Bling

One of the things that I pride myself on these days is not spending too much money on useless things. Read – expensive useless things. Or even better uselessly expensive things. Case in point  - my watch. It’s the standard 700 bucks casio F91 watch. I love this watch now. I bought it just as a style statement and soon realsied that now I can’t wear any other watch. This is the watch for me. Its tells the time as accurately and cheaply as possible. And wonder of wonder – its also good for swimming.

I wanted an everyday watch which I wear in the shower and for my swims as well. So in addition to the F91, I started searching for a cheap water proof watch. Then online I read a few posts wherein people were saying that the F91 is good for basic swimming. Someone said that the F91 and the so called water proof watches conform to the same standard for water resistance. Its only not promoted by Casio, so that you can buy the slightly pricier ones. I was sold. This watch I will wear forever. Its become my identity.

Today when I look at my photos with the watch, I love the look and the fact that I can wear this watch everywhere. I get questions from people on why I wear this watch and they ask me about the sentimental value of the watch. They are surprised to know that I am wearing it purely from a functional perspective.

That’s also the question in people’s mind when the see the car I drive. It’s a lovely functional Honda City. It’s got leather seats, its automatic, it drives well – why should I upgrade? I like this car. I have no reason to want another car over others.

No it’s not like I don’t like brands. All my life I probably loved and coveted a Rolex or a Mercedes. Its only now that when I have the resources and the brains that I am forced to think twice. Someone was asking me in office – you don’t wear expensive watches – no, you don’t buy too many clothes – no, you don’t drink – no, you don’t go to fancy restaurants often – no. They were obviously looking at me like I am some miserly guy. I said – I have no problem with spending and these expensive tastes but I hate it when I am buying something and all that the brand is doing is taking me for a ride. Its making a fool of me, which is what I don’t like.

But I do have a weakness – shoes. I like expensive shoes. I wonder why. But now that I have bought quite a few I have restrained myself. It’s a good thing that I have limited space for my shoes. Otherwise I would racked up quite a bill, buying expensive shoes (at a sale of course) but still expensive.

So I like what I have become so far. Richer but wiser. That’s how I like it. Simple and happier. I would love to be even richer and spend even lesser. I think a lot of celebrities would have died happier if they had learnt what I have learnt in my life.

The great joy is in being able to afford bling and not buying it because you recognize it as such. Useless Bling. Or uselessly expensive bling.

Watch out

I was feeling rich and there are two things that I have always secretly always loved possessing. One is shoes and the other is watches. I can still think about shoes as a functional thing and expensive shoes tend to be better lasting and comfortable compared to cheaper versions. Of course there is a limit to this pay off. I am at around 4 to 5 thousand beyond which I think the shoes start on their downward marginal utility of the money spent. The problem is that the world has moved to around 6 to 7 thousand or even 8 thousand before the shoes start making awesomeness. Apparently I have not kept pace with the shoes innovation inflation index yet. This is in the sports shoes index.

Luckily in the formal space index, shoes have largely stayed within my range. And at this time I am super lucky as one day I walked into the Cole Haan shoe shop seeing a 60% sale board. These were ridiculously expensive shoes. In INR they were at 15 to 18k for a pair of shoes. No way would I even smell them at that price. So luckily at 60 /65 % off they were with reach. Just a bit more expensive than normal but still within reach. So I bought one pair. After a few months, this shop was going out of business (obviously) and they had a 70% off sale. Jasmine egged me on and I bought two more pairs within my range and now I am complete. Three leather pairs and one old trusty pair. Done. These should last me at least 3 to 4 years. Hopefully more.

On the sports shoes, I was heavily influenced by the book “born to run”. There the author argued that humans are designed to run bare foot and the shoes with cushioning have spoilt our gait and running style. Thanks to the cushioning we have on our shoes, we have learnt to hit heel first versus a more mid foot impact style that barefoot runners have. I was so heavily influenced by this that I bought a lot of sport shoes with a thin sole and zero drop. I think today that it was a mistake. It’s not the best thing to do for my feet. Possibly I am too used to cushioning or my feet run in a different way and to retrain the old ancestral style would take too much effort and is probably useful for those running marathon, not couch surfers like me. But still – 4 K is my limit and I have to really wait for sales and clearances before I can buy anything.

But for now – I have enough sport shoes, chappals, leather shoes and sandals. More than what I need. No more testing the level of my passion of collecting shoes.

As for watches, I have a genuine problem. I love these watches but have complete understanding that there is ZERO marginal utility on an awesome watch versus a really cheap watch. Long time back, I think 7 years ago I was feeling pretty rich and I ventured to buy a watch. I bought a Victorinox watch on sale. One of my friends worked there and hence I got an employee sale price on the watch. The watch originally was for 26,000 and I was getting it for 16,000. A steal and I bought it. It’s a great watch and I love it, but after that purchase I understood that I have too much spare money and we decided to buy a house – our current house, and we got screwed in deb for the next 4/5 years. I haven’t bought a watch after that. I have been looking at watches, ogling at them, especially the automatic ones but could never justify to myself buying one.

Recently on a business trip abroad, while at the Duty free my CEO was looking at an Omega watch he liked. He bargained, got a good deal and bought a watch costing more than 300,000. That’s cool. He knows his watches and he knows what’s cool in the high range section. He bought it and looked at me. I smiled. He told me “you are that types – a three hundred thousand watch will also tell the time and a 300 buck watch will also tell the time, nah?”. Hahahah. Ya, kind of.

So recently I again started looking around and a mailer from my airline frequent flier program told me that I could redeem my miles for an awesome Casio watch costing around 6,000. Sure.

I started searching for reviews and views online, when my eyes fell on this beauty. This particular one called Casio F91W. Wow this was so retro it was cool. It reminded me of the watches I had in school and while growing up. Of course it released only in 1991 when I was firmly out of school but the design principal of the watch was very clear. It was that 80’s watch. Cheap fibre and a work horse. I researched some more and I realized that this one was a crazy seller and still sells high numbers. It’s cheap and the battery lasts between 7 to 10 years. And it reminded me of my childhood and my dad. Funnily enough that’s what the reviews also said.

I love it and ordered it online. 725 bucks and next day delivery. Am I proud or am I proud?

This has also been dubbed the most dangerous watch in the world. Its great use has been in being used as a detonation timer for bombs. Osama bin laden was spotted wearing it in one of his videos and it was also used to profile terrorists by the US for detention. Serious! What a story. Now this watch is no ordinary watch. It is The Watch. I am suddenly prouder.

Some guys in office wonder what a guy like me is doing with a watch like this. Ah – you know…..

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.

whats a high cost?

I have had some obscenely bad luck with books of late. I don’t know if I have gotten more arrogant there is little to note of new writing coming through. So I have endured one bad book after another. Books with little to say but a lot of words by which to say it. It is really irritating to get one book that you want to finish off after another. Nothing gripping or interesting that keeps you awake or alive, waiting to turn the page. In the niddle I got one interesting one but it was too small. It was the book called ‘jaane bhi do yaaron’ which was based on the making of the movie by the same title. It was well written, well researched and as funny as the movie itself. But that book was too small and I finished it off in one Sunday. That too only in one sitting in the morning followed by an evening sitting. The problem with good books is that they get over pretty fast. Pretty sad nah. So I have been a little irritated with my books. Shopping seems to have lost some of the charm. I can’t even see books on the shelf that makes me want to buy them.
Jispa on the other hand for the first time had a gift for herself in mind. She went roaming with my sister and came back to tell us that “mom, dad, you know what, I know what I want for my birthday”. Her birthday is 4 months away. That is some long range planning. “so what is it?” we ask. “you know, I saw this lovely watch, it has stop watch and light and it has a compass and it only cost 700 rupees. It is dam cool and I like it. Can we buy it on my birthday?”. “Oh well. Jips, you haven’t really ever asked us anything in particular ever. So it’s not important to wait for your birthday. We can buy you that watch this week itself”. Poor thing. She saw her watch and decided that she liked it and even saw the price and figured that 700 is probably a cheap thing. In any case we don’t exactly buy her a whole lot of stuff, so these small things I was more than happy to give right away. Its like this other day when the mangoes were still not in season. But some places the first flush was coming in and Jispa was asking Jasmine, when they would be in season. Jasmine and I have been pretty broke these days with the loan instalments of the new house and we have been a little tight with the money thing. Jispa kept inquiring politely when the mangoes would be in season. She was dying to get her season’s first mango. I told Jasmine to go buy the mangoes. The rate 900 bucks a dozen. Wow. But I figure that Jispa is a good kid and she very rarely, if ever demands/ wishes/ covets something. In many ways she has the least amount of ‘stuff’ amongst all her peers. No game boy, no ipod / ipad, no cell, nothing besides books. So we decided to get her the mangoes.
At 900 bucks a dozen they were the most expensive we would have ever bought. A few weeks later they were to fall to 250 bucks. But hell I can go to sleep thinking that I gave my kid 900 bucks ka mangoes. Hehe. Stupid parenting issues that we face.
Coming back to books. There was one book that many years ago I started reading. It is called ‘ if you meet Buddha on the road, kill him’. I remember reading it years ago and finding it very very good. So good that I kept it back without finishing it, telling myself that I would one day read it, I would in effect one day be ready for it. I can’t believe how right the decision was. In the last few years, a lot f my job role requires me not to do as much work but to work with minds. I am required to counsel my team more than anything else. They probably know what they need to do, they need to reach their peaks in working and it’s largely my job to help them reach there. So the book, which is about a physiotherapist’s story on how he treats and talks to patients. Sometimes I believe that my core job is just listening and coaching. That’s all I am required to do. And the book gives some awesome advice on talking and listening. It’s fun and deep at the same time.
I have always felt that in the past I have been guilty of reading through a book without due respect to eth author and his story line. Why is which chapter arranged such. What is the name of the chapter. I think the name of the chapter also has something to say about the book and it helps in understanding of the book, but I have most of the time chosen to ignore it. This time around with this book, I have trying to understand why the chapters have been arranged so. The way it starts and builds a case, understanding that case before proceeding is an important part of reading a book. I feel that I normally tear away and rape the book. Start digging in immediately for tit bits of data and information that I can peel away, digest and use. Almost a hungry dog gnawing away at piece of thrown meat. There is nothing refined or sublime about my reading style. Just a rape.
I hope his book changes my style. I have learnt to read the back of the book, the prologue, the epilogue, the foreword, the comments, everything. But now I will start by reading the chapter list and keep in mind how the author is seeking to build his case while writing a book. A slow but gradual process that will perhaps help structure his thoughts in my mind.
Here is an interesting tit bit that I read and then reread and then finally captured it here. It is something that I have always maintained. Especially when younger one come to me for advise or issues or simple conversation. I tell everyone that people grow up. I grew up. Life slaps us all very hard and we use these opportunities to grow up. I think it’s given to us as a choice, it is forced down upon us as a growing up ritual. We don’t choose it but we make the choice. We lose every bit of ourselves as we grow up. a lot of it is our innocence. I always tell people ‘you will lose your innocence but hopefully, you will do so at a lesser cost’. In fact the more you resist loss of your innocence the more you will pay the price. It will be wrenched away from you, torn from your body and you will be left with a hardened heart. So many years gone by, and I wonder what became of me. Should I have become as hard as I have become? Could it not have been avoided? Nopes, I have only struggled to retain a core which I am at ease with. A simpler core than makes me happy, that may have been bereft of innocence but hopefully filled with care.
So I quote from the book “And remember, too, you can stay at home, safe in the familiar illusion of certainty. Do not set out without realising that; the way is not without danger. Everything good is costly, and the development of personality is one of the most costly of all things. It will cost you your innocence, your illusions, your certainty.”