My shoes are Japanese

Got to listen to this very classic Indian song from Shree 420 (1955) - Mera joota hain Japani and couldn't help think about the irony of the song in today's context. Most Indians have heard this song and enjoyed it. It was used in the opening sequence of the movie Deadpool (2016).

The Lyrics roughly translated in English would be something like:
My shoes are Japanese,
My trousers are British,
The red hat on my head is from Russia,
But still my heart is Indian.

In 2016 we could re-write the song as:
My everything is from China
But still my heart is Indian.

Kinda amazing that China is the global manufacturer for a multitude of things that we use and consume everyday. Their dominance is mind boggling.

GPS Dummy

I drove in the US when GPS navigation devices were not that easily available, smart phones were rare, Google maps were just released and we actually had to use paper maps to navigate. That was more than 8 years ago. I kinda knew the roads around my neighborhood so well, that I could actually navigate without the need of any directional aids. For long trips, I bought the fold-able maps (AAA) and studied my route before I made the trip. If you took a wrong exit or a wrong turn, you would pull-up on the side of the road, open your maps and figure out how to get back onto the right track. And I actually understood the Eisenhower National Inter-state system

And then this time I went, I overly relied on the friendly Google Maps on my phone to navigate me to every destination, including the neighborhood grocery store. I felt dumb, incompetent and totally dependent on the GPS. So much so that, I had no clue of even basic directions around me.

Not that it matters, but I feel like geographically knowing where you are in the bigger scheme of things helps you feel in more control of your journey. It's just me. I know.

Nutrition Labeling

Had the opportunity to visit the same parts of California that I lived exactly 8 years ago for a week last month. Nostalgia trip aside, looks like not much has changed in my neighborhood in the last 8 years. Most of the area looked the same.

Anyway, one thing that I discovered quite interesting was that - almost all restaurants have now started labeling the nutrition content of their foods along with the price. Looks like a law was passed in 2008 and became sort of mandatory since 2011 for restaurants with more than 20 outlets. This is kinda awesome. Now I have 2 parameters to chose my food on - cost and nutrition.

I also discovered that most of the foods that I loved last time around are extremely dense in calories and maybe that was one of the reasons why I struggled with maintaining my weight. Most of my favorite menu items were actually more than my daily calorific requirement!

I think this is a step in the right direction. I subconsciously started choosing healthy menu items in the week that I ate out. I hope we get to see this all over the world soon!

Guide to a good sleep onboard

Most of my adult airline travel life has been spent on uncomfortable economy or budget class seats trying to catch a few winks before I get sucked into the dreaded customer meetings or work on the other side. Having worked in not-so-well-to-do companies, I have never had the luxury of traveling a day in advance to recuperate or travel anything better than the "cheapest seat on the cheapest possible airline at the last available minute to the destination".

Anyway, all this misery has taught me that it is vital to be able to sleep on an airplane. The worst I can do on the other side of my journey is doze off in an important meeting or presentation. Over the period of last several years, I have slowly and steadily improvised and figured out ways to catch up on those precious winks. While many well-to-do business travelers insist on dressing up while traveling, I am completely against it. Formal clothes aren't comfortable enough to sleep on an economy or lower class seat. If you insist on dressing up for your journey, I am mighty sure you are the upper class snob. Period.

So how do you get the precious sleep? Here is Girish's guide to airline sleeping:

1. Dress as comfortably as possible. As a guy, I have gone down to wearing extremely comfortable lounge pants, a t-shirt and a hoodie (or sweater).
2. No accessories, no wallets, even specs go into the cabin baggage. Wear removable shoes with socks.
3. Take a window seat so that you are not obligated to get up to let go off any passengers for their bio-breaks. You go in there and stay there till you have to get up. No one else can bother you.
4. Wear a balaclava or a knit cap on your head such that it can be pulled down to cover your eyes and ears when sleeping. Not only does it help you to keep warm but it also forces you to sleep (you can't open your eyes if the cap's fabric is on them).
5. Carry a medical face-mask to cover your nose and mouth. Not only does it provide some level of protection from the perennial germs lurking in the aircraft, but also it helps you to sleep (by not drying up your mouth and face).
6. Finally, the only thing you do once you get inside the airplane is - sleep. That's it. Wear your seat belt and sleep. No reading magazines, no watching television, no chit-chatting with neighbors. And no caffeine since 2 hours before your flight. Don't wait for the flight to taxi/ take-off/ announce random weather news or duty-free items. When food shall be served, the stewards will wake you up.

But if you travel higher classes, kindly ignore my advise and enjoy your flight. Good night. 

Overwork from Home

In the decade+ years of work that I have put in my life, I have hardly ever worked from home. I have supported remotely, worked at a customer's place but have generally never been away from my colleagues working alone from a place of residence.

For some reason, I had to do that for a week last month, and it was a stressful experience. Now let me qualify first. We are a very lean organization. Absolutely everyone of us is over worked. So the physical location doesn't really matter as everyone has tonnes of action items and deliverables pending. My management is not into micro-managing us and nor do I micro-manage the people I am responsible for.

Anyway, there is this unknown pressure on me (guilt maybe) that I have to over deliver and be more productive if I am at home. All the 5 days I put in more than 12 hours of work a day (skipping meals) and starting at 07:00 AM in the morning cause I was working across time zones. The entire experience has left me exhausted and I dread working from home again.

Being at a workplace, you take breaks, you chit-chat with colleagues and generally have a lower stress level than being all by yourself. I can only imagine how people pull-off work from homes this regularly.

Lame reasons

So I managed to disappear for more than 5 months from blogging last year. Besides the usual excuses of - lazy, no mood, no time, writer's block, blah blah - one of the major reasons why I stopped blogging was - Windows Live Writer.

As ironic as it may seem, my favorite tool to write blogs was the reason I couldn't write them anymore. Windows Live Writer is not available for Windows 10, and there apparently are no plans from Microsoft to continue the product. There were rumors that Microsoft would open-source it. But I haven't read anything new. This happens to be a repeat of the emotions I went through when Google pulled the plug on the Google Reader.

Anyway since the beginning of this year, I have started writing into the online composing option of Blogger, and this is the result. So not much difference for you, but some learning curve for me.

In the short 10 years that I have been using Software in my daily life 4 products have died on me:

Microsoft Money - I replaced it with GnuCash
Google Reader - I replaced it with Feedly
Windows Live Writer - I replaced it with the Blogger online compose option
TrueCrypt - Haven't found a reliable replacement yet

I am sure there will be a lot many more deaths in years to come. Learning never stops!

Exercise vs. Diet

Just like everyone else out there struggling with their weight, I had this question bothering me for close to a decade. Eventually a few years ago, I sorta figured out that improper eating has a lot more detrimental impact on your weight than proper exercising can undo it.

Simply put, it is easy to lose weight by proper eating and no exercising, but it is very very difficult (or impossible) to lose weight by proper exercising and improper eating. As an Engineer, I consider this as a very simplistic - Input - Output = Excess Weight problem. If your calorie intake is more than your daily calorie requirement, then you simply end up gaining weight (the excess calories get stored in there). And you can't really burn that much calories off by just exercising, unless you are a full-time athlete or a person who does extremely strenuous physical work all day.

I came across this video that explains this simple concept beautifully, and I thought it's worth sharing:

Anyway, for all you diet skeptics out there, who will be prompt to point out that one friend who is very lean and eats a lot, I just have to say this: not all bodies are equally efficient. Some of us are blessed with a super awesome metabolism, that manages to convert each and every calorie consumed, into a calorie that can be used (100 calories in = 100 calories that can be used by the body). These some of us have a natural tendency to grow fat if we don't take care of our diets.

The lean over-eating people are blessed with bad metabolism. They can eat to their heart's content, but their bodies can't convert all those consumed calories into useful ones. Though we can be envious of them, we have to live with the fact that our bodies are just very efficient. Had we been cars, people would have loved us for our fuel efficiency.

And to end this blog post, I would like you to visit this link, where they have visually shown how 200 Calories of a few food items look like. See. Ruminate.

Fall from grace

I have had a carry-on bag from a certain company (let's call it (S)) since 2004. It's quite worn out now, but it stood the test of time and traveled with me absolutely everywhere I went for more than a decade. I loved it a lot and decided that when I retire it, I would go with a (S) again. So, last year, I got a replacement (S). This new one (though quite expensive for my pay-scale!) didn't last me even the first trip. The wheels are all wobbly and it is very difficult to drag around on airport carpets.

However, I can understand one-off products can have defects and I forgave (S). I needed a new back-pack and I decided to go again with a (S). This laptop back-pack gave away yesterday. The handle tore less than a year of using it. Now, I am very disappointed.

I don't think it is appropriate for me to shame the brand. I am sure they have millions of other satisfied customers (like I was before) and me getting 2 defective products back-to-back is just my bad luck.

However, I just feel that as a company, you work hard to build your reputation. And then you deliver on it (the way they did with the first bag that I bought back in 2004). But later, cost pressures and other strategic initiatives come in the way of delivering your core brand promise. And you start cutting corners. May be by low cost manufacturing or by reducing the steps in your quality assurance process. Whatever is the case, once a customer is disappointed, you lose them forever. I probably won't give them a 3rd chance with my hard earned money.

Phone calling etiquette

We have reached a point in human evolution where the phone has become an integral part of our life (or may I say body?!!) and the primary function of the phone is no longer calling. It's web messaging (Whatsapp, Viber, Skype, WeChat or whatever you fancy!)

We have reached a stage where even calling a friend up, requires you to first check their availability on their favorite web messenger and then scheduling and re-scheduling multiple number of times - the innocuously simple act of voice chatting with your best buddy.

I have been wanting to call this very close set of my friends for a while (6 months!) and we just can't seem to make time. Never in my life has this happened before. In the beginning of the 21st century, you just randomly called your friends and see if they are free (It sounded like - "Ring, ring" "Hey! Wassup? How's life? You free to gossip?" - and then we went on and on and on!). If not, you just call them again. So simple! Now the more connected we are virtually, the less we talk to each other.

Sigh! Technology, you were supposed to be an enabler not a dis-abler!

Being Nice

You are nice because you can't be evil.

Being nice is thus more of an intrinsic thing. So, when the people who you are nice to, do not acknowledge your being nice, then don't blame them. Being nice is a completely selfish intention. However altruistic it may be. You are either nice because you can't be bad, or you are just too bothered about what the society thinks of you. Either way, the recipient of your nicety has no business returning your favor.

So next time if you are unhappy with a person because he or she didn't bother to be nice back to you because you were nice to them - remember this advice.