Explored

We visited the Nairobi National Park. Saw a few animals – Giraffes, Baboons, Bisons / Wild Bulls, lots of deers. Unfortunately could not see any of the wild cats. I guess the lions decided to take a year end break and disappeared into the jungle. See a collection of my photos.

Giraffe at the Nairobi National Park

Went to Village Market, which had some very nice X’mas lights and a big X’mas tree. Played a round of bowling after so long I can’t remember.

Shopped in the Masai Market which happens on Saturdays at CBD [Opp. Hilton Hotel]. Wife says its much bigger and better bargaining possible. I was happy to pick up a few trinkets for my office cabin.

Feasted

After almost 4 months of it’s opening, I finally got the opportunity to go and have a meal at KFC. My tip: Skip the burger and go for the bucket instead.

Enjoyed a X’mas lunch at Osteria Del Chianti. Once more we relished the wood fire oven pizza and the Ice-cream Sundaes.

Tried the famous sugar-cane juice and maru na bhajiya at Diamond Plaza. Mumbai ki yaad aagayi. 

Consumed

My favourite two got together and created magic once more. Farhan Akthar and SRK did an awesome job on Don2. I think they are taking Indian films a step higher when it comes to action, special effects and production quality.

Not a very bag fan of Sherlock Holmes, but enjoyed the bit of mystery which the famous detective cracks in his latest – Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.

The holidays gave me ample time to complete Season 5 of Entourage. I am half-way into Season 6 now.

A brisk read and I was able to finish Creative Mischief by Dave Trott. Also started reading Steig Larsson’s The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. My blog post for books of 2011 will be online next week.

Configured

Picked up a few lessons and made some Lightroom Pre-sets for 4×6 prints, flickr exports. Installed the LR/Mogrify 2 plugin for Lightroom. Now adding watermarks and that lovely black border to selected photos becomes really easy.

Ensured I did a data backup for both the laptops. A combination of the Time Machine Capsule, Sugarsync [referral link] and Dropbox manage the important files but I also did manual backup of the iPhoto folders.

I have now activated Google Plus. So join me there as I share more of my content – writing & photographs.

This has been a lovely time and now for the first weekend of 2012, I am going to just put up my feet, sip on some beer and think about 2012: Goals, milestones and action plans.

On the weekend, wife and me were shopping for our new apartment at TACC Store. We were browsing the many colourful and rather confusing furnishing material section of the store. Due to the X’mas discounts, the store was busy and the staff was making a good effort to attend them all. We didn’t have a sales rep yet talking to us, so we kept browsing till we could get somebody to help us.

And then came the WOW! Moment. One of the handy man who was probably responsible to carry the huge materials from one end of the store to the other, STOPPED and asked us = “Is there anybody attending you? Can I ask somebody to help you?” Wow! Now that doesn’t happen very often does it?

When was the last time a cleaner or house-keeping staff at the store STOP and check if you needed assistance.

And so staring July I was back here on a new mission in a new role. It’s been about 3 weeks now and besides reading the dozens of presentation files, brief documents I also spent some time making little notes of things around me.

So here is a quick perspective on life, people and some more around me here in Nairobi.

People

The first impression you get after spending some time with most people here is that they are warm and there is a lot of courtesy. Like you never start a conversation with – Ok listen I need this report. Most often the conversation will start with a few feel good greetings, weather talk and then to business. Like this morning I was at the bank and when I walked up to the teller – she said Hi, how are you? I missed the second part of the greeting and she repeated her question. Warm service for starters I say. Sadly, a common trait is the lack of punctuality and most often you’ve got to give it 10 mins of grace time. But it doesn’t really bother an Indian, does it?

Lifestyle

Life starts real early around here. Most of the staff in my office is well settled in by 8:30AM and on good days we are done by about 5:30 – 6pm. Coffee shops and malls are shut by 9pm so you usually find them crowded during the evenings or then Sat-Sundays. Friday night is a big night – and I am told most youngsters party hard till the wee hours of the morning. Sat / Sun is for the family and lunches are popular.

Till a few months back movies came in late – but they are now released locally on time with international release dates after some big cinema buy over deal. Good for me I say. I watched my first movie here – Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara – And trust me we were not more than 20 people in a 75 seater cinema hall at a 1PM show on a Saturday. Strangely, there is no intermission.

The food courts at the mall are interesting. You just sit in the common area and waiters from all the outlets attack you with their menu and you can mix and pick from all of them. I kind of like that option – No self-service.

Technology

Early adopters. Talks for 4G launch are already being discussed in tech circles and should not be long before it comes in. Government and communication companies are investing good money in laying high-speed under-sea fibre. Oh, interestingly Macs are very popular and I have seen at least a dozen people both in my office and coffee shops use the iPad. Having said that, the IT team has promised me that my now much delayed Macbook should come in soon. Seems the supplier here has issues with stock.

Cost of living

I am not sure if I can comment too well but I noticed vegetables are expensive but most of them are fresh and there is a good variety available. Compared to what you would pay in a city like Mumbai, I think housing is affordable and you get a much more spacious accommodation in decent localities. But I am not very happy with the quality of construction and the interiors of most of the furnished apartments. So you’ve got to be picky and look around a bit. TV / Newspaper and Internet is high expense. Mobile call rates are competitive but not dirt-cheap like in India. Entertainment can get a little expensive since most often you end up eating at food courts in the malls or then good restaurants. I haven’t seen much option for nice, quick cheap meal option – like the many udipis we have back in India or even street-side food is missing. Similarly movie watching is also expensive since more often I think you see it in the mall’s multi-screen cinema hall.

That’s it for now, more experience will hopefully be blogged as we go along this journey.

Please click on the image to see full size.

The recent attraction in her little garden has been this really attractive green mirchi [chilli].

And then there are some beautiful flowers at full blossom in this lovely monsoon season. See the water droplets.

Oh, and I managed to notice some tweeters in the garden too.

Some of the lessons from the evening:

Execution matters

Great, if you’ve got a brilliant idea. But if not executed well even the most unique one will fail. So having a great idea is only the start, a dedicated execution plan is what will get you to the real goal. Reminds me of this – 1% Inspiration. 99% Perspiration.

Keep it flexible

As much as we like business plans to be firm at the same time they need to be flexible enough to change as per market scenarios, consumer expectations.

Focus on the right thing

Often businesses lose direction because they are focused more on the competition rather than keeping a tab on changing consumer preferences.

Be human

Business is all about relationships. So you could be an IITian or a college drop-out but if you don’t have the right interpersonal skills and the humility to deal with people, you probably won’t go too far.

Be passionate

Entrepreneurship is not a moment of time. It’s a path you’ve chosen to walk. If you loose passion mid-way that’s the end of the game. Watch Narayana Murthy talk about Passion.

Accept failure

Entrepreneurship is all about risk taking. If failure is not your cup of tea, start-ups are not for you.

The mantra:

Passion. Perseverance. Patience.

And I thought it also needed the 4th P – Profit.

The Economic Times -  Power of Ideas got Narayana Murthy to share some of this thoughts on entrepreneurship. My favourites are Passion & Innovation. But you can see all the videos here at the powerofideasET – YouTube Channel.

Are you a successful entrepreneur? Would love to hear some of the lessons you learned while setting up your business. Use the comments area to share your story.

#2
Wish you could put more into that SMS? Read why text messages are limited to 160 characters?

#3
Fucking (pronounced “fook-ing”) is an Austrian village located in the western Upper Austria. The village is located 33 kilometres (21 mi) north of Salzburg, four kilometres (2.5 mi) east of the German border.

We had a vote last year on whether to rename the town, but decided to keep it as it is. After all, Fucking has existed for 800 years, probably when a Mr Fuck or the Fuck family moved into the area. The ‘ing’ was added as a word for settlement.

Read More.

#4
Using Gmail? Well, you can only send out 500 messages per day. Read more about Gmail’s Limitations for sending messages.

#5
Do you know what’s a Flugelbinder? See this photo and you’ll be surprised it had to have such a difficult name.

Did you learn something new in the past few weeks? Care to share with all, put it in the comments area.

Mumbai, hold your breath
Private swimming pools with DB homes

Spotted this hoarding at one of the busy traffic junction of South Mumbai. Seriously, can our city really afford to have private swimming pools? Isn’t the recent spate of water cuts a wake up call to all of us and that too a RUDE one. considering south mumbai has so far been the least affected by water cuts. Yet, our building suffered an uplanned/unannounced water cut for more than 48 hours.

At a time when most hotels, gymkhanas and clubs are being asked to reduce water usage in their pools and gymnasiums I don’t know how and where are we going to bring in those million litres of water to fill up these “private swimming pools”.

God can bless us and solve our problems, but I think this one needs to be solved by us. Let’s do our bit to conserve and use this natural resource responsibly.

In November 2000, when I freelanced with Teens Today – an India Today publication I had the opportunity to interview Stephen Gately on his India tour to launch his solo album. If you’re interested I reproduce the same below.

 
Click on image to enlarge.

Farhan Akhtar
This is the guy who once again re-confirms my “life-wish” to make a movie someday. His ability to play so many roles (film director, actor & singer) and that too with superb performances is commendable. Firstly, I would thank him for responding to the letter I sent him a few months back after watching ‘Rock On’. Then I will discuss what does he tell himself before jumping into the unknown waters. How do you expect a film director to make his debut in a movie in which he sings the songs himself?

ShahRukh Khan
The first two guests are from the film industry but I guess they have a certain attraction. I won’t meet SRK because he is King Khan but rather because there was something he said long back and that thought has been kind of printed in my head – “I strive to do good work, money is only a byproduct.”. And would love to know the secret of his energy. He is very active and needs only 4 hours of sleep to keep him going.

Robin Sharma
Read his books and have found them to be a great source of positive thinking and looking at life in a new perspective every time. Loved his book The Greatness Guide. Would love to chat up with him and dwell deeper into understanding the simplicity of life we forget in this fast moving world of ours. A totally philosophical chat, this one would be.

Thomas Hawk
This man has a mission – 1 million photos to be uploaded on flickr in his lifetime. He rarely travels without his camera & equipment. He not only has a brilliant photo collection on flickr but also is a photographer rights activist and talks a lot about his processes and experiences at the blog. Thomas is a person who inspires me to shoot more and experiment with angles and Lightroom effects. Will have a discussion on what’s it that he searches for from his viewfinder and hits the shutter to take that awesome shot.

Milind Deora (Who’s he?)
Politics and me don’t fit together very well. A little because I don’t really get the idea and a little because I believe Indian politics is a bit too complicated to comprehend. A luncheon with this young face of Indian politics, would only to be understand his attitude towards the political system. Is he just following his father’s footsteps? Does he see a future for this country different from what the old leaders see it as? Maybe this chat can finally get me interested in politics and it’s workings.

So, who’s that interesting person you would like to have lunch with? Share your thoughts in the comment area.