buckets everywhere

Blogging is so important for your soul. Soul? Yup. It’s so important for my soul. It saved me yesterday.

Ten years ago things got bad and I had to leave home and set up my own home away. One of the things I managed to do is never ever fight with mom ever. We had our periods of talking or not talking, but I never did fight with her. I knew she is my mom and at the end of it she does care for me and she finally made me what I am.

When we were growing up shifting from Dubai to India was an episode I would have loved to forget. From plenty to nothingness. Then more crap happened as we moved here. My dad got his first massive heart attack and that was a tough blow for the family. Yes we had savings but it also meant that he would never be able to do his core job, that is as a civil engineer, walking up and down building steps as it is being constructed. We moved to our new home that they planned and we started to build our lives.

I remember having a lot of foreign things in the house as we transferred a lot from Dubai to India in the government scheme called TR (Transfer of Residence). This meant that we had a lot of stuff, but it also meant that all this quickly dwindled away. Mom started a nursery to keep the income going. We were never poor or disadvantaged at any point but it meant that we saw a contrast that as a kid I hated to see. I remember asking many things from my parents and a lot of the time, wasteful expense was not encouraged. So I guess, I heard more no’s that yes. As a kid I dint like it but I have blogged about this, that I now understand it and I bear no ill will towards my parents. I think given the circumstances that’s the best they could afford and that’s the best we could do. My blog helped me clearly explain this out for myself in my head.

On Saturday I was alone at home and I thought I could spend some time with mom. I called her and told her that I was coming home to dinner. I just wanted to spend time with her, chill around. So I spent the evening with mom. Later in the evening she told me that she wanted to buy me something for my new home which we were renovating. Ya mom, but I don’t need anything. Luckily I am earning enough and it’s not needed. Mom still insisted and she gave me a cheque. This was not the thing. She said something that in some ways just touched my heart. She said that when she had us kids growing up, we would ask for a lot of things and it would break her heart to say no to so many things. We couldn’t really afford it and hence she would be forced to say no. She said she hated doing that but had no choice. Now she has money and she wants me to buy things that I want. Hence take the money.

Oh dear dear me. It killed me. Ya. As a kid I was mindful of the fact that we had less money but also I think as a kid I asked for things. I know and thanks to the blog, I know for sure in my mind that I was aware of it and that I don’t hold that against anyone. I grew up. This blog yesterday saved my soul from being burnt with guilt.

Closer home to the present. We are building our home and we are going broke. Our complete cash flow is being compromised as we go over budget. But it’s our home and we are aware. Thanks to some circumstances we haven’t had a big holiday and we haven’t had a chance to go abroad as a family. Now with the house coming in and screwing our finances, it not happening soon either. So this time when my friend was taking kids to a diving trip to the Philippines, my first reaction was to say no. We can’t afford it – a straight 1.5L poof, gone, for one person. That was not happening. But Jasmine told me – its ok dad. Where we send her anywhere. We can’t go but at least she can. It’s not that we can’t manage. I was agreeing but I did not want to screw the finances. I would have had to sell my shares (hard assets) for this. Jasmine still said ‘for what do we have all this’. If at this age she cant go then when will she go? Every time something or the other comes up. I agree. It does. One HUGE regret, we didn’t go to Hong Kong Disney when she was the age for it. I still find myself a failure as I couldn’t take my kid to DIsneyLand. I always wanted to do it. I had the money at the time but the outlook was bleak and we postponed it and it then never happened.

So I agreed. Jasmine was right. She IS right. My sweet mom, is right trying to do amends. I can do it right away. Ya its big but it’s not that I can’t afford. It can be made up and we can manage. Jasmine and me discussed that at this stage, we are older and we can choose not to go diving. Instead of all of us going, let Jispa go thrice, its better bang for buck. Ya. I wanted to do scuba, sky diving, bungee jumping and other stuff. But I am not worried. I think I will manage to do it. I went to the silicon valley and met all the tech companies – that was one off the bucket list. The others will come. But at least a 15 year old can tick one for herself now. That’s a great age to develop passion and experiences. Not 42. The next age I think is 54. That should be fun.

I told my mom yesterday – mom, your kids are cool. They work hard and they enjoy their lives and they have money. Take all your money and live however you want to. Don’t leave a penny for us. Not a penny. So while she also told us no while we were kids, I also know, they told themselves no for so many things. Who are we to judge our parents or anyone in history.

History – today I did a long cherished dream. I was a tour guide to Elephanta. A couple of our friends came in from Canada. Two old women who are absolutely amazing. I took them there and showed them the caves and helped them understand a lot of Mumbai, India and the caves. This is my third visit to the caves and I loved it. I reread the book and now I am able to interpret it completely from my eyes and my angles. History is about interpretation and so is mythology. I see the caves very differently from how the others would. For me, it’s my own version of the story and the architecture. It what I want out of it and how I am able to share my vision with others. Wow. I was so thrilled. I took a laser pointer and took my friends to the caves. Soon enough, a guide came up to me and asked me if I needed a guide. NO. I am good. But they insisted. They said, they were ASI certified guides and only they could show the monument, not me. Yes – I understand you. But I am not a guide. I am friend. I am not charging any money and I am not soliciting any tourists inside the monument. How can you stop me? I am a banker and not a guide, you don’t see my face every day and please, there is no law against what I am doing. I was disturbed three to four times. I think not many understand that normal everyday people can also have a reservoir of knowledge and want to freely pass them on. Jokers. I had quite a few arguments and I was pissed. While leaving, they again confronted me and told me that it’s not right. I again stood my ground. There is no law on this. These are my friends and I can show them around, without you. Arggghhh. This was irritating. The guards were very reasonable. They came and asked me – are these your friends, then there is no issue. You can do it, it not against any rules. We left the place, but it was super fun. I loved it and I realized that I could explain this temple without a book and with ease and build a credible, or should I say incredible story around it. I am going to retire and be an official storyteller. The name of my company is going to be  - ‘Through My Eyes’. I hope to retire rich enough to start this passion where, we take super care of all the tourists and have a free model with an ability for the tourist to pay whatever he wants at the end of it. No questions asked. I don’t mind a small box at the end where I don’t even know, who paid how much, so people pay for value and not for show.

Then I took them to St Thomas Cathedral and in and around the Fort area. I loved the 8 hours I spent with them. It was beautiful. I told them, don’t thank me – my wife would tell you – I need to thank you for allowing me to do this. To be mistaken for a tour guide in Elephanta - One more off the bucket list!

brain wave

What is depression? I find it hard to understand it. I think it’s like hunger. You can write reams of paper on it but you can’t really understand it till you actually feel it. I have never be able to really understand it at its depths. I have seen a few patients suffer from it and I wonder. When I was younger I tried to get people off it by talking to them and by trying to counsel them, but this was pretty much useless. I leant that people have their own battles to fight and the reasons can be both purely biological and psychological. It’s easy to lecture when you are on the other side but it’s extremely difficult when you face it yourself, I guess.

No I am not depressed or experiencing extreme sadness for now, if you are wondering. But yes, I am facing some not so happy mood swings right now. They seem to be irritate me right now as I fight them off. A few things are triggering them – first when I was in US, the first Sunday that I was free and by myself was horrible enough. Sitting in a foreign town and wondering whom to talk to and what to do is tough enough for me. At 42, I have seen a lot of life. Earlier when I used to go abroad, or out of town there was a sense of newness and a sense of exploration and taking in the sights. But now I guess that also has worn off a bit and now some amount of déjà vu set it and it was a tough day. Plus I went to a family place like an aquarium and completely lost it. Alone, in a separate land with happy families around me –oh dear, I was so home sick. But funnily, it lasted till lunch. On a full stomach, I just felt a lot better. Possibly it was the biology of it more than the mind.

Right now, Jasmine is with Jispa in Delhi for an event for 7 days. This is really hard for me. I don’t like empty houses and I hate being alone without my family. Luckily I have a packed schedule but it still gets to me. I think I just get angry at the world and it comes out in funny ways. I have learnt to just smile and know that this too shall pass.

Coming back to depression. I can seem to understand some of this of what goes on in peoples mind. Right now my mind refuses to see reason and forgive or hold patience. It is angry and tired. I have to reign it in. Tougher said than done. This is a small and tiny bit of what I think depression goes through. Who can talk to you when you don’t want to listen? How can you will your brain to outwit itself? When you are pissed every argument is in favor of your brain and what it seems to think. Mind has a way to thinking itself to its own reason. This is crazier than ever. I have always believed that i have a decent mind but it thinks all the time.  Like my good friend Sonal tells me, I need to give my brain a rest. She threatens to give a coloring book. Nothing can be tougher for me than a coloring book. Doing aimless, completely aimless, irrational waste of time with no learning… oh dear me, I would completely fry out.

 So it’s difficult to understand how the brain works. We don’t understand how our own brain works and here we are supposed to lead a bunch of people and manage their brains as well. How the hell does it work? We have barely been able to deduce any of its contents and its functioning.

How do I try to manage my own brains and my complexity – let me tell you about myself more than about anyone else? I have learnt that my brain is quite a tireless worker and it needs to be constantly challenged. It seems to like a challenge and like to do interesting things. It wants to learn all the time and it wants to spread all its power for the common benefit of all. It has many moods but it can be coaxed by its different parts to allow itself to be molded. It can laugh at itself. Which I think is one of the biggest assets that it can have.

I have allowed the luxury of my brain to laugh at itself. This is not a small easy step. This is a significant step. This allows me to be sad or happy or cry or angry or anything and then look at myself and laugh. This way I understand what I am going through without really being too perturbed by it. I like to look at my own emotions form an outside in perspective. It helps me also realize how I am being perceived and help me evaluate myself slightly more objectively. And fundamentally – it helps me look at my own emotions and … and laugh at them. I don’t think I can after a point control my emotions. I can check them but they do give way and at that time all one can do is look at them and think about them. Once I think about them and laugh then I can change – either immediately or possibly learn from it for the future. This is the simple effect of laughing at yourself.

This is my brain and this is how it has worked for me in the past. But one thing is for sure, the brain is an extremely complex piece of work with so many factors working on it and changing it and shaping it. It is fool hardy to control it or manage it. One can only look at it and manage it one small dot at a time.

I think as I am getting older I am begging to sound more and more like a cynic. A lot of variables that I thought are under control on closer scrutiny give way to randomness and chance. Within chance how can you have the notion of control? And how can you then change it by force of will. I think change can be enforced by perseverance more than anything else. You can manage through a concerted effort over a period of time by consciously trying and getting better at it, slowly. I have learnt many things and I have learnt a lot by simply seeing other people in action. But I think I also learnt a lot by seeing myself in action. Seeing what my rational or irrational mind is up to, playing these decisions again and again in my head and then seeing if I could improve them. This has been the cornerstone of my improvement program.

You know yourself the best and you have only yourself to fool. Yes my brain has fooled myself on multiple occasions but at least I try to learn from it. I may choose to get screwed again but then I know it was my fault. It’s been fun living this dual identity in my head. The ability to look at myself from an outside in perspective. It’s been lovely.

Here before you go, a lovely video explaining why you shouldn’t listen to your parents for your career decision. I have been seeing that propagating that thought forever. Don’t listen to your parents. They mean very well and they have your best concerns at their heart – exactly why you should not be listening to them. No good ever came about from listening to your parents on career. I try and explain the various skills required to Jispa but I definitely do not try and influence her career decision. I hope she doesn’t take a lot of my advice. Right now – I am constantly advising her one thing – learn to code. That’s my hangover from the US trip. Learn to code. Anything you do in life will be dictated by your coding knowledge, more than anything else. No profession will be immune from code. NONE. Bet your dad never gave you that advice. My dad advised me to learn computers, I disregarded it … joker..

a lemon and a peach market

No matter how bad the mood, the greatest joy I have found is in enjoying the company of your family. It was good that the last few months of my previous employment was a bit of a tough one. I used the time and the experience to grow smarter and tougher. I find it easier to deal with less catastrophic issues.

I have had some rough times in my career and many of them were earlier on in my life. These helped me prepare for a lot of shit that seemed to have followed. Of course it follows in different ways. Sometimes, there is boss trouble, sometimes there is peer trouble, sometimes, unrelated colleague trouble and sometimes employee trouble. Trouble doesn’t come with a standard tag or a name. You learn to deal with it and you learn about the vagaries of life while dealing with it. One of my reactions over a period of time is to simply buckle down and try and build a cocoon around yourself. Talking about it doesn’t really help. Hence sometimes I look at people talking about it to others and taking advice, making me wonder, if this was really helpful. Once in a while taking advice is good but more than that is to my view not healthy.

Over a period of time, I have realized that sitting, chatting and discussing with other people on various issues is a good thing. But consistently talking about your problems and looking for advice is practically useless. The old adage is that people say that you shouldn’t leave so much within yourself. It’s not good. Well – that’s a yes and a no. I think in life I have learnt to just simply contain a lot of the anguish and pain within myself. It served me well. Opening up did really do me good. I like the way men (archetype) are friends with each other (sounding sexist). We chat, we discuss and we move on. We simply don’t dwell too much on emotional issues. There are 100 different versions of this and counter versions, but I am discussing the archetype. Ok – forget the disclaimers. I am talking about the thing that when screwed, probably a response that allows you to just box it mentally and manage your other life well, possibly works best. In managing your other life, the time spent with your loved ones is something you cherish the most.

I love the way Jasmine fights with me these days. Or should I say – I love the way she responds when I fight with he these days. Whatever – it’s fun. I shout, she gets angry and in 30 seconds we are back, smiling at each other. It’s not personal. We fight and we just get back. No egos, no making up with each other – just the quiet confidence that we love each other more than what the fight is all about. That’s the only way we can manage to get through all the stuff that we are managing to do these days. Jispa’s swimming, the new house that we are planning about moving to, all the decor and the arrangements. It’s not possible to do all this and not fight. And it’s not possible to have good memories if we fight and sulk. Right now it’s going great and we are doing just fine on how we are doing up the house. Enough fights and enough fun times and a lot work trying to visualize all the work.

Coming back. I was in a horrendous mood since yesterday evening thanks to some crappy work I was seeing at work. But I liked the way I simply put my head down, slept through and when I woke up I decided to spend time with Jispa and jasmine at the dining table and take effort to smile and chat with them. There – I felt much better and I realized what real truth in life is.

Coming to which – Jispa is a real joker. She loves what she calls the ‘papa’ smell. Every time I wake up from sleep and I hug her she gets papa smell from my t shirt. So she makes it a point to sniff me when I wake her up. One day, out of the blue in the morning, I woke up removed my t shirt and threw it on her face and went for bath. After some time when she woke up she loved the fact that the t shirt was on her. Her words “I was dreaming that I was in a meadow and smelling flowers and the flowers were smelling of ‘papa smell’.” Hah! Jasmine didn’t know where to look. She rolled her eyes and was wondering to her self – these two are crazy.

With Jispa I have a pact going – she allows me to kiss her nose and I allow her to bite my arm. It’s an irrevocable pact. Now we have another pact that I engineered. I throw my t-shirt on her in the morning and allows me to give a kiss on her ear lobe twice a day. Her only condition is that I don’t do a slurp kiss. Hahaha. I engineered this one and in the morning I was explain to her – that thanks to this understanding a lot of benefits happened. First – she gets the t-shirt every day, second, I get to kiss her properly and not just sneak one on her ears while I am hugging her, third, I am forced to give a proper one – the one that she doesn’t really mind and fourth – it’s a sanity situation where I am constrained to two a day. All benefit when a trading pact happens. It benefits the whole ecosystem.

Today morning I was reading about The Market for Lemons. Here the economist Akerlof argues that in the market for used cars, there exist asymmetrical information. The buyer doesn’t know about the car quality but the seller does (which is the lemon and which the peach is). Over period of time, thanks to a trust deficit, the average price of the car being bought by the buyer will gravitate towards the middle, the average of the peach or the lemon. This will drive the peaches out of the market and then you are left with only lemons. This drives all the buyers out.

 An interesting quote from the paper: “The cost of dishonesty, therefore, lies not only in the amount by which the purchaser is cheated; the cost also must include the loss incurred from driving legitimate business out of existence”

The book I was reading spoke about how this paper is important in understanding that asymmetrical information is important in driving business out. With internet and apps and the platforms that it has mushroomed – people are able to rate each other and information can be democratized. This is the example of Uber allowing both the passenger and the driver to rate each other and similarly the case in AirBnB. It allows everyone to participate and the world becomes a more vibrant space. Trip advisor allowed the smaller hotels with exceptional service and no marketing budgets to beat the big hotels on ROI and occupancy rate. Information thus democratized forces people to improve their service or the lunch will move from the big stupid seller to the smart nimble seller on the basis of interactions that have been positive.

I have seen this thing in action. As Trip advisor and other review sites mushroomed the world became such a smaller place, such an accessible place, such a beautiful place. When I was in SFO I realized that to get anywhere to anywhere you just need Uber. This is a huge thing. Earlier you would wonder before takinga taxi in a new place – is cheating you, or taking you on the longer route or anything. Here all that friction is just taken care of. One other thing about uber – I have written about this in the past – is that in Mumbai it has caused a lot of congestion. I reaslie that it is in part thanks to the laws of the land. Here an average car owner cannot just switch on to become an Uber driver. He has to have a commercial registration and a yellow number plate. In US you can simply turn on the Uber app (some pre verification) and boom – you are an executive by day and an Uber driver on the way home. This is the ultimate Uber dream. Your car is idle and parked for 90% of the time. With Uber – you can simply sweat the asset through the day. Laws here stop that and hence the congestion. If you transform the laws, possibly you will have Uber and less congestion. That’s the great thing.

So it’s interesting, how Uber is relevant and the innovation has potential to really decongest the city. The ultimate Uber holy grail – Pooled, autonomous, electric vehicles. Now  that’s crazy. That’s serious transportation solutions. It uses existing infrastructure to provide a solution that promises to work and get the hassle off the commute. And without government spending.

That’s the power of innovation, freethinking and the ability to do business with minimal government regulation. That’s the case for regulation to reduce. And that’s the reason or trade. Trade allows rules to be formed that work well for all parties. Jispa gets my used t shirt and I get her ear lobe. Win win and everyone loses if the contract is broken. Speaking of which – distributed ledgers…. Some other day…

dead men walking

When I was growing up I lived in Dubai and obviously I grew up in a privileged environment. I realized how privileged I was when I returned to India from Dubai as kid. I have written about it in my past blogs that I was super pained about India and all the adjustments I have had to do. Sometimes I wonder how mom and dad managed to make the transition from desi economy to petroleum economy and back to desi. What I remember of it was that they adjusted very well. From a Toyota Crown he went to a scooter with a buggy attached and he was happy taking his family across town, roaming around and getting back to the humdrum of Mumbai life. I remember thinking about how cool kids we were to be ‘Dubai returned’ and that how many times we had flown on an airplane. That was super cool. In an era when AC travel was the ultimate luxury, airline travel was the greatest thing ever, and I in my 9 odd years had flown 18 times. Hah! I am too cool.

I also remember feeling rich and cool when I took Jispa and Jasmine on a vacation via a flight! Cut to the last vacation when to experience train travel we came back from Delhi via train and that felt cool. No matter how unique our experiences, over time mind adapts to everything and they aren’t so cool anymore. The novelty wears out and you get back to the humdrum of the known.

This last two weeks, I had the privilege of going to the US. I have always wanted to go to the US. US is the final frontier. It’s the greatest land ever, where arguably the greatest civilization ever existed, in the history of mankind (my proclamation, not backed by anything factual). It is an unsurpassed rich nation with supreme military prowess. It built this great nation, uniquely – only by immigrants. It is the ultimate example that you can build a great nation by attracting the best of the best from all over the world and only those hardy enough to make the journey will make it there and therefore natural selection will ensure that the collection of these individuals make for a great nation state. Amazing nah? NO. not so. The new world were not one but two. Even the South Americas were used as an occupation land by essentially the same mix of colonizers from Europe, but not to the same effect that US has had.

The argument is that US firmly believed in the simple adage that men govern themselves best when left to themselves. They actively hate higher government involvement and want as less of governance as possible. Also – they simplified and cleaned up their land records to allow the squatters to simply claim the land and move on. Both these forces acted as a catalyst and along with an amazing wealth of natural resources, the North American region experienced a wave of prosperity and domination that the world has probably not seen before. Possibly it was also lucky that it was so far removed from the rest of the world that the world wars never reached it shores ( barring – one Jap airplane, a few random bombs and pearl harbor). It was able to keep its industry intact and keep producing for the rest of the world.

The Arab states also got a rich natural dividend in the form of oil and so did Venezuela and some Nordic states. Except the Nordic states which decide to invest it returns in the form of a sovereign fund held on behalf of its citizens the rest have no real greatness to show for it.

All said – THE US OF A is a dramatic story of our times and is the Ultimate destination for the ambitious. It was a fascination for me for long. The few countries that I wanted to visit. I have been lucky that through my travels thanks to my work, I have been able to visit a lot of countries and see the places. It has always been an exciting learning experience. When I was growing up, I never did realize that I would one day be able to see all these places. I remember the first time I got to go to London on a work visit. It was the place that my dad worked for a year or so before I was born and I thought it was amazing that after so many years I managed to go there. It was especially special for me as for some vanity led reason I was excited to travel there in business class. Of course this was the crazy cheap money fueled boom of 2004 till 2008 and travel was cheap and money was cheaper.

This time I was excited to travel to San Francisco on work. My job was to go as a part of a delegation and meet the hot tech companies for US dominating the world. Google, Facebook, AirBnb, Adobe, Microsoft, Oracle, uber etc. It was an amazing line up and promised to be an amazing experience. And it was. Now that I am back, I am full of stories and insights and thoughts on how to change the world. But that was expected. What I found every interesting is not to understand how the tech works. That one can sit in India and surf the internet and get a sense of all the tech driving the world. But when I went to SFO, I realized how the air is over there. There no one cares how big you are. Everyone believes that you are just one innovation away from disruption and obsolescence. The people all think big and solve world problems. No one is looking at small issues. I also realized how the tech is real and the tech is now. We always knew about the tech of self driving cars and other applications of Artificial intelligence but when you go there you realize that when the world’s best companies with the world’s best people are putting their brains on the problem, the pace of the adoption of technology is greatly accelerated and can be real faster than what one can imagine it to be. It’s crazy there. This makes one feel that the impossible is now and achievable.

I am reminded of the cheesy dialogues of the movie Raees in which Shah Rukh khan mouths dialogues that the air of Gujarat is filled with trade, how can you stop it. Here listen to all the dialogues. Almost everyone is filled with the air of San Francisco. The enterprise culture filled with a  belief that all is possible unless expressly forbidden (that too seems negotiable) along with the intellectual capital brought to the place by the two world class universities, makes for a potent cocktail of imagination and achievement.

So my greatest learning is the culture of thought and scale of amibition. And the potent combination it becomes as a cluster when you are able to attract the world’s best all together in one place. SFO is a crazy open culture where I could see first-hand what amazing things an open culture can bring about. In SFO you can be what you want to be without a second glance. You can be brown red or yellow. You can have blue or red hair. You can be a techie or a dreamer or a painter. All feel welcome in the city. I was so much at home. It’s a good thing that I was there for 12 days. It gave me a chance to breathe the city and feel it from the core. It was quite a rich experience.

But here also, the first few days were heady and as time wore on, one got used to the experience and it ceased to amaze me as such. One of the things I always seem to think of when I step on a foreign locale, I think to myself ‘the laws of physics work the same’. Hah. That’s something I have always thought to myself. It’s a way of saying – its ok… it may be the most beautiful place or the most intersing coveted place or the richest country in the world – at the end – the laws of physics apply equally and you feel equally heavy or light as you take your first few steps. It’s something that I always think of. I think it keeps me grounded as I explore the city.

The fun bit – when I fly into the US, a friend knows a friend who is some senior person and I got upgraded.. to first class. So if I went to London on a business class ticket – I managed to reach the Americas on a first class seat. That is one thing one get used to. Some small confusion ensued on the way back and I was relegated to the economy section. Bah! I did get first hand experience what a 16 hour flight feels like as a common man. Short answer – not pretty.

All said – an amazing experience which I have recanted many times to many people already. It’s good this way as now it will stay fresher in my head. Soon enough I have to make notes on this to present to various different people. Hopefully I would be able to condense these experiences in a way that is engaging and relevant. I loved the chance that I got. I look back at this and realize that this is also a function of the thought process that I bring to the table and the ability for me to think imaginatively and help people. I owe this strictly to myself, while of course I will have a million to thank for.

I also figure that now that I am reasonably senior and that I have reached a higher level in corporate life, a lot of eyes are at me and that they must be looking at me wondering how I got here or how big I must be – going to SFO and meeting different people and understanding tech. I think it’s my role to now talk to a lot of people about my experience and teach them about what I Iearnt. I spoke yesterday to all the management trainees at lunch and I explained to them that all their jobs are going to change in the next ten years. I explained that all their jobs will be automated and that the world as they see it will no longer exist in tier work lives. When I joined the workforce there was no internet and there was no automation. Now the world is changing fast and the workforce skill sets are completely different. Of my last 20 odd years of working, only the last 7 have some value and that is also getting fast obsolete.

It’s going to be interesting to be relevant in a fast changing world. Who will win at the end of it all is anyone’s guess. The kids were then asking me ‘so what should we do now’. I don’t know, was my honest answer. I don’t know what will be there in the future, but one thing I know for sure – it won’t be what you are doing for now. Be aware and always look for something new to do. Things are moving, recognize them and try and be on top of things. Be ready to encourage change and be ready to move in new directions.

Change dear boy change. The future is now and you don’t even know of it yet. I see dead men walking.