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…
