Active Nation

My general observation in Singapore is – people here live healthy. By that I mean – most of them exercise regularly and eat healthy. And then there are tonnes of marathons and other runs that happen in Singapore every year that a huge part of the population participates.

The Government and associated bodies, seem to take public health rather seriously. Giving a discourse about the Government policies is beyond my capacity, but I felt I highlight 2 important things that have affected me in the recent months:

The Health Promotion Board has had a very active campaign for people to sign-up and commit to lose weight. Collectively the country is trying to shed a million kg (after I look at all the healthy people around me, I doubt they will achieve that kind of a weight loss but a noble idea indeed). And if an entire nation is trying to lose weight together, it is probably all the motivation that you can get.

The Singapore Sports Council (SSC) has been promoting active living all this while. Now the SSC has launched a program titled “ActiveSG”. To entice people to actually use the facilities SSC is giving out $100 for each sign-up. That $100 in credits is valid till end of 2015. Swimming, costs $1 a visit (I find it ironic, that I pay less to swim here than I did in India, and the pools are bigger and relatively less crowded). Effectively, that’s more than 3 months of swimming free. And mind you, there are a lot of other facilities you can use beyond swimming (Table Tennis, Badminton, Gymnasium, Group exercises etc.)

With advancements in healthcare, human beings in general have started living longer. However, we aren’t that much healthier than our ancestors. Programs like these should help improve the overall wellbeing of the nation and make the resident population healthier and contribute towards lowering healthcare costs and better productivity off an aging population.

Perceptions

These days I get to “advise” or “present” to customers in South-east Asia (SEA). Before moving to Singapore, most of my working life involved working “with” the Western world. While the work I do is more or less the same (yeah Enterprise Software related) here are the stark differences I have noticed:

When I travelled from India, I was deemed cheap labour (well, I was!) and judged even before I opened my mouth. When I travel from Singapore, I am coming from a developed nation to some developing nation in SEA. Naturally I get some sort of respect for my place of origin. I am more expensive than their locally hired consultants (many times) and well, I am judged (positively) even before I open my mouth.

My personal opinion is – no one can quite do hospitality like the Asians. Now I know I am generalizing, but I find the concierge and wait staff in Asian countries genuine, helping, friendly and naturally customer oriented. While in the “western” world, at times, I found them pretentious or down right rude. However, this is just an observation, and it could also be because I tend to stay in better places in Asia as compared to the Hotels that I stayed in the West.

Finally, Airports in Asian countries look chic and modern, while those in the West look more utilitarian and rundown. Again, this could be because, the airports that I have visited in this part of the world are newer, handle relatively lesser traffic than their Western counterparts (that I have been to).

Standard disclaimer about generalization based on specific individual observances and experiences apply.

47 Ronin

I had a rather lazy Saturday yesterday. Early morning I decided to see a movie. And I chose 47 Ronin. Why 47 Ronin? Well because I was so lazy that I didn’t even bother to scroll down the list to see other movie options (47 being numeric, came at the top of the movie options that I could choose). It was a box office disaster and it still rates at 14% on Rotten Tomatoes.

47 Ronin–Trailer

As for me, I loved the movie. I don’t know why. May be I wasn’t that aware of the samurai culture before (Check out bushido for a quick overview.) Or may be because it is based on a true story. Yup. Though the movie says it is “inspired” and changed the story to make it into a Hollywood movie. The true story is quite moving and awe inspiring. Finally, I couldn’t forego the uncanny resemblance to Bollywood movies in which the loyal naukar (servant) will do anything for his benevolent malik (boss) and the beta (son) takes badla (revenge) for the baap (father). Yup, you got the gist.

Anyway, something most troubling and mystical has to be seppuku. The ritual of suicide. Having seen it in many movies before, I didn’t really read about it before till yesterday. The movie ends with a mass gut-wrenching seppuku.

Which brings me to my final fascination. I seem to like Japanese names and words. Especially when you say them out loud. Don’t believe me? Just lock yourself in a room, and say the names given below out loud. These are some of the actual cast of the movie.

• Hiroyuki Sanada
• Ko Shibasaki
• Tadanobu Asano
• Min Tanaka
• Jin Akanishi
• Masayoshi Haneda
• Hiroshi Sogabe
• Takato Yonemoto
• Hiroshi Yamada
• Rinko Kikuchi

Are you convinced that they sound cool? No? Okay, go back to them and say them out loud again.

Well well, to conclude, I won’t recommend you go see the movie. I just thought I write about it cause I liked it. And here is a cool video teaching you how to correctly pronounce Japanese Car brands.

Real pronunciations of Japanese Car Brands

Trust

Almost every news these days seems to have a different outcome based on who reports. Be it war, politics, or even a simple altercation between two individuals the way it is reported can be poles apart based on where and from whom you are reading.

Never in my life have I questioned and not believed a news article the way I do now. We as a society have become extremely cynical and have lost complete trust in all media and in other people. Though social media has give people power (in general) it has also caused a lot of unnecessary noise and it is  becoming increasingly difficult (if not impossible) to distinguish the truth from the lie. Any person with a twitter handle, a blog or a Facebook post can change the course of history. What is a lie and what is the truth is left to the gullible readers to decide.

This also means a lot of what we have read in the past as news from distinguished media outlets, and as history has been manipulated to a great extend to satisfy a person’s or a political party’s agenda. Our world view as we know it today, is just a “view” that was built based on who brainwashed you. The “reality” could be far from what you think you know.

In the last week there have been a series of events that were reported in totally different ways based on where you read them:

1. A protest against a government policy went wrong in Singapore. Based on whether you read the news as told by the protestors, by the bystanders or by the media you get a completely different picture of what happened.
2. A news reporter got into an altercation outside Indian Prime Minister’s speech in New York. Again, despite all the conflicting evidence (with those YouTube videos floating around) it is very difficult to decipher what actually happened chronologically.
3. And any action taken by any political party (however noble it might be), there will always be a counter argument on how bad the consequences are going to be.

Never in my life has news been so complicated and stressful. I miss my good old days when I could blindly trust anyone.

You too!

Practically every netizen is aware of the new phone launches by Apple last week, followed by a bunch of announcements about the new Apple Watch. So far so good. Apple fans went crazy and Apple’s stock went through the roof yet again. I am sure the products are amazing and everyone will live happily ever after.

In all this frenzy, one of my favourite bands of all times – U2 released a new album. It is titled “Songs of Innocence”. Apple released it for free on iTunes. U2 seems to have a multi-year commercial and philanthropic tie-up with Apple. I am pretty sure both of them have done a fair bit of good in the world through the Product Red Campaign.

Songs of Innocence

However, free is bad. Free gives the wrong perception that the thing that you just received is not valuable. From Joshua Bell (the acclaimed Violinist) playing for “free” at the DC Metro Subway to Open Source software, people have consistently assumed (and many times falsely) that free means – not good.

I am appalled, sad and disappointed that U2 did this. Of course I am happy that I got their album for free. But I am not happy about all the negative reviews and articles that they are getting.

U2 made money in the deal. But they lost a fair bit of their amazing flair and credibility. According to NY Times online, this is what I could gather:

“To release U2’s album free, Apple paid the band and Universal an unspecified fee as a blanket royalty and committed to a marketing campaign for the band worth up to $100 million, according to several people briefed on the deal.”

So, it’s not that U2 gave you the album free, but indeed Apple did it. I feel, rather than pushing the album for free into everyone’s iTunes library, Apple should have made people to do the effort to search for and download the album. That way it would have been more valuable and people who don’t know them wouldn’t have bothered.

As for non-Apple users like me, I had to go download iTunes first then download “Songs of Innocence” and then uninstall iTunes. Anyway, I am listening to the album as I am writing this. And this week is gonna be all U2 for me. To end on a happy note, here is their funny “10 things” appearance on David Letterman:

Top 10 things U2 has learned over the years

HBR Articles that influenced me

Continuing on my theme from last week, I decided to write on the Harvard Business Review articles that most influenced me. Top 10 makes it banal, so I stuck to the list as my “most favourite” articles. Since a considerable amount of my “reading time” (during my MBA and after) has been spent reading HBR, I feel it’s unfair to not credit it to have influenced me.

Most articles are behind a pay wall, but if you are creative enough with your Google skills, I am sure you can get them online free. I had free access to HBR as a student, and subsequently my organization also gave me free corporate access.

So here is the list:

Competing on Analytics

If there is one thing that I can squarely “blame” for me jumping into Business Intelligence (head first) as a career, this has to be it. Very well written and then followed by a book by the same name, this is a must start if you are wondering what Analytics can do for an organization.

What is strategy?

The first article that I read on my quest to understand “Strategy”. Simple, but effective. Ended up reading a lot of Michael Porter after this.

The Core Competency of the Corporation

If all that strategy talk gets you confused, I suggest you read this article to understand what is “core competence” and what is a “sustainable competitive advantage”. Though they have mostly become jargons now, it’s good to know what they actually stand for

The Five Competitive Forces that shape Strategy

Strategy again. One reason I love so many Strategy articles is because I specialized in Strategy. None the less, I like reading about it more than on topics of People Management, Marketing and the likes. I have written about this before. The classic Porter’s 5 forces.

Managing Oneself

A very thought provoking article on what to do in life in general and choosing careers, and making life-changing decisions. Peter Drucker at his best.

Who’s got the Monkey?

Another article that has featured on my blog before. Helped me change from an over worked worker bee, to a smart working worker bee (yeah still a bee). Easy, funny but insightful.

Leading Change – Why Transformation Efforts Fail

Whether in life or at work, we all go through these notions of working on “grand transformations” and then miserably failing. I love this article for its clear “8 step approach”

The Power of Virtual Integration

I love this article for the amazing clarity with which the entire concept of integrating across a Supply Chain is explained.

10 books that influenced me

A very close friend of mine “nominated” me on Facebook to put this list together. Since Facebook for me is ephemeral (I still love to document my thoughts and life here), I decided to blog the list.

An intellectual exercise indeed. I spent greater part of my weekend ruminating and here is the outcome. I am aghast to see that almost all the books are prescribed “reading materials” in education. What that means is – I don’t read much (or at all!) fiction. That should partially explain why you find me so boring. Anyway, in no particular order, here is my list:

The Dorling Kindersley Science Encyclopaedia

If there is one reason I am what I am, I have to give credit to this book. My parents bought this book for me during my primary school days (1990s), and I got hooked. This book was my source of “all information” till I discovered Google!

Applied Cryptography

This book was a recommended reading for an Information Security course in my Engineering. I loved it so much that I ended up reading it again after I started to work, just to get a kick out of reading Bruce Schneier’s humorous way of presenting a particularly dry subject. Have followed his blog ever since!

Principles of Economics

I always found Economics to be extremely boring till I read this book. It is practically un-put-downable. I read this book during my MBA and I ended up neglecting other subjects during this term just cause I wanted to complete reading this book. And then I wrote the Economics of Love.

Power of Habit

One of my recent reads. Opened my mind to all this procrastinating and not sticking to schedules and plans that I keep doing. Interesting take on how our life is practically ruled by our habits (good or bad!). The Target Pregnancy detection fiasco is also explained in detail in this book.

In Search of Stupidity

This book is a must read for everyone who criticizes companies for their idiotic decisions in hindsight. A humorous account of how big companies managed to screw it up big time and wipe themselves out. If you have read all the happy books about companies succeeding (Built to Last, Good to Great, In Search of Excellence … ) it’s high time you read this one.

Understanding Michael Porter

Did a lot of Michael Porter during my MBA. Understood some theories, confused some others and ignored a few more. Then I saw this book. Pre-ordered it, and loved it. If you wanna understand the “theory” of strategy, I will highly recommend it.

The Data Warehouse Toolkit

Yup a rather technical book. But if you are struggling to understand what is OLAP and why we need star schemas to keep data to analyse, this is the go-to book. The author is amazingly eloquent and the entire concept is made easy to digest and appreciate.

Show me the Numbers

This book completely changed my understanding of Business Intelligence and Design. A must read for every person who has to routinely work with numbers and present them as a part of their job.

Why does E=mc2? (And Why Should We Care?)

Theoretical Physics has always intrigued me. I wanted to read a book to at least get a very layman understanding of theory of relativity, string theory and the likes. I browsed this book in a bookshop and bought it to go home and spend a considerable amount of time to “study” it. Helped me understand a lot of concepts. Highly recommended to all Sheldon Cooper fans.

Da Vinci Code

The only fictional book on my list. This book really got me hooked to the Internet, Wikipedia, Renaissance artists and the history of Christianity. While the story is celebrated, the side plots are laced with partial truths amongst all that fiction. Really made me spend a lot of time to figure out what is the truth and what are the controversies. Made me spend 4 hours staring at the Mona Lisa.

That pretty much concludes my list. Special mention – Harvard Business Review, Joel Spolsky and Seth Godin. I think I have been heavily influenced by the short (30 odd page) articles that are written in HBR, the nuggets of wisdom shared by Seth on his blog and in his books and Joel on Software – the go-to guide for all Software problems.

Creative Zen

My morning routine involves listening to the radio as I go about doing my daily chores. I know many people recommend not listening to the radio first thing in the morning (why worry about the world right at the start of a perfect day?) But I like local radios – they give me a gist of news, a little bit of music and a whole lot of chatter about local happenings at the comfort of my home without really stopping me from going about doing my stuff.

Today morning, as I casually turned on my radio, it just dawned on me – My cute little radio/ MP3 player has spent 10 years with me. A decade of existence! Crazy. It comes in the “disposable electronics” category. The kind which you are supposed to throw and buy a new one every 2 years. That very moment, I decided I am gonna write a post about it.

So my MP3/Radio is – Creative Zen Nano Plus. 512MB of MP3 goodness. I bought it in 2004. Small, compact and runs on a AAA battery. I found a YouTube video for you to adore.

Creative Zen Nano Plus

I know most of you swear by your iPod. But somehow I never ever had an Apple device. I started off with a Sansa clip, quickly followed by this Creative one.

Which brings me to the point that – Creative has been making really amazing and affordable products for a long while. It however never gets that much love and attention from the tech press.

I remember, in my first computer, I had specifically requested my hardware vendor to get me a Creative Sound Blaster 16 card. And then I had a Creative Infra Multimedia system with a CD-ROM Drive and a remote from them in the computer.

Somewhere along the way, Creative lost out to the other companies in the arena. Though they still make really good speakers and headphones, I don’t see them getting the attention like Beats by Dr Dre or Sennheiser and the likes.

Anyway, besides my MP3, I still got a few speakers lying around the house that are Creative. And I hope my Creative Zen Nano Plus continues to entertain me for years to come.

Speaking assignment

Sorry for disappearing for a while. I had the opportunity to speak in a conference. The topic – Visualizing Big Data. I spent unreasonable amount of time researching for it. I had a 30 minute slot. Which meant, I didn’t have to speak more than 20 minutes. 3 weeks of after-work research for it was totally not needed.

Most of my knowledge of Visualization I can attribute to 3 individuals – Edward Tufte, Stephen Few and Nathan Yau. If you read their books and follow their blogs, you are pretty much covered as far as “talking” about Visualization is concerned.

Big data is a bigger mess. There is no formal definition for it (or I didn’t find one!). And every company and marketer twists it to their own liking.

This was the first time I was very careful about using attributions in my PowerPoint presentations. All images I used were Creative Commons (and I attributed them using the right convention). I spent a lot of time searching for the “right” images (using Flickr and Google) so that I inadvertently don’t violate any licenses. If you have been confused about proper attribution, I highly recommend reading this link.

So what did I learn? If you are the 4th speaker, people don’t really pay much attention. They are hungry and waiting for food. Most of them are also stuck to their phone or are just staring at you blankly without really listening. Also, as a speaker, it doesn’t matter how much you really understand. It is more important on how much you can simplify and convey your ideas. I still got a long way to go to be a good orator. But I had fun. And now, I am back to my lazy old self.

Learning online

If you aren’t living under a rock, then you are probably aware of the revolution that is sweeping education. It is called Massive Open Online Course (MooC). Almost every big university I know of, now has its own online course. Besides, you got the good old ones like Coursera. Finally, even SAP has got into the game with its Open SAP content. Education has been revolutionized for ever. There will be a time when people will no longer have to go to Universities to get a degree. We will all study online and study continuous till we leave for our heavenly abode.

I have been trying to study MooCs over the last 2 years. After over 3 failed attempts (in which I left the course half way – got bored or over whelmed) I finally managed to complete 5 courses now. That makes me a self-proclaimed expert. So here is what I have learnt after several botched attempts:

You have to dedicate time for studying in your week – Yup if you don’t plan and allocate time to it just like every other activity, you won’t have time to study. Make sure you plan your calendar for the week with ample time slots for studying.

You need more time to study than you think you do – Most courses say 4-5 hours of study time required per week. Trust me, they are just trying to make you feel good. On an average every week’s worth of lectures and test take me anywhere between 10-20 hours of work depending on how well I can concentrate.

Load your portable device with the lectures – Yeah, your smartphone ain’t for candy crush and Facebook only. Make time to read and listen to your MooC lectures during your daily commutes. Commutes are the best times to listen to the lectures. It is much better time spent than staring at your co-passengers.

Read the course discussion forums – Most course assignments are difficult. The forums are a treasure house of useful information. These forums are almost always well curated and well managed by the professor and the TA so spend ample amount of time to go through them and read the notes.

Practice to assimilate what you learnt – While you can clear the course and get a certificate by following what I mentioned above, online learning doesn’t ever give you the desired amount of practice that you need to master anything. So, you have to spend a lot of time beyond your course to really sit, practice and imbibe whatever you learnt.