doubts – Pertinent Observations

Thirty to twenty nine

I turned twenty nine today. Yesterday to be precise; I see the clock has just ticked past midnight. And I’m sensing that my “project thirty”, where I had decided to not take up a full time job until I turn thirty and do “all the things I ever wanted to do”, is already in trouble.

Sensing that over the last two months of joblessness I hadn’t been spending my time usefully (Parkinson’s law and all that), I decided to sit down today and make a list of all those things that I’ve ever wanted to do and haven’t been able to, which I want to do before I’m thirty. It took me a couple of hours maybe, maybe a little less than that. At the end of it, I had a grand two page bullet-pointed word document to show for my efforts. To be honest, it looked rather skinny.

I started a (time) budgeting and planning exercise, and figured out how much time I would need to do all that. Apart from a few big holidays I’ve planned, I realized that the rest of the activities can actually be worked around a “normal” work schedule, as long as I don’t take up a job that will eat away all my time. Yes, the list of “things I always wanted to do” include entrepreneurship and freelancing, but again, bereft of concrete ideas I’ve started getting doubts if this is the right time to do that. Things are quite unclear right now.

I’m more open to taking up a full time job now than I was a week or so back. I need to not make the mistake again of taking up something that I’m not suited for, or something that won’t inspire me, or something that wouldn’t allow me to do the other things that I’ve wanted to do. Again, I personally don’t mind a “portfolio life” also, where I have a couple of part time gigs rather than a full time job. Ideally, something that would allow me the time and mind space to do my side projects on the side, while also generating some revenue.

I know I want to live in Bangalore. I know that I don’t want to take up an offshored job again (a mistake I’ve done twice in the past; not something I would want to repeat, ever). I have a reasonable idea about the kind of work I want to do, though I’m quite flexible about it. I want to do something that I feel for and be proud of doing – something more than just a “CMP”. And again, something that gives me the time and space to do my own things also. And yes, I know it’s going to be hard to find something to fit these constraints (Bangalore and non-offshored reduces the sample space quite a bit, I know). And I’ll continue my Project Thirty while I seek to find something on these lines, I guess.

Or maybe I’m giving up too early. Or maybe not, that I’m just being pragmatic. Maybe I’m bowing to pressures, both internal and external. Maybe I’m just taking a rational decision. Nevertheless,

I shall not take up a job that I won’t be proud doing.

I shall not take up an offshored job.

I shall not give up on the agenda of project thirty, which is quite exhaustive. It remains a priority.

I want to have a fulfilling life, and not feel like I’m wasting time.

I’m going to keep my mind sane, and try not to succumb to pressures.

Encountering Mark Zuckerberg

I first visited New York City in January 2010. It was a work trip, as I was working for a Wall Street firm back then. Blessed with a generous expense account, one of the aims of that trip was to sample all that New York had to offer in terms of culinary experience. One such experience took me to Hangawi, a Korean vegetarian restaurant. This was in midtown (32nd and 5th, if I’m not wrong). Amazing candle-lit ambiance. awesome food, exemplary service, nice soft music.. On my return to my hotel that night I’d called up my girlfriend (now my wife) promising to take her there sometime. I had also told her that “the next time I go to Hangawi will be with you”.

I must confess I tried to break that promise, the lure of the place was too hard to resist during my trip to New York City earlier this year. However, fate wouldn’t let me, as I was told that there were no tables available. The nice person at the front desk, however, said that there was room at another Korean vegetarian restaurant run by the same people who ran Hangawi. She gave me directions to Franchia, on 34th and Park.

It was easy to find a table there – the ambiance was nothing compared to that at Hangawi, and the food (which was as excellent) was much cheaper. There was a small group of young men seated at a table close by, and one of them looked exceedingly familiar. I tried hard not to stare, and trawled the depths of my “brain hard disk” while stealing glances between sips of my excellent soup. I have this amazing knack of identifying lookalikes (in fact, the name “pertinent observation” was first given to my propensity to find similarities in looks between people), so I didn’t know if it was actually Mark Zuckerberg who was sitting there, or just a lookalike. For the rest of this post, let’s assume it was Zuckerberg there.

Zuckerberg was dressed in a neatly tailored grey suit, complete with a waist-coat, while his associates were in casuals. The suit was what raised doubts about Zuckerberg’s identity. Why would a Silicon Valley CEO be dressed so formally, I had reasoned, when I had decided that it was someone else. Also, I had wondered, what had made such a “big person” come to a reasonably nondescript vegetarian place for dinner. If I had twitter or facebook enabled on my blackberry, I would’ve instantly broadcasted the likeness, and somehow tried to find out if it was actually Zuckerberg. Unfortunately, Wall Street firms are careful in blocking such frivolous apps when they hand over blackberries to their employees. I decided to focus on my dinner, which was fantastic.

I was to read later that Zuckerberg has these crazy New Year resolutions. For 2010, he had decided he’ll wear a suit every day. In 2011, he is mostly vegetarian, and eats meat only if he has killed the animal himself. Putting one and one together, could it be that in February 2011, he would turn up in a formal suit at a vegetarian restaurant in New York? The probability is not low.

So I’ll perhaps go on and claim that, on 15th February 2011 (not 100% sure of the date), at a Korean vegetarian restaurant in New York, I sat one table away from Mark Zuckerberg (and in New York, owing to real estate costs, restaurants place tables really close to each other).

Library Membership

While on a long lonely walk today (ironically, immediately after watching Liverpool play) I saw this library not too far from my house. It was called Just Books, I think, but I’m not sure of the name. With my British Council Library membership due for renewal in a couple of months, and doubts about whether I want to renew it (the library is too far, and I’ve stopped getting excited by the collection there), I’m considering membership to this library.

I took a look at the books today, and there were two major turnoffs. One was a section labeled “non-fiction” (whatever that is supposed to mean!). I don’t remember the other one right now – but I do remember having one other turn off while I was there. Apart from that, though, the collection seems good, which makes me think I should take membership there.

I found a lot of books there that I’ve read, or want to read, but wouldn’t borrow because I already own them. Now, I don’t know how to interpret this. The positive way of looking at it is that given that I like a lot of books that are there, they’re more likely to get other books of “my kind”, too. The negative way of looking at it is that I already own all the interesting books there that I want to read, so the membership wouldn’t add much value to me. The clincher, I guess, is about the frequency with which they update their collection. If they are going to buy new books on a regular basis, then I guess this will work out for me.

The other thing I liked about the library is that it has multiple copies of a lot of books. I think that is always a good thing, for you wouldn’t want to wait forever for someone to read that book that you want to read. They follow the netflix pricing model, where you pay a fixed fee (Rs 150) per month and there are no late fees. So by taking longer with a book, you are essentially denying yourself bang for the buck that you’re going to be paying them regularly (In the past I’ve “bailed out” of a library membership that followed this model. I didn’t go for a while, and then realized that the amount due was so high that I didn’t mind losing the deposit I’d placed there and I never bothered returning the books I’d “borrowed” from there).

And do any of you use Justbooks already? Do you like it? What are the odds that you go to the library and find nothing that you want to read?

Crowding out with public transport

This is an idea that’s been in my head for a while. About whether it is possible to nudge people who normally travel in cars to use public transport by simply flooding the roads with buses. The motivation for this comes from the hassles associated with marking and enforcing bus lanes, a form of public transport that is generally considered superior to subway trains in terms of cost of implementation and effectiveness.

So the idea is that as the number of buses on the road increases, the average speed of cars comes down. And after a point, the number of buses on the road means there’s enough supply that one can travel comfortably in them. And there will come a point when people will give up their cars in favour of buses since they can now spend the time more usefully rather than waste it by concentrating on the road.

Of course, this point is still far away for a city like Bangalore, though the BMTC has been making efforts, with initiatives such as the Bus Day. Still, now I’ve begun to have my doubts about it. About whether just increasing bus connectivity and frequency and quality will be enough to take cars off the road. I’ve begun to think if the comfort of not having to drive but travel at the same speed is enough to compensate for the cost of walking to and from bus stops and waiting for buses. The other cost of traveling by bus is that once you get into a bus you travel by a fixed route rather than adapting to daily traffic flows.

The important thing here is the distribution of waiting time for catching a bus. If a passenger is convinced that he is very likely to get a bus within a certain span of time with a very high probability (using vague words to avoid putting random numbers) he is likely to wait for a bus. However, if there are no such bounds, then the passenger might choose to travel by an alternate means of transport.

Still it needs to be seen. From what I know, all cities that currently boast of great public transport actually built a lot of the basic public transport infrastructure before the boom of cars in the place. I can’t recall off the top of my head any city that has actually nudged passengers from personal cars to public transport after cars had become default mode of transport (if you know of such cases, please let me know). In that sense, this nudging towards public transport is still a hard problem to solve. Nevertheless, I still think it might still be a good idea to try crowd out private transport by public transport.