Heartcrossings

I am a lite user of Airbnb with mixed experiences. Reading this open letter gave me much to think about. Recently we were guests in a home in an old neighborhood in a historical building. Our host had inherited a piece of property that is simply too large for her to manage on her income as a yoga teacher. Each room she rents out comes with an attached bathroom and all her guests are welcome to share her kitchen. During the few nights we spent there we saw a few other guests move in and out. The place is too big for anyone to be in each other's way.  It was a delightful experience living in a home that was several hundred years with strange and unexpected quirks at every turn. My favorite was the elaborate contraption with a latch twisted backwards, a hinge and a ribbon to lock a door that would keep the cat from coming into the house from the terrace where he was meant to live. The cat turned out to be crafty and made it in despite such barriers and had to be carried back to his h...

Interesting article about trade-marked colors and the right to use them or not. The notion is colors should be set free: ..Semple is not giving up the fight for Tiffany Blue—whether or not anyone else is fighting back. “I see the art materials as more of a cultural critique, a piece of critical art [rather] than a business,” he writes. “My studio runs on a not-for-profit basis, so we put anything we might get back into fighting for freedom of expression, and opening up colors for everyone.” Never thought about the right to use colors that are the signature of a brand. A saree like this one could be the same color palette as the FedEx logo for instance. It's not the first thing that comes to mind because the match is not perfect. This one is branded as Tiffany blue . When I think about colors and artistic expression, sarees come to mind at once. Some of the colors that come together in a beautiful saree could inspire logo design and brand palettes. If only the weavers could tradem...

We have a museum of fine arts in our town with a pretty decent collection considering the relative obscurity of the location. J and I have spent many wonderful hours browsing through this museum and having lunch in their cafeteria. It used to be one of our favorite things to do on Sunday afternoons after she got off from her job nearby. We also had the opportunity to visit some world-class museums home and abroad. The most time we had for these collections was a day or two. The marquee items are always mobbed by hundreds of tourists trying to take selfies and we stayed away from these hot-spots to go see things less well-known but dazzling all the same.  Even when spreading the experience across two days it was a sensory overload. J loves museums and she valued any and all time we spent there. When I compare the home town experience of knowing every exhibit and the stories behind them in a tiny museum that is orders of magnitude less impressive than a Prado, in some sense the home ...

This is news we can all use - how to get a hamster to out-perform the S&P 500 . The story is a winner at so many levels. First off, it is a great lesson in marketing - how to write a headline (or email subject line) that will grab the reader's attention immediately. In this case "A hamster has been trading cryptocurrencies in a cage rigged to automatically buy and sell tokens since June - and it's currently outperforming the S&P 500" The audience will fall in one of few categories - trades crypto and stock, trades crypto, trades stock, everyone else. Since this is in business insider the readership has basic understanding of both crypto and stock even if they are in the group that does nothing with either. That being said, that line has something for everyone. If you are trading crypto you want to know if the hamster outperformed you along with S&P 500. The stock traders among the readership will want to know if displacement by hamsters is looming in their...

Caught with my former colleague C after years today. He had been out of circulation for a while so there was much to chat about. His son, A is now in college and likely the youngest one in his class. This kid is one of the home-schooled prodigies you read about in the news - no surprise, this child has been in the news himself many times. Winning any number of competitions in any number of areas - there is nothing that he is not great at. C's wife gave up her flourishing career to home-school their son, once it became evident that public school would fall far short of his needs. A completed high school at 14 and started college before 15. Anyone observing A's progress and endless stream of accomplishments would assume that it's a foregone conclusion that the top colleges will vie to get him. He is not just an academic superstar but an all-around one. C told me that college admissions reality was quite different from his expectations. A's top choice schools did not accep...

What Seth Godin says about not thinking through actions that are easy to initiate but much harder to get value from apply in so many different ways in life too. The gym memberships that are got with the best intentions and never used, the self-help books that are read and never executed upon, the classes that are signed up for and never completed - the list goes on. The easier it looks to take the plunge the harder it is to get the real value.  Compared to bigger decisions - getting married, having kids, changing careers and the like, none of them is as simple as getting a puppy and people usually have the time to think through what they are signing up for. Given the effort to get into the situation, they are likely to try much harder to get value out of it.  This made me thinking about driving and parking experiences in different countries I have lived or traveled to. When the process is easy and predictable, chances are you will go out more, explore. Needless to say, the pr...

I read this poem by Jericho Brown many times savoring every line and word in it. This is not experience I can relate to but it completely draws me in: No one on earth knows how many abortions happened Before a woman risked her freedom by giving that risk a name,  By taking it to breast. I don’t know why I am alive now That I still cannot impress the woman who whipped me  Into being. I turned my mother into a grandmother. She thanks me  By kissing my sons. Gratitude is black— Black as a hero returning from war to a country that banked on his death. Thank God. It can’t get much darker than that. This got me curious about the poet himself and I found this interview where he talks a bit more about his relationship with his mother. The fact that this poem can exist along with his love for her gave me much to think about. We are products of many parenting flaws and when we in turn become parents, we continue that cycle and add our unique defects into the mix. I have a few fri...

It was a hot afternoon in Grenada and we had wandered from the narrow alleys of the old town over to a small square full of people enjoying their tapas and drinks under the shade of tall trees. We found an empty table and took it promptly. The place was a hive of activity and the thrum of people talking and laughing filled the air. Just about everyone other than us was local. We had wandered into the more mundane part of town, where locals were going on with their lives and were out for lunch on a workday. No one paid any heed to us and that is the sign I look for when scouting for a place to try local food. This was also the afternoon we discovered Tinto de Verano too . It was not listed on the menu and yet all around us people had this lovely looking drink we wanted to try as well.  We asked the waiter to get us what the folks at the table next to us were having. There is something about the hot summer sun, the pace of Spain in that weather and some other intangibles that I can't...

I don't know about contagious quitting but the phenomenon I have observed over the decades in the workforce is more like inspired quitting. Often there are a few folks in key roles in the organization who act as a bell-weather for disaffected employees. They usually have tenure and influence and form the bedrock of that company's culture.  The disaffected people are always watching the bell-weather types to decide which side of the fence they need to be. Usually these folks are new to the company and feel like they don't have enough information to make an intelligent leave or stay decision. Once one or more of the bell-weathers quit, it starts a minor tsunami of resignations. People on the fence act with great decisiveness after such events now that they have the signal they had been waiting for. The wave does not propagate much further.  Not sure if these events are good or bad for the company in question. In the short term it is chaotic and disruptive for the culture as ...

Read a couple of articles recently on the nature of intelligence. One was about a study done on cuttlefish where they are shown to have a demonstrable ability to delay gratification. The other is this essay about how we measure intelligence  By intelligence I mean only that the mind react to happenings with a certain sharpness and precision, that the radish not be perpetually seized by its leaves, that the gray not be confused with brown and, above all, that objects in front of one be seen with a little exactness and accuracy, without supplanting sight by mechanically repeated words. A is one of the most Zen people I know. In the middle of a crisis, he can remain absolutely calm and help navigate out of the chaos, He is also a very positive person. No matter how bad the situation, he will focus on the bright side and what good can come out of it. On average A makes good decisions and arguably there are more intelligent on account of his frame of mind while he makes them. Those wh...

This is an interesting way to access risk as we go about our lives trying to decide what's safe and what's not these days. The project's motivation:  We want to help as many people as possible feel more empowered to make decisions around COVID risk by helping them understand how COVID is transmitted. We hope this tool will help hone your intuition, lower your stress levels, and figure out good harm-reduction strategies. A great idea and if well-adopted and trusted could go a long way in easing back into normalcy. I was trying to set up a scenario for school going children as I happen to know a few and hear the parents worry about their safety. The age, general health and the pre-existing medical conditions of the person would be a factor too. Even with those things not in place, this is a useful way to gauge if your worries are warranted or not as you go about the routine business of life. Partying with 80 people in a closed indoor venue is still not a good idea. 

We stayed in an Airbnb recently that stood out for the level of attention paid to the needs of a traveler. The place was in the middle of an ancient town. The exterior was still historical but inside was completely modern. This was a smart and connected apartment where everything could be controlled by an universal remote. At first blush it seemed excessive to have everything remote controlled but with a couple of hours of settling in, it started to make sense. If you had a question about how anything worked, there was only one answer - the remote had a button for it. The blinds, the appliances, the bathroom, the garage - everything managed the same way. F, the owner of the place is a young geek who inherited some prime real-estate from his grandparents and decided to turn that into a source of income. He did a job the grandparents would be proud of - the old world charm remained intact while making the living area very usable and comfortable.  We extended our stay because the plac...

Learned the phrase from reading this article . I was burning out in my own way for decades not quiet or zealous but some hybrid of the two. The core of me craved peace and tranquility and the circumstances of my life strictly made both an impossibility. So I was seeking what was impossible and driving myself crazy in the process. It got me into being obsessively focused on the few things I could control, where I did have some agency. That lead then to zealous burnout. When I look back to the years that had been, I see the bad habits I picked up along the way and the triggers for anxiety that I recognize well but can't always manage.  There are both short and long term consequences of burning out and not being able to stop it. Reminds me of a forest fire I saw recently and the frenetic activity to quell it. Choppers will lifting water in pails from the nearby ocean and dumping it on the core of the fire in the hills. It was woefully inadequate for the job and the gash had opened thr...

Traveling by plane for the first time since the pandemic hit was like a dystopian dream. The virus is everywhere but not everyone feels the same way about its presence or the consequences to their life. There are people in N95 masks wiping down every surface, avoiding everything that can be avoided. Others including me stayed masked because we were required to but did not go overboard. I did not see any blatant non-compliance. Sleeping on a trans-Atlantic flight has always been a hit or miss for me but with the mask it became hellishly difficult. Many time I woke up breathless and each of those times, I asked myself if anyone had the right to request another person to make such a trip without an emergency. In my case we were traveling to spend a few days with J and explore a country we had not seen much of.  I was doing this of my own volition and yet this felt like so much effort. It made me think of articles I have read written by doctors who have been masked up way worse and wor...

If only every man who loved a woman could write such a letter upon her death or every woman who was loved in life could be so adored even in death. There is a certain tragic, melancholic sweetness to the first loves of our lives specially the ones that did not bloom into a full life together.  Feynman perhaps had it better than many but not nearly all that he might have dreamed of when he married his high school sweetheart. Even in this love letter, the amazingly simple way he could express his genius seems to shine. This is a letter to read and remember, think how lucky was the woman to whom it was addressed:  No. I am alone without you and you were the “idea-woman” and general instigator of all our wild adventures.  This letter is not so different in spirit that the his famous lectures in physics  - the same luminosity and simplicity in how he expresses his ideas - be it the love for his wife or the uncertainty principle The uncertainty principle “protects” q...

Talking of love and miseries On the bridge of kisses  Some wounds to cleave  Others to turn whole. Pain sears the half life Lived only half in light What is left of good years Two decades maybe less We speak different words For that last chance to change And then waiting it out to end.

 A listicle like many others but an informative read - specially the comments. Much to learn as such things go. Getting ready to complain to the PTA about fruit being served not being the ones in season is a such a great stretch compared to experiences I have had here with J going to public school. The school meal if it contained any kind of fresh fruit at all was a big win. Any expectations above and beyond would sound ridiculous even to the most over-zealous PTA parent. The only other experience I have of school is my own in India. The food we all ate for lunch came from home. A lucky few among us owned thermoses so their food was warm. The rest of us had tiffin-boxes of various kinds, some tiered others not. Opening those boxes would fill the air with aromas from different cultures and cuisines. It was a fantastic experience and never grew old.  I cannot remember any kid's lunch box as being sad or boring. There was the mother's creativity and desire to feed the kid a fill...

We happened to invite B and his wife to dinner last Saturday which happened to be 9/11. It was the only weekend in the month that worked for everyone. Half way through the evening, they told us it was also their wedding anniversary and they were glad to be out with us. Had we known, we could have organized a better celebration but they were clearly happy even with what we had arranged. This is a couple that has been married decades, have five grown up kids and multiple grand-babies. The marriage has survived a lot and B still dotes on the lady he first met a party forty five years ago. Clearly a relationship worth celebrating on its anniversary.  Yet 9/11 clouded over their big day for two decades now. They said they hoped their kids would think of something next year - apparently that had not happened as often as they might have wished. Its a date people want to get past, not celebrate. Yet for many this could be a very significant day in their lives and to deny them the chance to...

Remembered this morning hearing  this song  that playing for me on my birthday was the subtlest most endearing way to remind me why love endures and why the pain of having some dreams big and small shattered is still no reason to feel wistful on a birthday. The years accumulate and with it the disappointments. I have rarely been where I imagined I would at any given point in my life - maybe lacking the right vision or perhaps misunderstanding the larger plan in which the universe had made me an infinitesimal part. Yet I have received the unwavering love and affection of a few that made up for everything else. Each birthday, they are the ones who give me reason to stay in the fight, they are the ones for whom I made a difference and just for them I do matter.  This year, it so happened that my father is so disappointed in me that he wrote me message to wish me on my birthday but did not talk to me when I called. We can't seem to make peace with each other and all illusions...

I have a bag of carrots sitting in the fridge for a while and every time I consider it when thinking about what to cook, inspiration fails to strike. My search for something interesting to do with these carrots took to this recipe which seems quite perfect . As I read this, memories of dinner with my young friend P and her then boyfriend L came to mind. L was the one with the creative ideas and the patience to cooking complicated dishes.  When they visited us, they came with all the supplies they needed to prepare one of L's signature dishes. This included any special salts, peppers, oils, spices, cooking and serving utensils that might be needed. My job was to give them the workspace in the kitchen and ofcourse I was welcome to help or just watch. One of L's dishes involved carrot, goat-cheese and some Moroccan spices. It made for the most perfect balance. It disappeared fast once it landed on the dinner table - a crowd pleaser for sure. L and P have since broken up.  L had b...

I often interview out of curiosity about what's out there in the world, what conversations are happening in my space that I am not hearing about. The informational interviews are a great way to meet new people, some of whom are worth staying in touch with. I get the opportunity to tell my story many different ways see what resonates and what does not. These things don't always work well - when dealing with recruiter who is tasked with filling a role and doing it quickly, they don't see these conversations as being useful.  Others see an opportunity to build a network they can tap into at a more suitable time. I have introduced friends and co-workers to the later type of recruiter - people who want to invest their time in others, have the natural curiosity and ability to understand the human behind the resume. Recently, I met one that was a disappointment despite her long career and many accomplishments. We also have a ton of mutual connections some of whom provided glowing ...

Read this beautiful Yeats poem today A Prayer for My Daughter . Specially loved these lines: May she be granted beauty, and yet not    Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught,    Or hers before a looking-glass; for such,    Being made beautiful overmuch,    Consider beauty a sufficient end,    Lose natural kindness, and maybe    The heart-revealing intimacy    That chooses right, and never find a friend. It reminded me of something my grandmother used to say of girls and beauty. There is a threshold beyond which it turns into a burden. A very beautiful woman does not end up having a happy home or family, no one man is adequate for her. She becomes an object of art in a sense and there is a presumption of access by many to her.  That was a her explanation of why celebrities and movie stars often have very difficult married lives if even they have one. There is an optimal level...

Meditative moments come to me quite randomly even though I struggle to quiet the clamor in my brain most of the time. Recently, one came unbidden why waiting inside my car in the carwash. I contemplated the passage of time, how taking care of things that take care of us matters and why growing old does not mandate growing irrelevant. Each car I have owned has been about a discrete phase of my life - there was the starry eyed newly-wed car that was a gift from my ex-husband. I had no specific affinity for this car, did not feel any pride or joy of ownership but valued the freedom it afforded me. All of that was true of my marriage as well. There was a car that served most of J's growing up years and then the one I have now that came at a cusp of change - a second lease of life, J growing up and then leaving to college and now and an empty nest. Once the car was washed and dried,  it was time to leave. It made me think about the parallel to my life today. There is no new and shiny, o...

Happened to re-connect with a few people I have worked with in the past in the last few months. These folks are about my age and in an ideal world they would like to retire and do something else. One of the reasons they have trouble pulling the trigger is the lack of a plan for that next phase of life.  So they would stop pouring their time and energy into work and then do what?  Just not knowing that answer keeps people doing what they know to do. I can relate to that completely. There is this expectation (or should I call it hope) that at some point an epiphany will occur like it did to some of our lucky mutual friends. They found the right answer and have greatly improved the quality of their lives. We tend to forget that most were not so lucky so they keep doing the tried and true even if it is hard to justify why that's needed. The other theme that came up for some of these people was compensation and a sense that it might be too much and based on that feeling alone, they...

If the person was perfect for this job they could make 100K in four months and find something else to do another time.  ..They wake up thinking about tacos. They sleep to dream about tacos. In their opinion, every day should be Taco Tuesday. If you fall into this second category, you’re an ideal candidate for McCormick’s first Director of Taco Relations... The job description is a reflection of the idea in Marsha Sinetar's book Do What You Love, The Money Will Follow.  Have never read the book because I don't believe the second part about money is true across the board. I have known many people doing what they love and more often than not, they don't think too hard about the money that comes through it-  their happiness is not related to fantastic remuneration. Such would be the case with the Director of Taco Relations maybe. They will have their ideal gig for a few months, make decent money and enjoy every hour of it. Other taco-related gigs may come and go over time. N...

Interesting essay on the gaps between perception and reality, the conviction of being free and actually being so.  An enormous number of Americans have been persuaded to believe that they are freer in the abstract than, say, Germans or Danes precisely because they possess far fewer freedoms in the concrete. They are far more vulnerable to medical and financial crisis, far more likely to receive inadequate health coverage, far more prone to irreparable insolvency, far more unprotected against predatory creditors, far more subject to income inequality, and so forth, while effectively paying more in tax (when one figures in federal, state, local, and sales taxes, and then compounds those by all the expenditures that in this country, as almost nowhere else, their taxes do not cover). The notion of having choice is generally a convoluted one at the individual and collective scale. The assortment of choices a person believes they have is already filtered by their tolerance for risk. I ma...

Reading about this word - jouska , reminded me of a story about my great grandmother that I have heard many times from various family members. She was forty years younger than my great grandfather, a widower with a son whose wife was older than my great grandmother. So she comes into this marriage with very little means, chosen by the much older rich man only because of her looks. They proceed to have six children of which one drowns in the river trying to swim with his older siblings. And then as expected, husband dies at 80 leaving a 40 year old widow with five kids to raise on her own. The step-son being a lawyer takes swift action to ensure none of his half-siblings inherit anything from their deceased father and the step-mother is turned into domestic help for his family in return for room and board for her and her children. This miserable life continues until my grand-father comes of age and starts earning a living. He rescues his mother and siblings as quickly as he can.  Bu...

The  TX abortion law that was recently passed is the modern day witch-hunting. Some people feel so strongly about the issue that they would enlist the entire populace to track down women who choose to abort so they may be punished by denial of service. This is no different that labeling a woman a witch to procure a license to burn her on a stake. The idea that such a regressive law could be passed in this day and age is unfathomable and abhorrent. When such law is juxtaposed against the freedom to go unvaccinated and unmasked in the depths of a pandemic, it is complete insanity. The vigilante culture  TX will promote is aggressive: According to the law, private citizens can sue the physician who performed an abortion after the sixth week, as well as anyone who helped facilitate it, from counselors to anyone providing financial support for the procedure to someone who simply drove the woman to the clinic with the knowledge that she was getting an abortion. The complainant can ...

Watching Baggio: The Divine Ponytail was a great experience. It brought back memories of watching him play and following news about him - one among his legions of his fans. Between Baggio, Platini and Maradona there was a dazzling amount if star-power in football back in those days. I still enjoy watching the game but feel far more removed from the personality of the players which was a big part of the experience - that must have been a thing of adolescence and early youth. The movie tells the story of Baggio the man and the football player. The former I did not know much about and found fascinating. A great success like his quite often a combination of rare talent (one in a million as his father says), huge obstacles overcome to build strength and some unshakable inner faith that propels the person in their darkest hour. It's instructive to see the role parents play in the shaping of such greatness. Roberto Baggio had a complex relationship with his father and yet it served as a ...

Reading this poem about mackerels made me think about the use of words to turn things sublime. At my local grocery store, mackerels do lie side by side on ice, always the picture of perfection. They are one of my favorite fish so I do spend time looking at mackerel on ice but never did I think of them quite this way: Splendor, and splendor, and not a one in any way distinguished from the other —nothing about them of individuality. Instead they’re  all  exact expressions of the one soul, each a perfect fulfilment of heaven’s template, mackerel essence.