Heartcrossings

Great article on how near flawless software gets written to launch space shuttles. For the rest of us who have to content ourselves with the bugzilla of business application software this seems like a fairytale. Interestingly enough, getting to that level of perfection is hardly rocket science. What's going on here is the kind of nuts-and-bolts work that defines the drive for group perfection -- a drive that is aggressively intolerant of ego-driven hotshots. In the shuttle group's culture, there are no superstar programmers. The whole approach to developing software is intentionally designed not to rely on any particular person. And the culture is equally intolerant of creativity, the individual coding flourishes and styles that are the signature of the all-night software world. "People ask, doesn't this process stifle creativity? You have to do exactly what the manual says, and you've got someone looking over your shoulder," says Keller. "The answer is,...

I had met Sripriya online three years ago while looking for a roommate. She was a victim of a physically abusive marriage and had recently undergone surgery for a leg that her husband had broken in a fit of rage. She was legally separated at the time and was looking for a roommate to help pay the bills as she recuperated. We never ended up meeting in person as I did not need to move to her town in the end. We stayed in touch by e-mail and phone. Talking to Sripriya always leaves me emotionally drained. Knowing her condition, I feel guilty when I don't respond to her e-mails or try to call her at a time when I can get by with leaving a voicemail message. I realize how she feels desperately lonely in a situation that seems like a death trap - that she just needs to talk to save her sanity. Talk to someone she thinks would have empathy for her - it is just too overwhelming to be that person. She has a twelve year old daughter who lives in India with her family - a helpless pawn in a g...

The divide between the haute cuisine of the rich and the subsistence grub of the poor is probably sharp everywhere in the world but the French are doing something novel to bridge it. “Although these lessons are open to everyone, they are not really meant for bourgeois women who want to show off to their boyfriends,” said Marc de Champérard, one of the most influential food critics in France, who co-founded the university with Michel Onfray, the philosopher. “They are meant for those who have been excluded and marginalised by liberalism and globalisation.” And then there are the victims of simplification in the form the easy availability of partially prepared food, helpers and spice mixes obviating the need for the purist, from-scratch style of cooking. You are tempted to cut corners and substitute. Helping this demographic remember what they know of traditional cooking haute or otherwise is possibly even more challenging.

Interesting post about what the future holds for the credit card - particularly liked the title Numiscartomancy: Divination using credit cards - nice wordplay and many possibilities. You may be able to choose numbers and images that are Feng Shui friendly for you or have a whole tarot deck of credit cards to do readings with. There may be benefits to embedding credit cards where it would be least expected - like in an earring or cuff link perhaps. One use that comes to mind is being able to shop discreetly though others surely abound. Totally love the idea of card consolidation. One plastic, many credit limits, balance transfer offers, rewards programs and air miles. The competition between card issuers should intensify when customers have the ability to mix and match offers to best fit their needs. I'll be waiting for "numiscartomancy" to make it to Wikipedia.

Read this story about a man who thought depression was a bunch of hooey for most of his adult life until it happened to him. This reminds me of a conversation I was having with a friend a while ago about the effects of untreated depression in marriages particularly when the depressed person is in denial of their problem and tries to compensate for it by taking control of the relationship often aided by outsiders who think they are helping. S had said : This is such a common theme, I think that for the longest time psych disorders have been swept under the table and therefore if they are not talked about they do not exist. The controlling aspects of people's personalities are sometimes organic (in their heads) and in other times are placed there by misguided individuals trying to help (parents, friends, colleagues). Both are ingredients for failure. If a person cannot be happy in their life by themselves then they will not be able to make someone happy in a partnership. Remote con...

I run in fields of your flighty laughter, memories of you spun like candy floss for me to hold atop a stick long after you are gone. I imagine you sit there working through hedge funds,libor rates, shell corporations and other mumbo jumbo that meant nothing to me then or now. We traded love in verse or pun all through long summer afternoons while you worked and I pretended to.That meant everything. I did not tire of your thoughts as you spoke them loud, nor of the gussied up lies of your febrile imagination. I just loved. I soaked in all of you until I changed hue. Willing to be the chalice bearer of love unconditional. I would have poured until deluge overcame you. Instead you chose to leave me in fields ablaze with nothingness smelling your absence in westbound wind. You did not wave as you left you just did. There is a word you have missing after a apostrophied departure. You left for me to fathom the infinite ways to fill in a blank.

Things that can go through a man's head when a woman suddenly stops replying to his e-mails. Yo Babe, Where have you vanished? Have I said something to offend you?? It's not fair that you just stop communicating...as though you dropped off the planet!! That SILENCE...it's the most inexplicable thing for us lesser evolved men!?! What does it (the silence) mean??? It's got to mean one of the options given below, so just hit the reply button and write one of the numbers below - 1. Not interested in pursuing this any further. 2. Let me think about this, I’ll get back to you later…after x days/months/years. 3. Your e-mails are asinine and juvenile (especially on the sexual innuendos front); improve your outlook and then maybe. 4. I don’t like your looks at all. 5. My parents/grandparents/cousins/pets will not like you because you're not a 'Bong'. 6. With that age difference, it's almost like cradle-snatching! 7. Don’t want to leave where I live, have a great ...

Time was when getting a phone call was a major event in the household - it made the callee somewhat of a celebrity. That was in the dark ages. Now you don't want to get off the couch to even check the caller-id let alone answer the phone. Check out the caller id on the TV screen and "You don't have to even get up to see if it's worth pausing the TiVo to answer the phone or not,". That sounds like unsocial if not anti-social technology. Short of the caller being a pesky telemarketeer, you ignore a potential hour of conversation with a real human being who has taken the trouble to take time off their schedule to call you, in favor of remaining a torpid couch potato. Apparently, such technology is enabling us mind our manners better or so its purveyors would have us believe. Etiquette is a major motive for shifting caller ID off the phone, said Bill Geiser, vice president of watch technology for Fossil. He recalls using his Bluetooth-enabled watch during a recent ...

Exasperated after playing phone tag for days, Lauren said "Your voice mail greeting needs a makeover. What's up with you, girl ? Why don't you ever answer the goddamn phone ?" as soon as Sheila came on the line. "Where can you meet for lunch ? I am in town and have an evening flight back to Dallas" Lauren asked. "How about the old favorite, The Mongol Kitchen ?" Sheila suggested. "Too noisy. I need to talk" Lauren replied. After going back and forth over some options they settled on a quiet Greek restaurant a few blocks from Sheila’s office. Lauren looked perfectly turned out as always in her fashionable clothes and tasteful accessories. The sea-green of her knitted top was the exact shade of her eyes - sad, tired eyes that needed mascara, liner and shadow to look pretty. Laughter helped but not very much. "What's going on, Lauren ?" Sheila asked right after the waitress got them their menus. "So much that I don't k...

A friend said that he has been heartbroken so many times that he can no longer reconstruct from the broken pieces and then there are fragments that others have held on to, never returning them to their owner. He got me thinking about my relationship with and response to heartbreak. I wrote to him: For me its not so much the broken heart itself but my inability to react at any level to heartbreak. My resilience has grown to the point where I feel nothing at all. The end of a relationship was once the end of my life the way I knew it - today its like tossing away an empty cup of coffee. If the coffee was good, the taste stays with you for a while, the aroma reminds you of it - but that's about all. You don't pine over the cup you put in the trash - life goes on. There is a surfeit of both disposable cups and coffee in the world. I think I have grown blasé about loss of love. I think my defense mechanisms to cope with pain and anguish have dehumanized me. I don't know what...

Some reasons why men will call women even if they have zero interest in her relationship-wise 1) They have nothing better to do at the time of making the call and would rather spend it talking to a woman than channel surf or browse the web mindlessly or perhaps as an accompaniment to those activities. 2) They find conversation with her amusing and/or interesting just as children find the tricks of a performing monkey. As with kids, they grow out of performing monkeys and need more varied fare to sustain equivalent levels of amusement. 3) They like the fact that if they call her consistently and frequently over a period of time, she expects them to call her and will call them if they don't. Seeing such a Pavalovian response is gratifying to some men - it makes them feel powerful. 4) They are jaded in their primary relationship i.e. a wife, a steady girlfriend and want to take a break by seeking alternate female company. These deals are strictly telephonic and long di...

You are to me all I need and more- just a little out of reach. Maybe I seek to keep you there so you will turn into my magic talisman of love – the one I desired the most yet did not seek to make all and only mine. The sum total of all lost loves will still be less than my willful denial of my need for you.

J has been attending kindergarten for a few weeks now and I have been waiting to see signs of the apocalypse that everyone promised this transition from daycare to "real" school will cause. Her vocabulary has expanded quite a bit, she tries to act like the older kids and imitates her homeroom teacher. Other than that not much has changed. I usually pack her a home made Indian meal and had expected that to be a sticking point. From my cafeteria volunteer experience, no one else brings in food that the others will not recognize. Her wardrobe is unusually small and contains no brand name clothes. With the concentration of little fashionistas in her class, some coutre-discontent would have been understandable. J has surprised me on all counts. The one thing I had not anticipated has happened instead. She is waiting with baited breath for the tooth fairy to come calling and expects to loose her first teeth any morning now though there are no signs of that happening any time soon. ...

My Nokia cellphone is over three years old, clunky, sad looking and completely worn out. I like that it functions normally even after having been drenched in rain overnight, that I can take it apart, blow dry any dampness and put it together at will. In summary, it is a good phone and has paid for itself many times over. Lately, I have been looking for a replacement - a newer, smarter and slimmer number. Choices abound but most of them are too complicated for my limited capacity to figure out state of the art gizmos with more functions than my brain. At the going rate, I will turn completely obsolete technology wise in twenty years from now and be need of the future-day equivalent of an e-mail machine that does not require you to have an e-mail address, a computer or internet connection. You plug in the machine and are ready to receive e-mails and photographs from people who are not technology challenged.

Even in the 80s in India, Benetton was a familiar name thanks to the deliberately provocative and often politically incorrect ads. They made you wonder about the message being conveyed and what the "United Colors of Benetten" truly stood for. Color is pervasive and universally understood and it seemed that the company chose to play on those themes much like the famous Jensen & Nicholson ad for paint "Whenever you see colour, think of us". Unlike the paint ad, Benetton’s word and picture play on color was fraught with conflict, high on shock quotient and sent mixed signals. You did not know whether to view it commentary on news and events or just creative ad copy Benetton’s ads provided an early example of the erosion of clear distinctions between types of information – between sales talk and independent reporting and commentary – as corporations sought to gain attention for their products and enhance their brand images by establishing themselves in the viewer’s...

When I responded to this email a few weeks ago "Yes, I am interested", I had no idea what to expect to see . On November 14, 2006 at 9pm EST, HBO Documentary Films presents Thin , an intimate look into the lives of four women suffering from an eating disorder. Director Lauren Greenfield (author of the critically acclaimed book Girl Culture) has turned her focus on the epidemic levels disordered eating has taken in the past few decades. A disease once downplayed as a vanity issue, is now being recognized as a serious mental illness. In Thin, Greenfield explores the various stages of recovery and downfall through group therapy sessions, mealtimes, weigh-ins and heated arguments. In addition to Lauren being available for interviews, we have film screening opportunities, signed books and a custom resource guide available. We are currently looking for partners to help us communicate Lauren’s message. If you are interested in supporting this documentary, please contact me directly...

Music is so ubiquitous that it takes conscious effort to be in silence. Screen savers, cell phones ringtones, while on hold waiting to be connected to be a real human, public places, car stereos, the home theatre system and much else in between is replete with music. It makes perfect sense to take a day off from music even if for contemplation on its exuberant profusion. I have come to that point in life when discovering new music and genres is increasingly tiring even boring. No longer is a "new unlike anything else" sound worth seeking out. Chance discoveries are welcome but very rarely has it enthused me enough to check out other works of the artist or even the full album if one song caught attention. There is an abundance of music tinged with nostalgia that is easier to turn to for comfort - just like soul food is easier to reach out to than the finest gourmet delicacies. Great music once needed to be sought out with great effort but now everything is a click away and so...

Interesting discussion on the difference between being security conscious and paranoid on Slashdot spurred by the proposed RFID tagging of passengers in airports. Maybe the powers that be should go one step further and embed RFID chips into new-borns before discharging them from hospitals so they may be able to keep a vigilant eye on them at all times and pre-empt all misdemeanors and infractions. It would not hurt that the huge mine of data this exercise would cause to be harvested can be sold for profit to all providers of goods and services - one possible salutary effect of this could be a lowered tax burden on the RFID-enabled generation. They can pay their debts to society by data on and about them. In the meanwhile it will become ever so simple to get included on the no-fly list because human intent will be recorded, monitored and assessed by computer programs - a small glitch in the algorithm could well be one's undoing.

In the late 90s when I worked in India, it was common for my co-workers to schedule their phone interviews for jobs abroad while at work. The calls were typically taken in conference rooms where the interviewer assembled a bunch of experts who were tasked with writing answers to difficult questions so they could read it out loud. It was not surprising that most of these phone interviews translated to job offers. The business of impersonation in job interviews is still thriving in India and seems even easier than it was before A typical interview, especially in a BPO/call centre, lasts for no more than 3 or 4 minutes, which makes close verification very difficult, even if the candidate has provided his photograph. The credibility of India as a favored destination for BPOs is being challenged at many levels. There is news of grand data theft on one hand and of Munnabhais on the other. It does not help that the cost of living in major metros is soaring even as the pay difference between...

Showing only the spines of books on a vitrual bookshelf to replicate the real world would have made Shelfari a little different from Amazon's Listmania because there is very little to tell the two apart conceptually at least. Another nice touch would be to allow e-notes to annotate and comment on the text to replace the scribbles around the margins of your old dog-eared favorites - if the idea is to convey the essence of your personality through your bookshelf and not merely present an electronic inventory. But the idea has potential and can grow in many different directions. A tour of your home complete with virtual bookshelves, wardrobes, pantry, furniture and more could open up both novel social networking and ad space options. You can Google Earth to an address that's has a virtual "open-house"and check out what's inside Goldilocks-style. Clicking on the wicker ottoman could take the visitor to a Pier 1 Imports page. Visitors may be able to beg, borrow, bart...

After years today, I wrote a letter and mailed it the old fashioned way. I had no idea it would be so hard to write the fifteen to twenty lines that I did - my fingers hurt, the letters were malformed and almost tumbled off the lines. The half pager that I so laboriously produced looked nothing like my meticulous class notes from the high school days. While m y distressed chicken scrawl may be evidence of my state of mind to the graphology inclined, the real reason for the demise of my longhand is probably the computer keyboard. Scholars who study original documents say the demise of handwriting will diminish the power and accuracy of future historical research. And others simply lament the loss of handwritten communication for its beauty, individualism and intimacy. I guess I should be grateful that the computer did not come into my life until I was an adult and the complete dependence on the keyboard to produce the written word happened only years later. The loss of handwriting als...

Eating fish has never been so difficult - all water is contaminated, most varities are over fished verging on extinction, mercury levels are dangerously high. Farming your catch in your basement seems like a reasonable option. Beats using a mercurcy calculator to figure if the portion on your plate is too large to be safe or pulling flash cards out of your wallet to select a fish to order from the menu - it weighs too much on the conscience to know that you may be eating some of the last Chilean Sea Bass on the planet. For the burger lover who wants to go green there are delectable garden burgers but sea food alternatives seem to be confined to imitation crabmeat.

I have not seen a 5000 piece wardrobe but have come pretty close. A few weeks ago, I helped a friend move a lifetime of possessions to self-storage as she prepares to sell her condo. This was the home of her dreams and I could see why. It stands by a river in the middle of the woods - a sense of peace descends on you the moment you enter the driveway. Civilization is within twenty minutes but feels like it could be light years away. There were more that fifty cardboard boxes in the hallway when I arrived and the bedrooms were overflowing with more. Memories jostled with each other for space and the closets brimmed over with clothes that spanned several decades in fashion. A bottle of Chanel perfume from the 50s that belonged to her mother, grandma's tortoise shell combs, retro and art deco jewelry from her teens, books, music, prints, slides, travel memorabilia and everyday things poured out of boxes. For years, she has traveled for work and for pleasure - there was never enough t...

I remember my desi sensibilities being jarred the first time I visited socially with an American family. After spending a wonderful evening our hosts stayed on in their living room as we let ourselves out the door. I wondered if anything I had done had provoked such rude behavior. Back home we always walked our guests out to the taxi stand in the least. It was not unusual to have an elderly couple dropped home by the host. You never let anyone walk away from your home unaccompanied - that constituted lack of respect and courtesy. Over time I came to realize that my friends abroad did not mean any harm by not walking me to the parking lot and that there was no uniform protocol around the bid good bye ritual. I have had the families congregate on their front porch waving until my car disappeared from view, others have driven ahead for me to follow them to the main interstate because I am directionally challenged and yes some have asked me to shut the door behind me when I left. I also ob...

The phrase thought-leader features prominently in the industry buzz-word soup. The Economist tries to assess what the scarcity of such leadership means for businesses that depend on brainpower to operate. Of the many interesting observations and statistics are the effects of disloyalty both of employer and employee: Companies happily chopped out layers of managers during the 1990s; now people are likely to repay them by moving to the highest bidder. Anyone who has been let go "unfairly" and has been wooed by the competition across the street only to be fired in a few months knows first hand that loyalty to an employer can be kamikaze. To survive the choppy waters of the fickle job market, you need stay alert and be on the move. Likewise, when you have seen your team of A players drop off like flies for a fifty percent pay-hike plus scandalizing stock options you realize that the best work-life balance and commitment to career development amount to nothing. For more reasons ...

Saw a short movie called Ten about a man who breaks all ten commandments before breakfast. An idea with potential but not the best execution. Consent on the other hand is a six minute movie that's interesting, funny and different. As filmmaking becomes as easy as having something to say and a cell phone video camera to say it with, the diversity and number of really short movies can only grow exponentially. While these citizen-filmmakers may not be able to churn out Hollywood epics, they can certainly tell a good story with moving images, words and music. It would not be surprising if filmmaking became compulsory teaching and learning at schools. Maybe ten years from now, a Powerpoint (or Keynote) presentation would be considered primitive - you would need to be able to pitch your ideas in a richer and more textured media than that for anyone to notice.

Sleep comes late to my eyes most nights if at all. Sometimes in the quietness of the dark between the sounds of my child’s breath a voice asks me “Do you remember the last time you were lovingly touched ?” I choke back tears and say “Yes” She asks me “When was that ?” “Seven years ago and that was late” “What about since ?” she asks again “Never since” I say, the heart heaving with pain. “Never since” I repeat. The years pass me by. She says “Yes” like she hears me. “Do you miss that loving touch ?” she asks “So much that I mistake it for life” I say I want her to tell me I will Live and be loved again. She fades away like night melting to dawn. I hear my child breathing and birdsong These are signs of life I tell myself. I hear her whisper one last time “Pray to life for love to return”

Staring at the night sky in pitch darkness was an opportunity we had an abundance of growing up. Power outages were the bane of summer nights. We stayed outdoors as long as possible to cool off. Later men would sleep in the open on charpoys and folding cots while the women stewed indoors. Despite the heat and the humidity it was wonderful to watch the stars on a cloudless night - for a little bit, the irritations and aggravations of the day melted away. When in love, you wondered if the object of your adoration was also watching the moon scud through the clouds and thinking of you as you were of them. Then the moment would pass, the spell would be broken by the sting of a mosquito that you had to swat. The yawning gap between heaven and earth would become too obvious to ignore. In their mating season, the dhols on the streets would yelp in coital ecstasy forcing you to shutter the windows. Reading about how the lights were made to go off in Reykjavik for people to watch the stars brou...

My first tape recorder was an dull brown Philips the size of a shoe box with piano style buttons to start, stop, pause, play, record, forward and rewind. My first tape was a Beatles Medley recording. At thirteen growing up in my small town in India, that felt a lot to own. I added to my collection slowly and tentatively. A collection of Beethoven's Piano Sonatas was next. My mother got me the ghazals of Mirza Ghalib by Jagjit Singh for a birthday. Ron Goodwin's Music For An Arabian Night must have played several thousand times in my teens. Mrs M, our neighbor had a great collection of western classical LPs. Sometimes on summer evenings music wafted over to our home through her open windows draped with lace curtains. I heard snatches of memorable music but did not know what I was hearing. But I must have heard just enough to grow curious and explore on my own. Thanks to her, I became a faithful reader of Kishore Chatterjee's classical music reviews in The Statesman. He taug...

The hapless H4 wife is one among the many stereotypes that abound about desis. Having known many myself, I have an appreciation of their plight though the desperation that this TOI article describes is news to me. That they could become victims of domestic abuse is easy to understand given that their legal status in the country is tied to their husband's and they have no means of acquiring financial independence. Why turning to swinging should be an H4 wife syndrome is not quite as clear. It is a choice any jaded and adventurous couple could make if they were so inclined. How typically TOI to use an "undercover agent" to uncover material for the tabloid the publication has now become. Raheel Dhattiwala - skipping the first two paragraphs of your story and the unimaginative allusion to Desperate Housewives soap would have lent the gravitas to the H4 predicament that it is deserving of. That cheap trick dilutes your message and makes the H4 wife caricature so much more gro...

The name Alakananda crosses Sheila's mind atleast a few times a year since they lost touch with each other in 1997. Aly for short - petite, pretty, stand-up comic and stubborn - they went to college together and were meant to be friends for life. One evening, sitting at the Starbucks near her house between trying to finish up a tedious presentation for work and chatting with a prospective date, Sheila typed in "Alakananda Sen" instead of "current Libor rates" as she needed to into Google search. The first thing that showed up was a posting on a Indian matrimonial site. The profile was brief, succinct and very Aly for someone who knew her as well as Sheila did. The picture was startling because it was the one taken in 1995 outside Sheila's house the day Aly, Aparna, Revathi and Simran had come over to spend a day at Sheila's for the last time before graduation. Posting a picture that old was not quite as Aly - maybe people change, maybe their motivations ...