cobbling up some knowledge

I hate going down alone. I like to take someone with me for a short walk and possibly eat something or finish some work or something. This time I wanted to go down for getting my shoe laces replaced. They had frayed and I was worried that one day they would just snap. I took Dixi along and at the cobblers, he asked me which ones he wanted me to put  - the cotton ones or the nylon ones. This was all the invitation I needed to get as much information on them as possible. The cotton ones are the ones that look a little old and not shiney. They have a dull matt finish about them. The nylon ones look cool and shiney and you can clearly see the weave pattern on them. But the cotton ones are the ones that you want as they have the necessary friction to hold your boots together. The nylon ones keep opening up as they are too smooth. Hmmm. And everyone goes for the nylon ones as they are the ones that look good. He sells 10 times more nylon than cotton! Ah. I too would have chosen the nylon one without thinking. The cotton ones do look very old worldly.

Then I got him to polish my shoes as well. I was in the NCC since I started college and thanks to that I learnt the art of polishing shoes. We used to have a routine that was passed on. Every Sunday was parade and hence every Saturday evening was the ritual. You sit down with a  brush and a tin of polish and you start polishing your shoes. You polish and polish away. Then you take nylon cloth and then shine your shoes. And if that’s not enough, the rule was to then use liquid polish and put a layer on top of that! Wow that was colossal use or waste of polish, depending on the way you see it. It was a similar routine for all the brass that was there on the uniform. There were brass buttons on the cap, brass buckle for the belts and brass on the shoulder insignias. Here also I had brasso liquid and a cloth dedicated to this. A full 40 minute ritual every Saturday night. I think that’s a good discipline for a 16 year old boy. Some of that NCC discipline stayed on for a long time.

Now I find the process very messy and hence I just step down the office for a quick polish every time. So when the guy picked his nylon cloth to give the shoe a shine, I was wondering why the squeaky noise was missing. He said – it depends, sometime you get it and sometimes you don’t.  Stations in Mumbai were famous for having shoe shine boys. I sure that would a legacy of the British in India. These guys are officially there in every station. Left to our own we wouldn’t have ever thought of having them here. It’s the marriage of the British love for trains and shiny shoes. I told the cobbler that the train guys make a huge squeaky noise when they use the cloth. He said they use a different cloth. I wondered that possibly those guys would have a special secret on the type of cloth to be used that made the sound.

I told Dixi that the noise is a call to action, like a ice cream cart bell. It tells people that come an dget your shoes polished. IN any case, Dixi was reeling under the amount of information that we got while getting a simple shoe lace. One should always ask. These kids call me Jugal… who is Jugal – brother of Google. Because I seem to know so much on so many things. I told Dixi that you guys call me Jugal, but the answer is here. It’s just that I am curious on everything and I ask and hence I know. So next time a topic on shoe laces comes up I will know, how a cotton shoelace is better than a nylon one.

Everyone has something to give as value to someone else. If someone spends time doing something as a profession it’s obvious that they will be knowing some angle of it better than anyone else.  The key is to ask the right questions. And their inner secrets will be exposed to you. ASK

look inside to sell outside

What are job interviews? How difficult they are when you are just starting off?

I remember my first job interviews. It always work when you are confident and you get into the room thinking I don’t really care what happens after this interview. That’s the way you max your interview. You simply tell yourself you don’t need this. but there is a caveat. In the middle of my career I was so high on this that I went into interviews and possibly came across as an arrogant prick. Who wants an arrogant prick?

The key to an interview is not all this – but simply being earnest and sincere. You have to go in confident about yourself. Of course you can’t behave that you want the job, cause that will turn the other guy into an ‘employer’. You want him to turn into a position where he believes that you can actually change his business for him. That’s what I think worked the best for me. I stumbled upon this by chance one day. I was interviewing because I thought I could use a higher pay but not because I wanted the job. So I went and then in the middle of the interview, I asked him about his issues and then tried to explain to him why it won’t work with his current approach and how he could improve. That was the first interview that I think I did exceedingly well. Now I try and convert my interviews into meetings. Friendly meetings where I am trying to genuinely learn about the interviewer and his business. Hopefully we can depart after having an intelligent conversation. That is the best thing to be gained from an interview.

Of course you lose the ones that you have pricks on the other side who think they know it all and wouldn’t be less bothered if their business plan bombed in their face. You don’t want to work with them at all. I like to say a simple thing like you try and play to your strengths because if you do get the job you like to get a job that rewards your strengths. This is actually the best strategy. But try telling that to someone who needs a job change desperately. That one wants to be all the interviewer wants him to be. Then it’s the simple thing of being a great sales man.

I remember some lectures / professors from school. Sometimes you don’t know what made an impact in your life. It takes so much time to know what was the best advice you ever received or the best lecture you ever attended. This one I am referring to my sales professor in b school. It’s a pity that I don’t remember his name.  He started his lecture with a  simple truth – he asked us – what is the most thing that motivates a sales man. After ten minutes of answers that we farted out – the answer came from Cherian – who said – money. I remember the prof calling him and shaking hands with him. That’s it – Money. The other one thing he taught me was that amongst the best thing that a sales man will have is motor mimicry. I am not sure if I get this term right but basically – he talks about the sales man to imitate the prospect. He copies the body language and tonality and almost every mannerism.

On Saturday I was teaching some of this stuff to the kids at college and I distilled my experience in to two words that I thought was very cool. Enthusiasm and Empathy. He first needs to be enthu about his product that he is selling and that has to be translated to the prospect. Only if he is enthusiastic about the product then only is he able to transfer his enthusiasm, because so many times what are we buying? Everything is so similar to each other and there is little differentiation between products and services. And this is especially important if there isn’t a packaged product that we are buying. So we just go by the basic feel of the sales man we are talking to. His enthusiasm is what sells.

Empathy is the foundation of the mimicry that he does. A good sales man is one who feels deeply about his prospect. While he is genuinely enthu about his product, he is also concerned about the prospects life and his needs and his deep unstated / stated desires. This is what makes him want to understand the prospect and then on this understanding is where the enthu builds and BAM… Sales.

This is the same technique in an interview. Genuine enthusiasm about your product or service (Self-confidence) meets Deep empathy (right banter). This is an unstoppable force. I think in many ways Malcolm Gladwell also agrees with me. See below

Free bonus video, the wordings of which are possibly apt for the blog I wrote. It’s a weird connection. I am not saying be selfish but be matlabi in a nice way. There is a niceness inherent in you that you have to harness to get your sales pitch right!

Matlabi, ho zhara matlabi…. I love the song in any case… its got a lovely ring to it!

the futility of a pig wrestle

I guess we just don’t understand what collateral damage is. Or what the value of peace is. We discount what we don’t have and hence we are not hesitant to drum up strife. Our friend from France is here and recently France saw a gruesome terror attack and murder.  The targets were popular cartoonists who ridiculed all religious dogmas including the Muslims. It was sad. Killing cartoonists is taking things a little too far. It just shows how sensitive we are to being ridiculed. Hmmm. After this we had the normal people who of course want action to be taken against a community as a counter measure. Sigh.

Today while I was driving from work, I heard a podcast about vaccination. When the CIA tried to ascertain if Osama Bin Laden was actually inside the compound at Abbotabad, in Pakistan, they recruited a doctor whose was told to go in and collect DNA samples in the guise of a vaccination campaign. After the news leaked out, vaccinations sponsored programs especially by foreign countries took a hit. It seems, vaccinations were banned enmasse by the Taliban, more 65 health officials killed and Pakistan saw a reemergence of Polio with more than 200 infections. Uff.

Was the CIA right in doing what it did? At the time I read the news and thought nothing of it. I would have said sure. If its mission is to kill a national fugitive then its it, go for it. but when you think of the collateral damage it has on society, on children who will suffer from it, and the generations that will pay… you want to think again. I am sure the argument is not that simple. People will make choices given their immediate goal. Who knew what the consequences would be. Surely there would be more killed if the man wasn’t taken out. These are complex questions to which we don’t know how much impact our current actions will have on future lives. Things are fast evolving and changing. Perspectives are changing and nothing is really straight and simple. What to do in such circumstances?

I am visualizing a  Hollywood movie where the polio emergence in Pakistan thanks to this action of the CIA creates a new mutated virus that enters USA and that everyone stops Americans from travelling anywhere and large walls are built around the country. Trust the Hollywood writers to think of any thing outlandish.

I am not for once, preaching inaction. A man has got to do what a man has got to do. But sitting in the confines of safety it is easy to preach war. What we know of its effects and after effects. Israel is still fighting over the land it fought over many years. Who started it, who felt wronged and who is to blame.

See this video and tell me:

Sometimes it is just best to live and let bygones be bygones. Kill, Finish, attack, nip in the bud, these are terms we bandy about loosely. We whip up sentiment and forget lessons from history. I have no clue why can’t just let it be. Why is it so difficult to be a pacifist, why do we need to take action, especially on moral grounds? Today’s newspapers talk about a Goa minister trying to set up a rehabilitation centre for gays and lesbians. What on earth is that? It wasn’t too long ago when Alan Turing was the hero of England for helping them decode the Enigma code used by German communications. Later he was arrested for homosexuality and then ‘treated’ for it. Today we again call him a great hero and apologise for our moral uprightness.

Stop this morality. I love the simple thing of the declaration of human rights – Man is born free and shall remain free. He is free to do what he wants as long as he does not harm others. That’s it. How difficult is it for the courts to acknowledge this?

BTW – Jispa got chosen for the scholarship interview on the basis of this essay she wrote – the greatest invention was that of the declaration of Human Rights!

BLAH! But thing I have learnt in all this. to laugh off when someone tries to rile you on your views. To not get pulled into an argument. As I always tell – when you wrestle with a  pig, he loves it and you get dirty.

Jump jump!

A  few years ago … and I have blogged about this… I used to teach Jispa elocution and then she nominated herself into a singing competition. She thought, it would be simple, dad will teach me. Of course she did not even qualify, with me as her teacher.  This time it was sports day! Her school is actually quite a small school. In sense – that there are only two divisions in her standard – so that 60 kids per year and that too is divided into girls and boys. So in a sports day competition – there is hardly any competition. At best you have to beat 120 girls as the age groups span two years. For sports within girls that a dumb ass number. That is no number. Three fourths in any case don’t know how to run or jump. And from the remaining there will hardly be anyone who does serious training.

So this time Jispa had to choose her track and field events. Go for the long jump and the high jump. I told her. She had no clue what a high jump was. She was wondering how they would judge who jumps the highest. She thought it was like how you jump while standing up, jumping high. Haha. Jispa is so underexposed at times. But I explained how it’s done and left it at that. Yesterday morning I come to know that the trials were on for that day. Ok. How do you explain what to do to jump high? First, one had to explain how high jump actually works. So while going to school in the car, I just simply got her to switch on youtube and search for high jump. There… now you understood. Now she understood what high jump really was. Then I told her that that will not work as that Olympic technique of jumping from your back is next to impossible without serious…. Really serious training. So I told her to search or the straddle style for high jump. She searched for it and understood. I said that’s the way you do it. She got it and then in the evening I got the message that she got a bronze. It was a stupid thing in the end. I had told her a few things that I thought were technique – don’t jump of two legs (I don’t think that’s allowed) and approach the jump from an angle. I told her to throw her upper body when she jumps. I had no clue what advise I was giving her, but it seemed to make sense for me. She then told me that she got the hang of it after a few jumps. They kept raising the bar; till one girl cleared the bar and the other three were left trying. At the end – all three trying for the second and third place couldn’t clear so when it was close to finishing time, the sir just declared from whatever he saw – one girl as the silver medalist and Jispa as the bronze medalist. Whatever. So great. Youtube meets Jispa meets Bronze. That too with Jispa being the youngest amongst them all.

But what I found most interesting is that I pulled out the word straddle style from some deep corner of my memory. I remember reading about this if I am not mistaken in a book we had at home when I was Jispa’s age. It was the Guinness book of world records, in which there was a mention of the high jump record with a photo of one guy with a caption that said, that he was the guy who jumped the highest with the older straddle style of jumping. After 30 years, I came to use that little bit of information to help my daughter do well.

You should always read and it’s doesn’t matter what you remember – you never know what is going to come your way. What is it that you will retain and use and at which time. I used a word after 30 years and it helped explain and mean something to someone I love. What more can you ask for?

So what exactly is straddle style?

And If I had the time I would have possibly discussed this link with her in detail. That would have been fun. Key thing I missed – get your other leg high… but hell. There is only so much you can do with swimming taking away all the time we have.

guide to the future and past

I have on my left hand something that also tells me the time. I bought the Moto 360. It is basically a smart watch. On a lot of the mobile revolution I was wrong or caught napping. When mobiles first came out, I thought they were hardly of any use. Then when Black Berrys made a lot of noise, I was late onto the market. I couldn’t understand what the fuss was all about. What do you get by checking your phone regularly for email? Why would you need that? And of course all those investment bankers in their suits in the lifts, spending eth valuable 30 seconds to see their mail as opposed to simply saying hi, or at the least acknowledging the presence of another human being. So when the iPhone first came out, I too was unimpressed. What use could it possibly have in my life.

The touch screen sensation missed me. I had just upgraded myself to the Black berry and used it for a good three years before one day; the BB gave up on me. I came back from a vacation and it refused to spring back to life. Now I recently saw a friend using the smart watch and I was hooked. My first reaction was what my measured reaction is – I am not spending that kind of money. No way. Why should I spend this money? I am a bit of a gujju here. Does it really add that much value to my life? Do I really need something like this? What use is it actually? I kept thinking about it and I realized that I am what I am because I understand technology very well. I am constantly ahead of the curve in technology, I read technology, I use technology then I can’t let the iPhone mistake to happen again. I must be there in the middle of it all. I must be the early adopter and I must see how it works and evolves. Today I claim to understand Google and what it does for me because I have seen it evolve from what it origins were. I see it as a human. If I understand its soul at its core it will bare it to me, with all its mysteries. So when the android wear 1.0 has launched, I should be stupid not to adapt to it first up. I must.

Coming back to the soul. Technology is nothing but the manifestation of the human mind. It tries to do what a mind has taught it to do. The inventor has a belief and a philosophy. What is that philosophy? We must understand it and we must internalize it. Once you understand this core, you will be in a position to leverage it for you.  Mathematics can do everything; it can twist the universe and bend it. It proves that the world is far more than what we can see. In fact it predicted what you cannot see and hence you have to look out for what you cannot see and then find it – aha – the black holes. But at the end of it, it also has a philosophy, that of its writer. So if you understand the writer then you understand his philosophy and then you can understand its core. Whenever I try t understand some math guy or some algo, I try and decipher its core philosophy. Once that’s done – you can understand where its come from. That’s why history is so interesting. Once you understand where you come from you can predict where you will go… atleast it will give you probabilities.

Here is one – you are what you eat

Researchers have found that people from rice-growing southern China are more interdependent and holistic thinkers, while those from the wheat-growing north are more independent and analytical.

The researchers call it “rice theory”, and they believe the psychological differences of southern and northern Chinese stem from their ancestors’ subsistence techniques – rice farming needs co-operation and planning; wheat farming requires less co-operation between neighbours.

…The last experiment assessed the nepotism, or group loyalty, of the participants. Students were given hypothetical scenarios and asked how they would treat friends and strangers in reaction to helpful or harmful actions. A defining characteristic of holistic culture is that people draw sharp contrasts between friend and stranger.

“The data suggests that legacies of farming are continuing to affect people,” Thomas Talhelm, of the University of Virginia and lead author of the research, said. “It has resulted in two distinct cultural psychologies that mirror the differences between East Asia and the West.”

Talhelm and his team concluded that the co-operative nature of rice-growing has cultivated a culture of interdependence, while wheat-growing has cultivated independence.

“I think the rice theory provides some insight to why the rice-growing regions of East Asia are less individualistic than the Western world or northern China, even with their wealth and modernisation,” Talhelm said.

We went to Elephanta recently and I had read up on it before hand. I had a book that I had bought many years ago but we never did manage to go to Elephanta island. Here we took a local guide but I soon asked him to keep quiet. He got his facts wrong. I started off explaining to the kids what each statue was and the significance of the story behind it. Each one is a picture that tells a moral much like Aesop’s fables. It was lovely. I also did not know how much I knew. Now I plan to read more and more and then I want to be a guide at least to Elephant. I want to explore the island and go often enough. I want understand it more. This is near home, it is exquisite and then let me see if I can do guiding to Elephanta for certain tourists on weekends. I would love to be a guide. Today I know more and I can explain more than most guides on the island. I know the stories and the mythology behind it. The significance of Shiva murals and the other gods in it. Just a little more research and I could be in business. What say? I want to be a guide that says – come along – really low or free to join and work completely on tips. If you like you pay, else it’s up to you. Just like teaching – money can’t be the motivator. In teaching you don’t get or want tips, but here that is critical. If I am able to make it fun and happy for all, who knows, this could be a great source of self-fulfillment. Teaching helps me learn so much, being a guide will also help me. I want to be a guide. Elephant is the perfect starting block.

I was speaking o Jispa about Elephanta and was asking her about the trip. She then remarked that if I loved history and mythology so much, why I didn’t pick it up as a career or something. What to do… in school, I hated history which was nothing but a bunch of dates to remember. I remember asking mom – what use is history to us? Hmmm.. today I try and explain the importance of these subjects to Jispa. They are important. Yesterday I was explaining why civics is important. And I explained how she wouldn’t appreciate it now, it’s almost impossible to appreciate it as a young kid but it is extremely important to understand how we are governed… by ourselves and how the structure is critical to be understood by every citizen. I have to teach her civics one of these days… I hope I can teach it without boring the crap out of her.