought about a feature-film length documentary on Helvetica. I was amazed to learn that one was made and was more fascinated to see it. I'll now have more appreciation for the letters every time I read a billboard or a signpost.

This made me think about The Long Tail (Chris Anderson coined this term in Wired first). There's an audience almost for everything and the new flat digital world can help you reach them with out much sweat.

If there's a movie and an audience for Helvetica, the font, I'm sure we can find audience for all the crazy topics we have in mind. How about a digital documentary production company that focuses in making films on topics that fit the long tail? Here's your business idea.

What should I see when I visit Earth?

One of my colleagues was going to India and as usual I gave him a twenty minute run down on Devata's version of Lonely Planet for India. I told him what to see and what to do in his one week of off time in Hyderabad and Delhi.

Later that day I was walking with a friend in Harvard Square and a thought occurred to me. What if a colleague from Andromeda galaxy told me that he's visiting planet Earth for 40-50 years and asked me what he should do when he's on Earth. What would I recommend? Pause and think about it for a moment.

Well, I can recommend many places to see - deep oceans, golden deserts, rugged mountains, tropical jungles - or ask him to experience various things - falling in love, making friends, hating someone and taking revenge. And of course, things to do - making love, parenting a child, and so on.

Immediately, the obvious thought occurred to me. Am I doing everything that I want my alien friend to do in his 50 years of life on Earth? Would I recommend him to spend hours and days sitting in front of an object primarily made out of sand (the computer!)? Would I ask him to be a product marketing manager and sell security stuff? Would I ask him to blog or read a blog? May be I would. May be I shouldn’t.

Even though I love my job, the thought started bothering me a bit. I would not recommended my friend to be a product marketing manager, but I would recommended him to dream and live his dream. It’s been a while since I dreamt. What are you dreaming today?

What do you talk when you meet an Ex-President of a country?

If you are wondering that the title is quite hypothetical you might want to think again. Interesting things happen when random dots connect.

Today, I had the privilege to meet and talk with Dr. Jamil Mahuad, Ex-President of Ecuador, well known in the international community for preventing a war and settling the dispute between Peru and Ecuador in 1998 through a series of negotiations with Peruvian then President Fujimori. He seemed more of a scholar than an ex-politician of a country struggling with poverty (38% plus).

In our chat, we discussed about the concepts and frameworks for negotiation and how they can be applied to some of the tough challenges in India such as the Kashmir dispute. Overall, it was a delightful experience.

Curious on what random dots connected for me to meet Mahuad? Well, the dots include a law school newsletter, my mentorship with our VP, an interesting guy at Cisco, politics in a marketing group...oh boy! I can keep going forever.

Why did Ram Kill Ravan?

Seriously. Why did Ram kill Ravan? Is it because Ravan is a bad dude and does all sought of evil things through his Rakshas kingdom? No, that's not the reason. Ram killed Ravan for personal reasons. Ravan abducted Ram's wife, Sita. So what's the moral of the story?

If someone is evil, and even if you have the power to stop or eliminate this evil person, do not do it. Fight only if it is personal. Ram did not even challenge Ravan, even though Ravan is a Rakshas causing trouble to people until the wife kidnapping episode. Ravan became a personal enemy by kidnapping Ram's wife and that's the reason Ram killed Ravan.

Why was this moral from Ramayan never inferred and taught (at least I never heard it!). Is this a loop hole in Ramayan or was it actually written to teach this moral?

Congested!

Overload of everything! Cars, information, things to do and even options for drinking water. Let me try my part to reduce the overloading of one thing. Words.

If I have to present for two hours, I prepare for 15 minutes and if I have to present for 15 minutes I prepare for two hours. Less is more for audience and harder for presenters.

Instead of writing long blogs let me try to see if I can tell better stories with lesser words and more pictures. Who has the time and patience to read long blogs in this information overloaded, multitasking, gadget addicted, attention deficit traited, hitech world anyways.

If you are still reading you read about 120 words and will read 140 by the time you are done. Let's see if I can have 147 words as the limit for my blogs.

Pleasure and Pain. Which one first?

If you ever prepared hard for a major exam or trained for a marathon or worked out to build muscle or lose weight you probably know what I'm going to talk about. You go through a certain kind of pain in anticipation of pleasure. Right? I went through the pain of running every Saturday morning for tens of miles to experience the pleasure of finishing a marathon. Well, in the process I had many benefits and truly enjoyed the journey but still felt the pain of party less Friday nights and early Saturday morning. You get the point.

Pain came first and pleasure came next, whenever the goal was achieved. I think, most of the things work in a similar way except for RELATIONSHIPS. It's so much of pleasure when a relationship is established but eventually it's going to break and there's going to be pain. Agree?
Well, you can argue that many relationships do not break. But I tend to disagree. Everything is destined to break. That's natures law. The time when things break and the way things break can vary.

EUREKA POINT: Relationships start with pleasure and end with pain. So stay away from them. Well, if you can. I can't.

Everyone is a superstar in London. Well, not really.

How do you feel if you are photographed every minute as you walk on a road, buy a drink, catch a bus or just stand on a bridge and stare at the views around? Well, you feel like I do. A superstar? Hell now! I feel like I’m meeting the future of real-time entity monitoring. I’m not a criminal nor am I a VIP to demand this level of active monitoring. I’m just a traveler in the London city.

London has more than 500,000 closed circuit cameras strategically placed and takes a significant share out of the 4.5 million cameras the government installed all across the United Kingdom. One of my colleagues from RSA worked on this project in the past and was telling about the level of sophistication they have in the control rooms and systems. It sounded stranger than fiction.

If you land in Heathrow and travel through London, you are probably photographed 400 times in a day and state-of-the-art face and entity recognition and tracking technology is used if they want to connect the dots and focus on you.


I work in a field where we strive to prevent bad things from happening in life – well, more in the information fabric. Most of it is related to protecting the privacy and identity of people. But truly, I think that true privacy is a thing of the past. As we digitize more information about individuals and as computing power reaches a level where real time correlations of multiple data points are possible with commercially available technology, many more organizations will have systems in places to watch you 24 X 7.

We are not far from a day when our friends and unfortunately, others too can just “see” us in real time anytime they want irrespective of where we are. They will even get information about our body temperature and other vitals to figure out our mood. So just get used to it.

These guys ruled us. But I'm feeling at home here.

Since I landed in UK 3 days ago, strangely I’ve been feeling at home. I don’t know if it’s because of the “connection” between UK and desh or just looking at all these signboards, ads and papers in English instead of things in Italian or Swedish or German. Everyone speaks a language I understand here, obviously, and things look and feel very familiar. Even my full day meetings at the office were very similar to those I typically have in Boston. I did not have this feeling in other countries I’ve been traveling to in the last 10 days. For some reason, it feels like a gentle mix of desh and Boston. May be I need to get out of Bracknell and London city and see other things around to actually realize the differences.

By the way, the chicken korma curry and tikka masala here are just freaking awesome! Very creamy with well cooked meat. Very delicious.
PS: The picture is taken on a Saturday evening at the house of parliament.

How to know what makes you really happy?

I think everyone comes across this question, may be more than a few times. Seriously, how do we know? And what do we focus on? Short term happiness or long term happiness? Some things make us happy for a moment but might make us really unhappy in long term and there are things that are little painful to start with but can make us really happy in the long run. Logic and conventional wisdom recommends we aim for long term happiness.

I’m a person who believes that we have a lot of people on this planet and someone out there has already thought about a question or an idea you just had. So, I googled this question and was pleasantly satisfied to see 130 million pages that contain answers for this question. Some of them are from reputed organizations such as Harvard and Stanford. So I researched a bit more only to realize this is a specialization in itself and there are highly trained professionals who can help you answer this question for you. I’m thinking “really?” Do I seriously need to consult with someone with degrees more than two lines long to help me realize what makes me happy?

What a world we live in!