4 February
2017
4 February
2017
An adventurous spirit!
How do you teach Project Management for Supply Chain Management in a novel way? Dr. Javadpour’s approach was surely unique. She told her students that they were going to help a needy old couple by breaking down their bathroom and rebuild it and make it handicapped friendly. That started a 6 week long intense planning phase where the students had to do everything – from raising funds to understanding what construction was all about and then on the final day they reconstructed the bathroom in 6 hours flat from grounds up! The students were so taken in by the challenge of the project management of a real life project that most of them were working early morning to late night without being asked to. To the point that their other professors had to ask Roya what was she up to!! Apparently, she has offered that course 12 times in all (in CalPoly) and has been nationally recognized.
That was how our conversation started when I finally managed to meet up with her last week. First, she had to plough thru 2 hours of traffic. I gave her a way out but she insisted on meeting. We missed each other the last few times we tried. Roya and I worked in the same team in a supply chain company and frankly I cannot even remember when I saw her last – 2001?? After she left, I again got in touch with her thru FB much later.
And from her occasional posts, I realized that she followed an interesting and very adventurous life. I would call her to wish her a happy birthday and I would realize that she was in Vietnam or Thailand or Turkey and so on. In 2012, I suddenly got a message from her that she would be in India with a few of her students and wanted to know what should be visiting while there.
What I learnt last week was very interesting. Roya goes to all sorts of exciting places and explores them without much of planning from before hand. (I know, she is the one who was recognized nationally for her project management class 🙂 ). She buys one way ticket to a country and goes around exploring. During that process she crosses country boundaries and one fine day, when she thinks she has had enough, she buys a ticket to return. Another method I found was she would buy a one way ticket to country A and then a return ticket from country B without any prior plans of figuring out how to go from country A to country B.
I remember one of those birthday calls, she let me know that she could not get into Greece from Turkey (some visa related issues), so was trying to figure out How to return home!!
“So, what were you doing in India?”, I asked.
“Oh! We went to the Himalayas”.
“Trekking?”, I continued.
“No. We were there to build septic tanks and showers for a small village up in the mountains”.
I have to say – I was pretty impressed. I go to India four times a year and never ever have I attempted to build a septic tank!! 🙂
With the vast life experiences she has gained, I had to ask my inevitable question –
“So, what is the life lesson I can learn from you?”.
She thought for a second and said – “Enjoy the journey. Destinations are overrated. Life is all about the journeys to those destinations.”
Thank you Roya, for a wonderful evening. And thank you for taking the pains of tolerating two hours of traffic on 405.
4 February
2017
Qawwali of the evening – “Bhar do Jholi”
The original proponent of this qawwali were the Sabri brothers. Today, I was listening to the version by Amjad Sabri (son of the younger Sabri brothers). The poem was penned by Purnam Allahabadi. Born originally in India in Allahabad as Mohammad Musa, he later migrated to Pakistan after the partition.
“Jholi” refers to the bag that a beggar carries to collect alms.
“Bhar do jholi meri ya Muhammad
Laut kar main na jaaoonga khaali
Tumhaare aastane se zamaana kya naheen paata
Koi bhi dar se khaali maangne waala naheen jaata”
Roughly translated (please feel free to offer better suggestions – this is not my mother tongue)
“Fill my bag, O Muhammad
I will not go back empty-handed
What does the world not receive at your doorstep
No one who comes asking at your door leaves empty-handed”
4 February
2017
Too funny!!!
4 February
2017
From the bartender’s corner – Gin #3: Dutch Courage
There is a very interesting story behind the name. First of all “Dutch courage” is an English phrase which means “strength or confidence gained from drinking alcohol”. The story goes that the during the Thirty Years War (early half of the seventeenth century) – one of the most devastating wars in Europe – the English soldiers were impressed by the bravery-inducing effects (both by warming the bodies in cold weather and numbing the nerves) of genever (predecessor of gin) on Dutch soldiers and gave the drink the name “Dutch Courage”.
Dutch Courage Gin (which is not genever or Old Tom style but the traditional London dry style) was started by Fred Van Zuidam more than 40 years back near Baarle-Hertog which is on the south side of Netherlands – very close to the border of Belgium. In fact, very close to the Flanders area which is acknowledged to be the birthplace of gin.
One of the coolest facts about Zuidam’s distillery is that his is the only distillery in the world that still uses windmills to mill the grains!! The grain of choice is barley. Unlike most London Dry gins – however, like many other gins from the Netherlands, this gin too is barrel aged. And because of that, to me at least, it was closer to an Old Tom than a modern gin.
The botanicals include the staple components – juniper (interestingly, from Italy), coriander and angelica. On top of that, it has orange, lemon, licorice root, cardamom pods, vanilla and iris root. The nose is anything but simple – due to the barrel aging and the botanicals and the flavor is distinctly citrusy. The juniper comes thru much later. The finish is a little bittersweet.
I tried on the rocks and with Indian Tonic water. The latter was more enjoyable.
2 February
2017
LIDAR – if you were ever afraid to ask about it!!!
First there was the world. Then the dinosaurs came. From there, somehow we meandered into film cameras. Then on to digital cameras. And then came LIDAR. And today LIDAR itself – with breakthrough innovations in Geiger, Single Photon, Bathymetric and such technologies – is poised for another technological revolution.
Valerie King, the Managing Editor of POB (Point of Beginning) has done an excellent job of explaining LIDAR and its potential in this article. The article is remarkable in its depth and breadth without making it too detailed or too surface skimming.
You can read it for yourself here: The Latest in LIDAR
P.S. I am part of the same team as the Mr. Meade quoted here extensively and in our trips to customers and partners together, he often tries to explain all these innovations to me. And I usually retaliate by asking him a lot of inconsequential trivia 🙂
2 February
2017
One more shot from last evening’s run.
2 February
2017
That was my running track yesterday…
Like I mentioned in my previous post, I had an interesting running track. On my left was a sharp drop of 100 feet in to the beach below. On my right was the railway track. Ever so often one of those double decker Caltrain trains would speed by. And in between the edge of the cliff and the railway track was enough space – filled with stones to stabilize the tracks – for me to run along.
The stones were a little painful. But the constant watch out for an approaching train and the staying safely away from the sheer drop was enough to keep the mind focused away from the pain. Just when I was wondering how stupid the whole idea might have been, I came across another runner from the other side.
She must have been as relieved to see me as was I. She spontaneously high fived me as we stepped aside a little to make space for each other. One of those “runner” highs, no doubt. That said, I shall try to keep these kind of runs to a minimum.
2 February
2017
5K by Solana Beach
It was going to be a long drive from San Diego to Long Beach, CA. A two hour drive is not normally long – but then you have to adjust for another twelve hours because of a parking lot in southern California fondly referred to as Highway 405 🙂
I knew what was going to delay me further. I cannot drive up the coast without taking breaks to take in the beauty of the ocean. And knowing me, if I could find myself a strip of land along the ocean, I was going to put in a run.
When I left the parking lot in San Diego, Anand was kind enough to hold my car back as I ran to a hotel restroom to change into running clothes. And then dropped him at the airport and started the long drive.
Barely half an hour later, GPS let me know that there was an accident in front of me and traffic was backing up. That was all the excuse I really needed. Exited the highway and headed west and soon came upon Solana Beach.
Beautiful (albeit cloudy) views from the top of 100 feet sharp cliffs. And there was enough space between the railway track that ran along the cliffs and the edge of the cliff to squeeze in a 5K run!!
31 January
2017
Sometimes, he surprises me by listening to me!!!
Sometimes he might even listen to me!!
This time during my India trip, when the whole family had gone to Ibiza resort, my dad and I had a rather interesting debate about something. The topic was of money. He is always worried about spending money himself because he wants to leave that money for his grandchildren. I tried my level best to make a case that it is a totally futile exercise.
From his point of view, given his upbringing, he will forego a lot of things if it meant that would buy financial stability for his kids and grandkids. My argument was that there is no objective definition of “stability”. By many people’s definition, he has comfortably pushed his three kids and their families past that line. Now they need to maintain and improve from there.
After a long pause, he asked me if I will make sure my brother and sister and their families are looked after, after he and mom pass away. I did not answer such a silly question directly – but told him that there is no way I can give them something that only he has the ability to give.
Confused, he asked “What do I have that you do not have?”.
“Your time”, I had said.
“Meaning?”
And that is when I tried to impress upon him that my brother, sister, myself – we can all work hard and make sure we are all taken care of. We can earn more money, worldly stuff etc etc. for our kids. But as much as we jump and down, we can never give them a grandfather’s time that only he can give.
I had encouraged him to think about spending a little money and hire a car to go visit my brother’s family in Kolkata. It is an hour and half trip – two hours at most. Over a weekend the time the two grandkids would get are what memories will be made of for them long after he is gone.
Not sure how we ended up the whole discussion. In fact, I had forgotten about it completely. Then the other day – about a month after that discussion – I got a call from my brother that mom has a new physical issue and she needed to visit a doctor in Kolkata. He was going to get her checked and drop her back. Well, that was the plan. Till dad said – he would go too and spend a couple of days with my brother’s family. “Bachchu boley gechhilo”. (I guess he remembered our discussions).
For the next couple of days, I kept getting incessant IMO calls (that is a free app used for video calls – popular outside US I think) from my nephews with all sorts of stories. Once they had called up just to let me know that “Dadu Google ke Googly bolechhe” (I guess my dad pronounced Google as ‘Googly’).
I asked them to send some snapshots of them with my dad. And this is what I got.
Looks like the last India trip is a gift that is still giving. 