4 February 2024

“Lucky” intersection point!!

After quite some badgering from Sharmila and a threat from DJPJ that if I did not upgrade my good old, much shattered iPhone 11 by this weekend, they were going to order one for me, I finally caved in and went to the Apple store with Sharmila. Got a new iPhone 15. Spent quite some time debating what color phone to choose. Picked my favorite one. Then promptly got a cover (hopefully less screen shattering) to completely hide the phone color. Go figure!!

Anyways, after all that, Sharmila and I went over to the bar next door in The Hotel. It was pretty empty. Ordered my Old Fashioned and then a salmon dinner.

I had not noticed that a gentleman had come and sat in a chair not too far from me. When Karmen went to him, he said – “I will have the same order as him”.

I looked at him. A young gentleman with head clean shaven and face with trimmed beard. I joked – “I like your hair style. I wonder why?”

We both laughed as he said “Rajib, you are always good with your one liners!”

WAIT!! WHAT?

And then I realized that it was Lucky Gilja!! Remember how I mentioned his head was shaven and he had beard? Well, last time Sharmila and I met him – four years back – it was the other way round! He had a headful of hair and a clean shaven face!!

We used to work together in the same PE firm a few years back. There is an interesting story about how I met him in an elevator and found out he grew up a hop, skip and jump from where I was living at that time!!

Lucky was in town for work and did not realize that we had changed homes and now live a walking distance from he was staying!!

We had a great evening!

Officially, the first photo taken on my new iPhone was by Karmen. “Lucky” omen, I say!!

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2 February 2024

Book Review: Uncommon Grounds by Mark Pendergrast

With the new coffeemaker at home, I am trying to learn the fine art of making different kinds of coffee, There is a lot of runway left in that learning. Wanted to pick up some of the theory and history behind coffee. (You might remember my three year journey into gins). I think it was Stephen Leitner who had pointed me to this book “Uncommon Grounds”.

Fascinating book. If not anything else, it showed how little I knew about coffee. Some of the highlights of the learnings include:

1. Coffee originated from the ancient land of Abyssinia (now Ethiopia). We are not sure when though.
2. Roasting of beans is relatively new – sometime in the fifteenth century
3. Like gin in England, alcohol in general in the USA, coffee all over the world has a rich history of becoming popular only to be blamed for a lot of social ills and then getting banned. Which was usually followed by periods of surreptitious drinking and smuggling.
4. Growing up in India, I was aware of the coffee plantations in the south. What I was not aware of was that coffee made it to India with a Muslim pilgrim taping seven seeds to his stomach and smuggling them to south India during a “prohibition” period in the middle east.
5. Europeans were the ones to start adding milk to coffee while the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern folks still drink their coffee straight. It is theorized that this is because Europeans can tolerate milk while the folks in the Middle East and Mediterranean areas tend to be lactose intolerant.
6. The folks to adopt coffee last – the Scandinavians – ironically are the ones with highest per capita coffee consumption today.

Much of the book is dedicated to detailing how colonialism and slavery were intertwined and abetted by the coffee producing countries. Other than putting forward how unfairly the slaves and locals were treated by the colonials for profit, it also details some interesting history of the Cold War where USA and the CIA got deeply involved in the local politics of Latin American countries thru coffee economics (to stave off the fear of communism taking over).

Above all, when it comes to America, this book is an ultimate treatise on how consumer marketing evolved in the USA. Fascinating history of false claims, brilliant packaging, provocative ads, adoption of the practice of TV sponsorship, all the way to congressional hearings to peddle more of the black aromatic beans!

Another interesting fact: The total value of coffee traded today is larger than the GDP of over half the countries in the UN!!

While this has done nothing to improve my cappuccino foaming skills, I strangely feel smug while drinking a cup of coffee.

Enjoyable read!

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1 February 2024

An uncommon lady!

Pilar and I last worked together about 10 years back and I think that was the last time I had seen her. After that, we had kept up thru phone calls. I give her a lot of credit for initiating phone calls to discuss stuff (mostly work related) and that meant I was able to follow her life journey throughout the years. (We lost our dads within a few days of each other)

We missed each other by a whisker in Miami last week. Remember the art show in Brickell Sharmila and I went to? Apparently she was there too with her friends! She is a painter herself and follows Sharmila, I believe, in social media. This week, we got a chance to meet in Atlanta since she was here for work.

That gave me a chance to sit down with her to learn the fascinating journey of her life. She has lived and worked in three different continents and has one of the most in depth understanding of different work and social cultures. I was impressed with her grit in dealing with multiple personal and life tragedies she has had to deal with (two of which were life threatening).

But the best part was – and Sumana, you might want to listen to this part – how well rounded she is. We talked about various aspects of our life – physical health, mental health, spirituality, family, work… in fact all the aspects of Level 10 life. I was captivated by how she takes intentional actions to keep up with all those facets of our being. That makes her a very uncommon lady in my books.

Pilar Bide, we have a lot to learn from you! May your tribe increase!!

You still owe me a crisp answer to the tombstone question though 🙂

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