15 January 2019

Book Review: “How not to be my Patient”

This year, during my annual physicals, my doctor – Dr. Jarrett – who has been looking after my health for nearly 10 years, suggested I read a book called “How Not To Become My Patient”. I remember I was asking Dr. Jarrett about not just my physical health – which we obviosuly go thru in every annual physicals – but also about how to keep my brain and memory active. As well as focus on having a full life instead of a longer life – now that I am 52 already.

Written by the leading oncologist as well as specialist in palliative care in the renowned Mayo Clinic, Dr. Creado, basically deals with three large topics in this book. The first segment of the book is about what you should be aware of as a patient about doctors and hospitals. That was not so interesting, frankly, to me. The third segment deals with how you cope when you are diagnosed with a life-ending ailment. That part did not interest me either. But I am keeping this book because I think once some doctor some day has that “I am sorry but you have…. and you have … days to live” discussion with me, I might want to read those chapters more thoroughly.

What is very interesting though is the second segment of the book where Dr. Creadon deals with a variety of topics – sleeping, exercises, prayers, time management, stress management, being under the sun, nutrition fads and so on. This was the most important part for me, as of this read. It is focused more on the prevention aspect than the cure aspect.

If it interests you to learn about what you can do to potentially have a higher quality life – specially in the latter half of your life, this might be an interesting read!

Category: Books | LEAVE A COMMENT
7 January 2019

What I find fascinating about India…

… it has the most impatient folks I have ever seen in the whole world. The plane barely touched the ground and everybody got up to get their stuff from the bins when the plane was still moving. The plane was yet to start boarding and everybody had crowded out the gate. A mere ten minute delay in the flight and everybody was trashing the airlines.

That is the not the fascinating part.

The fascinating part is that it is also the country that has given us yoga, breathing techniques, meditation and all those stuff designed to manage stress 🙂

Category: Vacations | 1 Comment on What I find fascinating about India…
7 January 2019

Two colleagues from the past…

Instead of coming to Bangalore late evening to catch my flight to US in the early hours, I decided to come earlier in the afternoon. Got myself checked into a hotel in Whitefield. Also remembered that Austin used to live in the Whitefield area. I had not seen him since he left i2 in 2004. As luck would have it, Austin had time in the evening to meet, Further, he grabbed another old friend of ours – Nathan – from the good old days of our first start up experience. (Nathan and I actually got to work in two start ups together).

After leaving i2, both of them have had illustrious careers – Austin has done organic farming and then has put in a lot of time with NGOs and Foundations (like The Gates Foundation) for social causes. Nathan has stayed true to the supply chain domain all these years.

It was inevitable that we would talk about our learnings from i2 days. We were together for over three hours talking about what went well and what did not go well from those days. What was very interesting was that our learnings themselves have changed as we have grown up. Talent was a great point of discussion. We always had a very strong – and very commonly held (amongst i2-ers anyways) – view of talent in i2. Today, I realize that our views – at least for the three of us – are far more nuanced.

We further realized that things that we look back and think we should have done differently is far easier to say today. Living at that moment, we had no other data to go by and would therefore probably make the same mistakes all over again. That said, we agreed that making the same mistake twice was probably preventable. And we believe we did make same mistakes twice.

We remembered fondly some of the really outstanding colleagues that we had a chance to work with. And some who, unfortunately, are with us no more.

It was like good old times. I used to be somewhat in awe and somewhat a little scared by the sheer amount of IQ power I was surrounded by. As one of the friends we remembered had said then – “In i2, being considered average is an accomplishment”. Like those India Palace dinner meetings. I was there last evening to bring down the average IQ level at our table.

Category: Intersection Points, Vacations | LEAVE A COMMENT