Too Cold!

There is a local joke out here in Singapore that goes like this – Singapore has two seasons – summer outdoors and winter indoors. While Singapore being on the equator is a tropical country, almost all indoor public places in Singapore are air conditioned. So may it be the trains, the buses, the malls, movie theatres or even indoor recreational areas they are all kept cool.

The problem however is that most of the places are kept too cold. I can of course understand that while some people like their air conditioners cooler than others, as a general principle temperatures between 23.5°C and 25.5°C are good for everyone. However, I have noticed and felt that most places the temperatures are kept at about 16-21°C. Mind you, the outside temperatures range in 25-30°C most days of the year.

Not only is it too cold for most people, but it is a colossal waste of electricity (yeah and a direct contribution to Global warming). I am amazed even though there is an economic incentive (electricity bill reduction) no one seems to care about it! This goes along with my other pet peeve of people using too much paper napkins for drying hands after washing! Sigh!

Avoiding decision fatigue

For a guy wearing tents all my life, the recent news about some great (established people) wearing the same colour clothes everyday came as a big ray of hope. Yeah, if you haven’t read the article yet – here is the gist – People like President Obama, Mark Zuckerberg and the late Steve Jobs choose to wear the same colour clothes everyday. This helps them to make less choices (avoid decision fatigue) and thereby utilize their brain’s limited capacity to make other important decisions in life.

I can’t be more elated by this news. I have decided to dump my wardrobe and to go all-in with light-blue shirts and navy blue pants. That’s it. Not that I make important decisions. Nor do I have to think hard to choose what to wear everyday. But the very idea of wearing the same colour and getting away with one big headache of wearing clothes to look cool (or dress for success – whatever you like to call it!) looks extraordinarily appealing. After all, a man in blue shirt and blue pants is as dull and boring as any other person out there in the crowd. I will blend in with others and can happily continue with my minion existence. If that’s not all, if someone indeed notices and questions me about my weird sense of style, I can proudly quote the article. In fact, I have decided to make copies of it and keep it in my shirt pocket so that I can distribute it around.

Besides, making my wardrobe easy and shopping easy, I can occasionally reuse soiled clothes without people noticing. How do you know if I am wearing a different blue shirt than the one I wore yesterday (or the day before)? I will end up saving a lot of water, electricity and detergent. One more step towards a eco-friendly living.

Elevator Door Buttons

Though I have used elevators all my life, if there is one simple task that I still struggle at – it is to keep the door open when someone is trying to get in at the last moment. And the reason? Because the Door open and Door close buttons are hard to differentiate without thinking hard enough.

Japanese have this concept of “Poke-Yoke” (Mistake proof or Idiot proof your design). There are plenty of examples of Poke-yoke online, so I add a few more for you to read here:

1. Your USB drive can go in only the right direction into the USB socket
2. The ATM Card comes out before the money is dispensed so that you don’t forget your ATM card
3. The Ethernet cable can only be inserted in one way into your computer.
4. Your basin has an emergency extra hole at the top so that even if the main drain chokes, water can flow through an alternate hole.
5. You can’t start an Automatic gear car unless you put the gear in parking
6. Your room key doubles up as a key to start/stop your electricity in your hotel room. That way you never leave the lights on when you leave your room.
7. The Video Component cable uses the same colours as the sockets so that you blindly put the red in red, black/yellow in black/yellow and white in white.

However, I am amazed that no one has yet come up with a UX design for an elevator door open and close button that can be easily identified even by an idiot and not used to mistakenly close the door on someone while being chivalrous. This goes along with my rant about how easy it is to be confused between restroom symbols and elevator symbols in public places!

Cost of being a common man

My Twitter and Facebook timeline is abuzz lately for a few celebrities/ politicians taking or not taking public transport. People who are in favour of important people taking public transport voice the fact that those people should represent the common people from where they come from. If majority of people of that country are poor, then the politicians should also travel like them.

Since everyone is entitled to their opinion, I am posting mine here. I strongly believe that politicians should not travel by public transport. The cost of “showing” them poor is way too high. And here is my argument for them staying away from the general public:

1. As an elected official, you are representing an important post in the Government. Though your life may not seem important to you, the mere title that you are carrying, makes it important. The cost of replacing you if something goes wrong with you, is too high to the economy.
2. Since people tasked with your security know point 1 above, they have to ensure your safety at all costs. If you plan to travel by public transport, your security detail has to do a lot more effort to make you look “common man”. In reality they are frisking and inconveniencing a lot of people who are going about their daily lives.
3. Just by traveling public class, you are not messaging anything. If you are rich, we know you are rich. Be what you truly are. Of course, if it is a vote garnering tactic, then go ahead and do your antics.
4. Just because you are travelling public class, a lot more people are crowding that system to look at you, than to do their daily routines. This burdens public transport. You are best seen on Television or on meet-the-people sessions in an enclosed space specifically meant for that.
5. If you really wish to show that your humble, make sure that you travel in such a way that you inconvenience the least number of people, and make conscious efforts to reduce the cost of your security detail. And yeah, live a simple lifestyle.

Weighed down

While I was having my breakfast the other day and watching my local news channel, my sleepy state of watching daily news was suddenly interrupted by a truly breaking news. The local news channel broadcast live – President Obama giving his impassioned speech on immigration reforms. He is a mighty impressive orator. To be fair, I don’t understand anything about American politics. (Yeah I do see House of Cards once a while, but it gives me an impression that American politicians are sly, scheming and conniving bunch of high-profile scoundrels. And I can safely assume that they are not.)

Anyway, this blog post ain’t about America or Obama. It’s about my weighing scale. That little thing neatly sits besides my Television at home and dutifully tells me how heavy I am everyday (Yup, I make it a point to weigh myself every morning – a sad way to start your day actually!).

However from that morning, my scale has started showing my weight in Pounds. After all these years of showing Kilograms, I don’t know why it suddenly became imperial. The only association I can put together is – it heard the President speak, got inspired (and hoped to be an American someday) and started following the American way of counting. I have no clue why the Americans still use the imperial system (someone has to show them this comic by Oatmeal). Luckily, my scale doesn’t speak else I am sure it would have adopted an American accent as well.

Now everyday morning, after I weigh myself I have to go to Google and convert that weight into Kilograms to feel sad.

Movember

It’s the 11th month of the year. And it’s the month to raise awareness about men’s health. Unless you have been living under a rock, I am sure you are aware of the “Movember” movement. Men grow moustaches in November to raise awareness about men’s health issues. Particularly – Testicular cancer, Prostrate Cancer, Mental Health and general Men’s health.

Though I have known, I stayed away from Movember for the last 2 years. This year however, I gave in and am on day 15 of my moustache growing spree. Why? Beyond the obvious reason of supporting a good cause, I also wanted to grow a moustache. I never dared to sport a moustache (other than the one that I had as an adolescent – the kinds that teenagers keep before they actually resort to shaving), and have pretty much stuck to the “clean-shaven” look for all formal occasions. However, as a kid, a silly Hindi movie imbibed in my impressionable mind  - “Moustache is the mirror of human mind and soul” and I always wanted to experience what that means. Now after 15 days, the only difference I feel now is that my moustache is itchy. Period.

Golmaal–Moustache scene

 

Ministry of Funny–7 Reasons to Grow a Moustache

So to sum it up, I am waiting for November to end so that I can be peaceful again. I haven’t officially signed up for Movember. Mainly for 2 reasons:

• I don’t think (given my popularity and amazing social presence) that I will be able to raise a substantial donation amount .
• I don’t want to put up my silly moustache photo on a website.

Anyway, now that you are aware, I would love you to contribute directly to any of the causes that you feel like. Even if you don’t, I hope I could do my bit about educating you about men’s health and of course my fascination for moustaches.

Product Pricing

I had the good fortunes of spending half a day with a savvy pricing guy from a local retailer. In the short time that I spent with him, he opened my eyes to how ignorant and gullible a consumer I am, and how retailers make use of that fact quite frequently to con me into parting with more of my money for their products. Enough ink has been spent about all these practices, so I am just gonna give you very short examples that have stuck in my head. Mind you, I am not even talking about the silly promotions that they run all the while. This is the hard-core regular bread and butter stuff:

1. We don’t really know the exact prices of the consumables that we use everyday but don’t buy that frequently – e.g. – Shampoo, Soap, Toothpaste, Dishwasher etc. We are either brand loyal or we just go by the advertising on the shelf to do our purchases. The retailers use the knowledge of this fact to keep changing (mostly increasing) prices of all their consumables very frequently. The demand for these things is pretty inelastic and unless there is a crazy price increase we hardly bother or even realize.
2. Besides prices, the other thing that they frequently play with is the packaging (net weight/ volume). This is because for items that are purchased frequently, we really know the prices quite well, and any movement in the price is easily noticed by the consumer (e.g Milk, Biscuits, Yogurt, Cereals etc.). But we are not that cognizant of the quantity of that item that we buy. So they trick us by changing (mostly decreasing) the volume while keeping the price of the product same, there by increasing the per unit cost.

After listening to his sermon, I was pretty sure that now I have “awakened” and have become a smart shopper till a few days ago I got conned again. A “health” drink that I frequently purchase (I know the price right down to the cents) just went through a huge rebranding and repacking exercise (yeah the “new and improved” trick). My local neighbourhood chemist was running a promotion on it and was selling the old product and new product side by side. Using my age old trick, I picked up the rebranded product (from the back) and went to the check-out counter. Luckily, that guy pointed out to me that to maximize my purchase I should buy the old packaging cause the new packaging actually offers 50gm less. Off 900 gm, it’s a decrease of 5.6% weight keeping the price same.

I don’t have an opinion about whether it is ethical or not. But I just feel as a consumer, we need to be more aware and not this gullible.

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