Reading

I have been able to salvage my reading habit a bit this month after long time. I would consider I do have a decent appetite for reading books. My interests mostly reside in non-fiction and court room drama occasionally spilling onto other genres as well. I will give a list of some of the works I enjoyed towards the end of this point.

The reason and timing for this post couldnt have been better. I have always been a fan of John Grisham's works. Being a lawyer, almost all of his books I have read till now are court room dramas. What attracted me to his works are usually his theme - a typically-broke lawyer "the underdog" takes on a mighty and corrupt business and exposes its corruption in a court. The honest win and the corrupt loose. This somewhat pro-underdog or liberal theme of his works coupled with my socialist sympathy and capitalistic apathy to some extent have always made reading his work very exciting and satisfying.

Finished his book "The Appeal" yesterday after a week -- call it coincidence, the timing could not have been better. It was deviating a bit from his usual theme and it could not have come at a more opportune time when big wigs like AIG etc are bringing the economy to its knees, wasting tax payers dollars, leaving a still-unborn generation with himalayan debts and breaking innocent families' setups. What boiled my temper more was some AIG big heads calling it quits because they cant get bonuses. If millions of people loose jobs for no fault of theirs, forgoing bonus is nothing compared to what these mess-creaters actually owe to the society. Anyways, I can go on ranting on these. Back to my book, its a good read.

Recommendation from what I have read -

1. John Grisham - RainMaker (the best of all), The last Juror, Firm, The partner, The Broker, The Appeal.


2. Jurassic Park - The book by Michael Crichton.


3. Jefferey Archer - First Among Equals, A matter of Honor. (lot of other books are literally fashioned after his Kane and Abel and hence stopped reading him after that).


4. Made in Japan - Akio Morita - Non Fiction


5. All Harry Potter books - 4 and 5 will be bit boring but you have to go through it to enjoy 6 and 7. Seven was amazing to say the least.
   

If you are interested in Tamil, here are is my all time favorite - "Naan Krishnadeva Rayan" - by RKRangarajan. Kalki's works are breath taking as well. Definitely recommend his short stories and "Parthiban Kanavu" (presented by my friend Venky for my wedding). Havent yet gotten to his magnum opus "Sivakamiyin Sabadam".

I asked for my 2.5yr old to pose for a picture for this post. He is not that interested in posing for a camera. When I asked him to sit here, do this etc etc, he let out a sigh and said in his baby-ish accent "paduththal..paduththal" - a term, meaning trouble, that sometimes his maternal grandma uses to refer him as when he creates trouble. It was one cute timely remark.

Clarifying Leadership

Right from the often-dirty grounds of national politics to the closed conference rooms of private companies, "leadership", "leader" are a couple of terms that I found getting abused pretty frequently and obscenely. The most common misconception of this term comes when the speaker should actually be using the word "manager" or "boss" instead of these terms.

Leadership is an innate quality. Leaders are born. Its not an acquired trait. I have seen some folks who even though possessing this quality couldnt express it (society is to be blamed here) out of integrity or other good qualities holding them from doing so. A leader should be inspiring, championing passionately without conflict of interest or at least, not giving into self-interest when it comes in the way. (S)he should be magnanimous, leading by example and not just by preaching alone. Should be able to get to the level of their team and be one of them. Should be able to stand up to their team members and shield them when all they have done is follow his/her orders. In short, a team member in the presence of a leader feels energetic, enthusiastic and eager to achieve or do stuffs - everyone feels the synergy and optimism.

Leaders are not produced by B-schools. B-schools produce managers - really smart people, I admit, who can work their way through corporate culture and make lot of money. Management skill is an acquired trait. I have seen uninspiring people become good managers by observing or even mimicing what fellow managers do. Getting the job done and producing results more often takes precedence over inspiration, integrity, synergy and conscience. One can even get the title of a "great manager" by pitting one's sub-ordiates against each other and getting things done from both sides by maintaining the pressure. In the presence of a "pure" manager, a team player often feels conscious, defensive and sometimes even stressed out. The essence of words like "synergy" and "team spirit" often heard in such groups stops with lips and ears and doesnt get through to the heart and soul.

No complaints from my side - I have been in teams under good leadership (touchwood!!). While its great and gratifying to have a leader, its often difficult being a leader. Uneasy lies the head...you know that.

Pic take with my son's toys - intended to show a leader and couple of followers. The one noticeable thing is the vignetting around the edges when taken at 200mm.

Life

Recently came across an interesting dialogue in the movie "Hitch" - Life is not about the number of breaths you take, its about the moments that take your breath away.

Thought of putting together my own list and heres what popped up in my mind for now.

- When I first held my son in my hands just minutes after his birth in the midnight of what was the longest day of my life.
- Sneaking on my son from behind his toddler classroom door with him sitting cross-legged on the floor during a meditation class with an expression that was inscrutably nonchalant.
- When I was tying the thaali around my bride. Yup, I never thought I would feel the way I felt back then.
- During take off of my first airplane flight from Bangalore.

Of course, there are events in life that take your breath away in an ironic or sarcastic fashion. Many of them leave you wondering "OMG, are you serious ??".
- the uninteresting time logging web interface in my office, in which when you click logout, it never fails to ask you "Are you sure you want to log out ?". I dont know what other interesting tasks that the creators thought a user would do with a lame interface. Of course yes, log me out and keep quiet.

Nature has had its share when it comes to taking to taking my breath away. In fact, its a long list by itself - The Himalayan North of India, Konkan coast seen through the konkan railway, Grand Canyons, Temperate Rain Forests of Seattle to mention a few.

Today's picture is something I wanted to capture ever since I got my DSLR. Its that of a humming bird. In fact, this one was trusting me so much that I was literally within 5 feet of it while I took this shot. Taken with my 55-200mm VR at 200mm. Its still lurking around and one day will try to get it while flapping its wings near a flower. A hummer never fails to take my breath away. The pictured one hardly 4 inches long !!! Click on the pic to see a bigger picture.

Also, starting from this post, I have changed my trite (c) message in the pic to something novel and different.

Devil and Deep Sea

The previous century has witnessed the stand-off between two different and principally opposed forms of social set up - communism and capitalism. People my age and older are today "blessed" with the chance of viewing the demise of both - communism with fall of Russia and Capitalism with the economic downturn now - with the effects of latter much more widespread and devastating. For argument sake, you can call me either (a) a communist who accepts that communism wont work, OR (b) a capitalist who feels agony and fury when the so-called "fittest" scumbag more often takes advantage of the "principled and moral" mortal.

For (a) - Communism - "from each according to his capacity, to each according to his need" - In hindsight, Marx seems to be a really naive person to have actually believed that every human being will be truthful and honest enough to the society to give his best and at the same time, humble and content enough not to crave for more than what he needs for a decent living. Theoritically its not impossible, but then every one of us have to be a mahatma.

For (b) - Capitalism - we have the dog-eat-dog situation. The underdogs are always sacrificed. Not much different from the red regime's propaganda is this one from the west that made its citizens believe that their government is always going to be "for the people". Most ordinary citizens of western world fight for their living , earn a living. Some might put some of their earned dough back into the system (read investment) in the hope of getting more dough. All of them give some dough to the government to help them in common ways in present and for their future benefits (read taxes, public facilities, social security). A select class of the ordinary citizens gain extra-ordinary insight into the system and device ways to increase their share of dough by "taking" from others (read structured investment vehicles, financial schemes etc etc). When this exclusive extraordinary class has become filthy rich and the amount of "taking" has reached unsustainable levels, the system falters. Now the exclusive class, having set aside more than its share of dough for its rainy day, tells government it has not done anything illegal and that it does not have any dough it took from people left out to be given back to them. Now the ordinary class of citizens who "invested" have lost their bet. Not only that, with the exclusive class using its power and influence, makes the government "bail them out" with, guess what, the dough that ordinary citizens paid through their taxes. This is what is left out of the three groups - the exclusive class gets to keep its bounty as it dint do anything illegal, the ordinary class that invested lost it share of dough to the exclusive class but got some back from government as part of bailout, the ordinary class that dint invest probably went through hardships like layoff, foreclosure etc and later got some dough from government. But the dough that the government gave the latter two is actually a debt written against a generation that has not even conceived and will not be conceived for years to come.

So, whats the good way out. The answer is none - as long as we, as a society, keep disrespecting the rules and killing the spirit of the setup we created in the first place to help ourselves live an orderly life.

Thats the bottom line - as I indicated in one of my earlier posts, any system we conceive comes from a set of human thoughts (brains) and logically, there exists another set of human thoughts(brains) that can find loop holes or can break the system if it decides to. Probably instead of creating new systems and experimenting them at the expense of human peace, for once, we can try respecting the system we have and may be, we can co-exist peacefully with principally opposed setups. But then, this is again thought of one human brain which can be... (you fill up the rest).

The post can also be titled "Heaven and Wonderland". Depends on how you look at it.

Today's post was one taken during our visit to NY. It shows the New York Stock Exchange building on Wall Street. A symbol of economic activity and economic pulse of the country. Even though today's post is about society in general, it all boils down to money and how the fruits of labor are shared or rather, unshared and hence the relevance to today's post. Taken with Canon A70 P&S, one can vividly notice the walls and floor that appear to be curved rather than straight. This effect, called Fish-Eye effect, was because of a wide-angle lens add-on that offered a 0.45x zoom out. Yup,..call me crazy.. I had purchased an Opteka wideangle and telephoto addons to my P&S.

Acceptance..

Any one who had even a remote connection to India, emotionally, should have had an exciting time during this year's Oscar presentation. I do agree that its debatable as to how much an amount of "India" pride one can exude for being recognized for a movie that highlights the darker side of India. But what is indisputable is the recognition given to A. R. Rahman for his achievements in Music. A long time over due for a real talent that was just kept waiting because none of his work came with "released in hollywood" stamp so far. Personally I think there are far better scores he has come up with than the music in "Slumdog millionairre". For starters, think of his debut "Roja".

Anyways, related to that, recently my mother-in-law forwarded me an email that probed the ancestry of A. R. Rahman. Till date, I know he was a hindu-converted-muslim by faith. But I was amazed as I read that article. He was a malayalee native, that too a palghat brahmin by birth, married to a born-muslim, his in-laws are gujarathi and malayalee. I can see the usual narrow boundaries that haunt India diaspora like caste, religion, regionality etc. getting shattered in this single individual's life. Probably that may explain the far reaching effect of his music genius and his unquestioned acceptance all over India, and now the world --> Bottomline, in my opinion, every Indian feels there is some aspect of themselves in A. R. Rahman., that makes them get past those narrow boundaries I mentioned and appreciate him for his talent and genius.

I couldnt help but to extend the same logic to an even bigger celebrity - Barack Obama. I and my wife were truly carried away by his clarity and composure during the campaign days. Thinking about it, we can see Obama too had a "global-ness" about him just like the "indian-ness" that ARR embodied, which could partly explain the acceptance that Obama enjoys not only at home but all over the world ( Iran, Russia included). Get a load of this --> a US citizen by birth, white mother, black father, raised by white grandmother ( you have covered two major groups in US), has a muslim african father and a muslim middlename (most of mideast and africa covered), very literate, elite and composed (got the votes of people like me), middle-class bred, disciplined family man (another major plus point), christian by faith (covered the bible belt to some extent), "an atypical non-condescending American president" (read "non-W-like" and, of course, whole world likes that). I can see there is something for everyone to identify with in the Obama persona. Probably such a figure was long time due and is needed in my opinion, to get humanity to its senses. I only wish Obama lives up to this repute and succeeds in his efforts. Otherwise, with the way humanity is increasingly glorifying the petty differences among its members, it would be very difficult at a later date to come up with a leader-soul which has a piece in him/her for everybody to identify with.

Just like the multi-faced personae discussed above, today's pic is that of a colorful fireworks display. For a change, this was taken with my good-ole, always reliable Canon Powershot A70 P&S, my first digital camera. The pic was taken during the 2004 July 4th fireworks at La Jolla Cove when we went there as a bachelor gang with one of the aims being to test my newly acquired digicam. The exposure is a good 4seconds with the camera on a tripod. Even today this photo finds its place in our "Folder of Fame" that we created to commend ourselves back then on our ability to shoot with P&S creatively :-)

Veedu ....

The title of the post means "Home" - and while I write this post, I am reminded of an old tamil movie I saw under the same title long back which portrays the struggle a middle class Indian family undergoes to get their own home built. Not much different from that are the hurdles a renter/tenant undergoes.

I, for a change, am in both sides of the game and much like a "thavil" or mirudangam, is getting the short end of both sides as of this post's date. Lets see if either of them improve in the coming days.

Thanks to financial world partly, housing prices and foreclosures are hitting record numbers in the bad direction and an whiplash effect of that is increasing rents for rental homes. My apartment management can be credited with the most lackluster customer service of its kind.
The first thing we learned is the "screen saver" idea - The real apartment you get is nowhere close to the model apartment they show during site tour. Of course, I am not comparing the furnishings. But the closet doors- shouldnt they be same or similar. Lease renewal this time around brought to light a hare-brained rule that our property management had - You got to have a renter's insurance with both the lesse's names in it - My insurance agent went dumbfounded when I told him this. If you need all insured names in auto insurance, understandable. But why for a renter's insurance. Does a brush fire or a thief care to affect only portion of the property where a insured renter lives ? or makes sure if both are insured ?

Another one, yet to be solved is I got a water consumption utility bill for the month of December which stated I used ~900 gallons of hot water. Heres the joke, we were not even in the country during that billing period. And add fuel to the fire, that amount averages about 66% of our regular monthly consumption for the past 2 years. What hit me was is it just a one time misreporting or has this leak been happening for past 2 years. As usual, our best-tenant-service-award-winning management, in its usual red tape style, has taken up this issue with the utility company. So many layers of useless outsourcing, no wonder this country is going down the drain. And we are yet to receive a response from them. In the mean time, they have credited that controversial bill amount to our recent bill. But thats not the end. We need an answer. Probably should take it up with local celebrity Micheal Turko or somebody if time permits.

Dont get me started on the other side of the game. Me as a owner of a home. The wish list there is even long. Let me vent that out in a different post someday.

Attached picture was taken with my new Nikon 55-200mm AFS DX VR lens that I bought over eBay. Amazing gizmo. The aperture opens wide enough that my shutter times are now in 1/1000ths of a second outdoors. The picture shows one of our neighbourhood homes from a park atop a canyon.