Us and Them: Wetware

So, 75 days after the trek, I quit my job and joined a start up. Such steps involve deep introspection, meeting some new interesting people, and one or two life changing events. As an insider, I can confidently reveal that a start up can hire you even if you don't have any of those three points on your CV. You should also know that if you let a greater number of life changing events happen to you then you risk overshooting the why-I-quit blog post and heading directly to the one where you describe your ride from one end of the Sahara to the other with just 5000 Indian Rupees, a goat, and a camera worth a few months of salary. By the way, this is not the why-I-quit blog post. This was just a rebuke.

I joined a company which is into hardware. We’re making smart electric scooters. For those who don't remember, hardware are things. They have a physical presence and therefore their existence goes beyond the hard drives of servers, computers or phones. For a guy like me, who types for a living interspersed with the occasional click or two, the new environment was refreshingly different. Over time, however, I got the feeling that somewhere deep down, software and hardware have a lot in common.

In the wisely chosen words of James Franco -

Goecha La, Sikkim, India

Photography

You’re most likely a city bumpkin and will find yourself going gaga over the views on day 1 itself. Unless the misfortune of bad weather befalls you, each day offers uniquely great sights, and will be colder than the last, so keep your pants on. This is all the more important if you’re the sort of traveler who doesn’t plan well and aren’t carrying enough charge or storage. Depending on the extent of your poor planning, you might run out of supplies or die midway so factor that in against your conservation efforts.

The descent has significant overlap with the ascent which provides you the option to click pictures of some of the stretches on your way back. By then you would have made your peace with being tired. You should have also become better at picking scenes which bring out the fancy quote in the foreground and cover pictures candidates which capture your vibrant, philosophical, spontaneous, tranquil personality. The selfie that goes on your DP is most likely going to be the one you take at the top so don't bother until then.

Indrani: The Murderer of Nouns

Disclaimer: I do not personally know any of these people. Except for the reported facts, most of this content is speculation and hyperbole. Peter and Indrani and the rest of them are probably nice, gentle people who wouldn't hurt a fly. May Sheena RIP, although it would appear that she isn't remembered all that much.

A reputed daily recently carried a confusing heading on the front page about an ongoing murder case. A lady called Indrani Mukerjea figured prominently amongst the participants, like that one kid on the team who understands why the science fair project is doing what it's doing. One is inclined, as was I, to think that the modus operandi might have involved giving people cancer by spelling her second name the way it is. Accepting that Narendra Modi had successfully distracted me from the Patels rioting in Gujarat, I decided to delve further into the matter.

Desiderata Errata

Someone on my social network recently shared the Zen Pencils' Desiderata strip and it seemed a little outdated and overtly optimistic. I took a stab at getting the updated and corrected version.

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
or risk sweat patches and body odour.
Remember what peace there may be in silence,
and the data charges you would save on,
if you stopped streaming music to your phone all the time.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with the members of the local law enforcement.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
avoid being witty;
people get offended easily nowadays;
hence which you will be destroyed on Twitter.
Listen to others,
especially the dull and the ignorant;
their feedback is most likely going to be the market response.

Frankfurt, Germany

I had an evening to myself in Frankfurt, Germany.
This was the best flag I could find.

Copenhagen, Denmark

On my way from Iceland, I stopped in Copenhagen for a couple of days too.

Start Me Up

The world has more articles about start-ups than it needs. The main news in any article is usually the recently secured funding and the rest of the article comprises of -

• the name of the start-up, which must have an ‘x’ instead of an ‘ex’, a ‘z’ instead of an ‘s'. A ‘kart’ or a ‘cloud’ thrown in there makes you fit better with the rest of the crowd,
• a picture of the young 20-something founders, usually all men, which might be causation and not just correlation,
• the eminent colleges they graduated from, usually engineering colleges, which might be a deeper level of causation to the previous proposed causation,
• the lucrative job offers some of them turned down or left

Willfully ignoring the insipidness of the start-up’s idea, and ignoring the inner voice, which is hopefully still there, that keeps telling them to write about something more interesting or relevant, the journalists often opt to add some human interest to this story and squeeze in a few quotes from the founders. When that age group is given a platform to sell something unambitious, it makes for very Brendan-Rogers-press conference-after-every-defeat sort of talk.

Iceland

May your flag forever fly high.
Hopefully you also get breaks in between,
it might to strenuous otherwise.

I was in Iceland in late February. It is an island located in the area that belongs to either the Atlantic Ocean or the Arctic. I can't say for sure and Google maps doesn't help much.

Nainital, India

Good evening, namaste, aadab, hello, and welcome to The Come On Man

When Babies Fly

Yawn... Hmph... Huh…? Wha…? Are we in the airport? Oh no, we’re catching a flight again. Is that an A380? No, probably not. You guys would never buy a ticket on an airline that could afford to buy that aircraft. I’m looking at you, lady. Yes you, who insists I play with toys and wear stuff that belonged to Sheila before she grew out of them. She isn’t even the same gender.