Rabbi Shergill's Avengi Ja Nahin

After three albums, I've concluded that Rabbi Shergill is the best pop singer in India at the moment. He is the complete package: singer, songwriter and musician extraordinaire who weaves catchy melodies with solid songwriting to make top-notch music. On top, he's articulate, urbane and quite funny.*

Frankly, Rabbi's debut album was slightly underwhelming for me personally. Bulla Ki Jana was very good as was Tere Bin, but the rest of the album seemed good without being great. The fact that I don't understand Punjabi may be part of the problem. The videos for Bulla and Tere Bin with English subtitling helped a lot with understanding the songs and I enjoyed Ajj Nachna and Gill 'te Guitar.

The soundtrack to Delhii Heights was better. I haven't seen the film, but all the songs on the album were quite good. Dilli, the raw folksy energy of Aaja Nachie, the irony built into Kabhi Aana Na and even the initially grating Ey Gori all grew on me.

Avengi Ja Nahin tops both these though. The album is a cracker with Rabbi making a marked departure in themes - focusing even more on personal travails, unrequited love and more earthly problems, moving focus away from the Sufi invocations of Bulla and the meta/physical yearnings of Tere Bin. Also discernible was a change in tone. While Rabbi is quite varied in and of itself, somehow AJN seems more upbeat. Songs like Karachi Valiye, Maen Boliyan and Avengi Ja Nahin all point to a style that's sad but not morose.

There's something about certain albums or artists. You feel that they're 'speaking' to you - not just through their songwriting, but through their style of music and musical choices. I felt that very strongly with AJN, in a way that I've not felt with an Indian pop album in a while - which explains the gushing praise.

The songs are varied - be it yearning for a love lost in arena-rock ballad Karachi Valiye, talking about playing hard-to-get in the ditties Maen Boliyan and Avengi Ja Nahin or about female infanticide in the pensive Ballo. There's an English track Return to Unity which was the weakest lyrically but is remarkable for its sheer energy. The quieter songs, including a paean to Bandra, Tu Avin Bandra and Ballo are quite well done too. Especially Bandra, where he sings:

                                                                     Translation

Je tun labhda eyn koi ik apna                       If you’re looking for some
Tuttia-futtia hoia supna                                Ragged ol’ dream
Sutt ‘ta jihnu tu kadey                                  That you’d long discarded
Lagda hai ik chor-bazaar ithey                     There’s a flea market here
Har sham samundar de kandey ‘te               Every evening by the seashore
Farhin koi auto ‘te kahin                               Get into an auto and say
“Bhay! Carter Road” jan “Bandstand”           “Brother! Carter Road” or “Bandstand”
Sab labh ju ethey                                         You’ll find it all here
Pehlan das dan vira                                      Let me warn you though
Ethon de bha ne tikhe                                  The prices here are a bit steep

He also sings in Hindi on Bilqis - Jinhe Naaz Hai, an incendiary track about contemporary India's conscience. It's a track in the best tradition of Dylan and Springsteen, audaciously channeling the Indian national anthem in its guitar chords. All in all, rocking in the true sense of the word.

An incident to end this fawning fan tribute. I was traveling with family in India on vacation. The AJN CD was playing in my brother's car, and Bilqis was playing. I was riding shotgun with him. Halfway through the first antara (the one about Satyendra Dubey) we went silent and the silence lasted till the end of the song as we are hit by the sheer force of his words. A couple of seconds after the song ends, my brother says "He's really good." And I'm thinking, "Hell yeah!".

* I saw him on MTV India while on vacation a few months back. He did a censored Punjabi version of Jimi Hendrix's Hey Joe that cracked me up completely.

**The official album site for Avengi Ja Nahin - http://ajn.co.in has lyrics and translations for each song and some streaming audio. The CD is a worthwhile buy for the inlay - again with lyrics and translations, plus information about each song, where it was recorded etc.

Shameless plug

For the past year or so, I've been DJing (in Indian parlance, RJing?) at a radio station (KBCS, on air at 91.3 FM here, streaming online at www.kbcs.fm ) run out of Bellevue. It's a program called "The Spice Route" which plays music from South Asia - ?ollywood (? == B, T, M), Indian classical songs, music from Pakistan, Sri Lanka and other countries in South Asia.

Now the station supports streaming archives which you can search here:

http://kbcsweb.bellevuecollege.edu/playlist/searchplaylists.aspx

You can search for me by name or search for "The Spice Route". Playslists are always available. Audio is archived for 15 days after the program is over. The station can't archive more because of USA DMCA regulations.

This means that after my next show on the 24th you'll be able to listen to it till the 8th or 9th of December. I generally DJ on the 3rd Wednesday of every month, and it's been a fun experience for sure. If you're in the Seattle area and are interested in DJing, drop me a line. It's a volunteer thing. You won't get paid, but I guarantee you'll enjoy it.

FAQ:

Yes, I take requests.

No, I don't let you go on air when you call in. With the FCC being what it is, we can't risk you using a swear word on air.

Yes, listening to yourself can be weird at times.

Stick to the basics

I'm not big on writing about stuff I'm not an expert on, but that's not stopped me in the past.

This time it's the bank and credit meltdown. I was observing the rise and rise of real estate for the better part of two years and one thing struck me last year: this isn't making sense. I'm not talking about the subprime loans, credit default swaps or collateralized debt obligations et al. The basic business itself wasn't making sense. How can a sensible businessman even assume that real estate prices will keep going up forever? Were incomes going up at the rate real estate was? How long before people could simply not afford to buy homes anymore? In the Seattle area, it'd reached the point where buying an affordable single-family unit close to Microsoft was well nigh impossible for a single-income family. You had to move farther away or move into a smaller place. How many banks realized this and yet did nothing to reduce risk or exposure to mortgages?

This American Life had an illuminating episode on this. Link here. They say that the system made it such that no one had any incentive to be realistic about the kind of risks they were taking. Risk kept getting transferring from the lending institutions to banks, then to investment banks and so on till you had no idea where your debts were really owed. Then of course, everything went haywire.

However, I still wonder about banks and the people who run them. Didn't they at some point wonder - "This person didn't put down a single cent of his own money to borrow half a million from the bank. Is s/he ever going to be in a position to return all of this? What if some of these people are unable to repay?"

There's a saying in Kannada my mother loves to quote about money (which may partly explain why I'm hard-nosed about it). The saying means that you should stretch your feet only as much as your bed allows you to. Sleeping with your feet hanging off the bed leads to much grief, including $700 billion bailouts.

Bhat...seriously?

I've heard from more than one source that I sound a lot more serious in print than in person. When I write on my blog, write email and so on, I tend to come across as being quite serious. There have been rumblings from some quarters that I sound like a preppy upstart. DQ remarked on my seriousness once, and I've had other friends say the same.

The musings on this blog tend to be introspective, well-thought-out and so on. I can punctuate my writings with :), LOLs and :p, but what the heck, my blog was meant to challenge my writing style and not my texting vocabulary (which is fine, thx! ). If trying to be articulate and very precise with my vocabulary in speech and in writing is a crime, guilty as charged.

However, all this seriousness isn't because I don't have a sense of humor. It's just that my sense of humor is not very bloggable. I find humor in stuff I talk about, observe (especially personality traits, attitudes etc) and not in things I write about. It's also that I'm never satisfied with the attempts at 'humor' I make and they never end up on my blog for the same reason. Being a medicore humor-attempter is fodder for a Seinfeld 2.0 episode.

Elaine: "He writes lame jokes on his blog."

Seinfeld: "He's a pseudo-humorist!"

Elaine:"OMG, I just met a pseudo-humorist! Is it infectious?!"

This leads to a weird dichotomy: a somber persona online combined with a dry, sardonic tongue-in-cheek flesh-and-blood personality. The twain do meet, in the form of this person, who long ago learned that caring too deeply about what people think about you tends to over-analysis of your own behavior, which is never fun. As coeus would say "Doosron ke bare mein soch ke kiska bhala hua hai."

*The title of this post is pure genius, which is not me. Hat-tip to elder Bhratashree. It's also to avoid actually saying "Why so serious?!" - the dialog cliche of the year.

Tale of a day set right

Prelude

7:30 AM - To self: "Wake up. You've got lots of work to do today."

7:50 AM - "OK this is it. Enough is enough. At this rate I'll be really late to work."

8:00 AM - Finally wake up to a miserable day out.

8:20 AM - I'm getting ready. Maybe I can get out of here by 8:40.

8:40 AM - Ha! I'm still wolfing down breakfast.

8:50 AM - The 16 is here. Why the 16? The 5 would've saved me a few minutes getting to downtown. But I'll take what I get.

9:45 AM - I'm walking to office from the Transit Center. "Alright! Will be in office before 10 - only half an hour later than planned. Work to be done."

Act I

10 AM - As I'm prepping a couple of machines for testing, I'm furiously multitasking, catching up with the market and bailout news...wait, what's that? Neil Gaiman's reading from his new book in Seattle tonight.

OMG OMG OMG, Neil Gaiman's in town. Wait, he has a new book out and I didn't know?!

I *have* to go for this! Chance of a lifetime! It's Neil Gaiman!

It's at 7 in U. District in Seattle, so I need to get out of work by 5:45. If I really rush my way through work, have a quick lunch, maybe I can get done here sooner.

1:30 PM - Things looking OK and on track.

Act II

2:30 PM - Why TF is that happening? An AV, of all things? Why today? Why now?

4:30 PM - NJ and I are no closer to figuring out what the problem is. NJ goes and tries something to fix a separate unrelated bug, re-builds and voila! The problem is gone. I'll still have to chase it down later, but the crisis is averted for now.

5:45 PM - I'm still not done here. Neil Gaiman's not happening. *sigh*

6:20 PM - Overlake Transit Center. I'm waiting for the 545. Me to self: "If I make it to the Montlake stop by 6:50, I'll take it as an Omen. I'll go then. Otherwise I'll go all the way to downtown and take the 5 home."

6:30 PM - The bus is whizzing through insane Friday-evening traffic. Hurray for the carpool lane! At this rate, I'll make it to Montlake by 6:50!

Act III

6:50 PM - Montlake ramp sidewalk - Two buses whizz by as I'm walking up to the Montlake Ave stop. Bummer. I'm going to have to walk 8-10 blocks which will take a minimum of 20 minutes.

6:52 PM - Montlake Ave stop - the 48 pulls up just as I reach it. That'll save me 10 minutes.

6:58 PM - A girl is asking the driver where the University Bookstore and church are. I ask her "Are you going to the Neil Gaiman reading? Do you know exactly where it is?." "Yes. My friend told me it's in the church across the street from the bookstore."

7:00 PM - We( The Girl From The Bus & I ) are rushing down 15th Ave NE and then across on 42nd street. We're late!

7:05 PM - I've paid up for the book. It's either that or a $5 fee. The clerk tells me that the book is autographed. Yay! Also, because of a number of buses running late, the reading's not started yet. Double yay!

7:10 PM - We make our way in: a Safeway grocery clerk from Ballard and a software 'serf from India, talking about the awesomeness of Neil Gaiman's writing and how crazy it was to make it here in time with the insufficient notice. (She learnt of it 20 minutes back just as she got off duty)

7:15 PM - Gaiman's finally on stage! He looks much shorter in real person, but as impish (and as good-looking) as in his photographs. Shorter hair than his recent pictures I've seen elsewhere.

He reads a full 40-page chapter from his latest, The Graveyard Book. It's good. The chapter is also curiously self-sufficient. I later realize it's a short story by itself in M is for Magic.

8:30 PM - Post-reading, there's a short break and we're back to a sneak preview of Coraline, based on a comic book by him.

9:00 PM - Q & A. He's really funny in real life too. That droll British sense of humor shines through. To top it, he reads from a new poem book Blueberry Girl. It's absolutely beautiful. As he ends, he gets a standing ovation from the 850-odd people in the audience.

Epilogue

9:40 PM - I'm out on the street, waiting for the 44 to take me home. There's a smile on my face and a song on my lips as a dull, regular "wait-for-the-weekend" Friday was transformed. And I have an autographed Neil Gaiman book to show for it.

Rock On!!

AG once remarked how Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy were very clever with the hooks in their songs. A prime example offered up then was the brass band trumpet refrain in Tainu le ke from Salaam-e-Ishq.

Rock On!! adds to that oeuvre with the blistering lead guitar solo for the title song. An ear-worm of a piece, it's made me listen to that song at least 30 times in the past week alone.

The soundtrack is an absolute winner. In a Bollywood where song sequences increasingly mean exotic locales, dozens of dancers and pointless breaks in narrative, Rock On!! succeeds because it performs (quite well) the duties of soundtrack music - drive narrative, evoke emotions and tell stories.

Javed Akhtar is pure genius as he manages to write quirky, sometimes idealistic but mostly pointless rock music lyrics (most of the film band Magik's songs), a really bad metal band song (Zehreelay), a sappy teenage ballad (Tum Ho Toh) and lovely, dreamy soundscapes (Phir Dekhiye and Yeh Tumhari Meri Baatein). S-E-L are in top form as composers, with the sound of a rock band emerging clearly. It's standard stuff: guitar intro, lyrics, simple chorus, long lead guitar solo, rinse, repeat. But that's what most new bands are about and it's quite nicely done.

Farhan Akhtar does a good job as a singer. I mean, he isn't expected to be Mohammed Rafi, and his singing is good enough for a college rock band. 

Of course, what makes it all work is the film. The soundtrack isn't much without the film, and vice-versa. Writer-Director Abhishek Kapoor manages to build a whole world around the characters, all of whom live their roles with attendant instrument-playing. I won't bet my life on it, but what appears on screen seems to be in sync with what the band is playing. Maybe the long guitar solos are made-up, but the vocals, harmonies and the drumming was definitely spot-on. The lack of a bass player is explained away in a sentence ( Luke Kenny's character programs bass on the keyboard) and I'll give them the benefit of the doubt since they got most of everything else right.

While the film isn't a classic by any standards, it's low-key and honest, a rarity in Bollywood. And it still has humor, warmth and a style all its own.

Watch Out For: A rock Dandia version of Saanson ki Zaroorat Hai Kaise from Aashiqui - for me, one of the funnier moments of the film.

And now I'm off to listen to Rock On!! the song again...

Dream On

Aankhon Mein Jis Ke Koi To Khwab Hai
Khush Hai Wohi Jo Thoda Betaab Hai
Zindagi Mein Koi Arzoo Kijiye
Phir Dekhiye ...

- Phir Dekhiye - Rock On!!

Dreamy, catchy, lovely.

*Lyrics from here: http://www.thelyrix.net/lyrics/Rock_On-Phir_Dekhiye.html with a minor edit

Ye Re Ye Re Pausa

Here comes the rain, falls on my face again - BT, Circles

Let the rain fall down and wash away my tears - Celine Dion, A New Day Has Come

Dhagala laagli kaLa, paNi themb themb gaLa... Dada Kondke, Dhagala lagli kaLa

I like rain. If you live in Seattle I guess you have to. It's a coping mechanism.

For me it isn't that. Growing up in Western Maharashtra means rains come with the pleasant association of engineering vacations, the idyllic first few weeks of a semester, lush greenery and so on.

My grouse is with the pitter-patter that is Seattle rain. Unlike what BT or Celine Dion or Dada Kondke go on about, rain here doesn't pour down. The Dhags have no kaLa moments and paNi themb thembach gaLta. The clouds are just making up attendance.

Rain here kind of slides its way down apologetically, saying "Gee, I won't interrupt your life like those thunderstorms in the south or those snowstorms in the Midwest. But mind if I just kind of scoot in and make myself comfortable? Under your skin, that is."

This kind of rain drives people from more tropical climes up the wall. I'm thinking, "Can't it rain already?"

Maybe a couple of times a year these complaints are addressed. As it poured today, I looked up and let it fall on my face. There were no tears to wash away or fears to drown, but it did fill my soul.

AID Seattle quiz

AID Seattle is organizing Chakraview, a quiz on India on the occasion of India's Independence Day. The quiz is being set by Mihir Dharamshi and Arvind Sethuraman, two regulars at the Microsoft Redmond Quiz Club. The quiz, in fact was 'outsourced' by AID to the quiz club and these two people signed up.

More details are at Parth's blog and on the AID site . I've been at quizzes set by Mihir and Arvind before, so I can assure great quizzing and much fun.

Teams of two, registration is FREE, yada yada.

What: Chakraview, India quiz

Where: Microsoft Building 99, 14820 NE 36th Street, Redmond, WA  98052.

When: August 23rd, 2008, 2PM

Random info on last year's India quiz here.

Event on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=33437585890

Singapore

There's a sense here of the familiar and the unfamiliar. The signs are in the four official languages - English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil. In addition to places like St. James Power Station and Clarke Quay, there's a subway stop named Dhoby Talao. The temple in Little India resembles the Asthika Samaj temple in Matunga and I eat better South Indian food in my weekend here than I did in three years in Seattle.

On the metro, there's a girl with Asian features. She's dressed in standard Malaysian headgear. Yet she has mehndi on her hands. Everywhere, there's people with distinctly South Asian features dressed in clothing I associate more with the Asians I see in visuals from Hong Kong or Japan. Add hair with highlights, and the incongruity is complete.

The strict government here is purportedly scary. But honestly, most of suburban US looks more organized and clean. Nothing here's dirty, but the city looks lived-in. Everything's spotless in a natural and organic manner, not as if anyone's taking a real effort. Which adds to its charm.

And yes, this is what a tropical metropolis looks like. Shorts, flip-flops and summer wear all year long. Umbrellas and jackets for the rain? Maybe. Mostly not.

On my taxi ride back to the airport as I head back to Seattle, I'm shaken out of my reverie as Seattle local favorites Death Cab for Cutie play on the radio. I will follow you into the dark. Fitting.

Also, I get sunburned over a cloudy Singapore weekend - something six US summers couldn't accomplish.

I jotted down quick thoughts on my flight out from Singapore two weeks back. Fleshing these even into this stream-of-consciousness post has taken a while.

Schadenfreude

scha·den·freu·de [shahd-n-froi-duh]

–noun

satisfaction or pleasure felt at someone else's misfortune

There are times when you understand a word. There are other times when the full import of a word makes complete and eminent sense.

Edit: Linked to original dictionary.com meaning

Aargh...maybe not.

On days, you feel like the guy in Office Space who's sitting in traffic in a lane which simply won't move. You change lanes only to find the lane you moved into has stopped moving.

However, the important thing to know is that you've been here before. You've seen this room and walked this floor. Strategic lane changes, patience and good music on your car stereo means you'll be through before you know it.

Nick Hornby

My first brush with Nick Hornby was a few years back. I was in India then and I saw a movie about a record store owner who's just broken up with his long-time girlfriend and is having a hard time dealing with it. I didn't know it was based on a novel then, but the movie stuck with me. It was rich in irony, dripped in sarcasm and impeccably cast, with John Cusack as the record store owner, Jack Black as one of the two neurotic music-obsessive clerks working at his store, and Tim Robbins as the mysterious hippie his girlfriend defects to.

A few years later I ended up in a bookstore with High Fidelity staring me in the face. What had remained with me about the film included the deep love of music the protagonist has, and how it permeates everything he does. Jack Black and the other clerk in his store are laugh-out loud funny in how they try to out-obscure each other's music tastes. Being a bit of a music obsessive myself (just look at the number of posts I have tagged music), the idea of the book seemed interesting.

I, however, knew how the book ended. So I did the next best thing. I picked up another book by the same author with a more intriguing premise: 4 people end up on a London rooftop deciding to commit suicide on New Year's Eve, 2000 - the beginning of the New Millennium. What happens on the road taken - when they don't actually go through with it? (I have a morbid streak that is probably worthy of psychiatric attention. Death and its effects/after-effects as humor or literature fascinates me.)

A Long Way Down was a home run. I'd had a horrid time at a social do I felt  obligated to go to and I came back home feeling miserable because of some of the people I'd had to meet. I polished off the book in that one night - it was probably 4 AM by the time I slept. It wouldn't be the first time I did that with a Nick Hornby book.

Hornby's strength is, as one of the gushing blurbs on the back of High Fidelity says, is "The Male Confessional". Many of his novels are about a young man trying to figure out his way through life, responsibility and the onset of middle age. High Fidelity and About a Boy both follow this pattern and to an extent, one of the story arcs in A Long Way Down and How to be Good follow the same path for a married, middle-aged man.

However, what makes all his books shine is the generosity of spirit he expresses towards his characters. The character may be a complete goofball scared of commitment (like Rob in High Fidelity) or someone shallower than a tea saucer (Will in About a Boy), but Hornby manages to infuse them with warmth and uncharted depths. They aren't the way they are for no reason. Maybe life never really demanded they be responsible until the circumstances unfolding in the book asked more of them.

Then there are the pop-culture references. Hornby himself seems to be a music junkie and the numerous references and use of popular songs (and films, and sports) in his books as plot points play well enough if you are music literate, but can be to devastating effect if you are an obsessive. One such note played to poignant and hilarious effect is the death of Kurt Cobain in About a Boy.

In addition to the references to music and the warmth he displays towards his characters, what is likeable about his books is that all of them have satisfying endings. All his books have fairly dramatic arcs( attempted suicide, break-up, a husband finding religion), but the denouement tends to be not so. The story starts with a bang. Then the protagonists generally go through a lot of soul-searching with lonely drinking sessions and pizza dinners aplenty. It however ends quietly with everyone picking up the pieces and moving forward with cautious hope. Kind of life itself.

Jaane Tu...Ya Jaane Na

Films are made or unmade in the small moments. Jaane Tu...Ya Jaane Na has many of those small moments that make it memorable.

In Jiggy's birthday party, Jai says "Hum hamesha dost rahenge" and Shaleen crinkles her nose at Aditi - a knowing, shared confidence about Aditi's unrequited feelings. Then, after the party Jai's mother asks him "Us ka mangetar bhi tha?", Jai nods and she hugs him as he breaks down. Cool parents were everywhere in the film, but the tenderness in the relationship between Ratna Pathak-Shah and a fatherless Imran Khan was especially well-done.

The film reminded me of Dil Chahta Hai on many levels. A key aspect of what made it work for me was how real and contemporary the characters seemed. The friendships in DCH leapt out at you in terms of how realistic the interactions between Akash, Sameer and Sid seemed. Similarly the lives of the characters that Jai & co. live with the attendant wisecracking, easy camaraderie and tangled webs seemed lifted right out of the pages of St. Xavier's class of '08.

Worth noting: The film belongs to Abbas Tyrewala. Good direction, tight script, crisp dialog (very Bambaiyya without being clichéd) and quirky lyrics. He wins the award for the funniest ending for a standard romcom story. Imran Khan is believable and likeable, as is most of the supporting cast. The film uses Mumbai as a location more cleverly than any film in the recent past (Satya pops to mind). The title sequence is pure genius. The Khan brothers are an inspired piece of casting - it may be the most memorable film they end up acting in.

A R Rahman rules, hands down. He's copped a lot of flak for having a 'signature' sound. But here (it's been so increasingly in the past few years) the music suits the film to a T without him imposing any stylistic pressure. It sounds fresh, funky and fun with ARR's penchant for using new voices paying off rich dividends. Kabhi Kabhi Aditi, Tu Bolein...Main Boloon ( a very low-key ARR himself - great singing and jazz interludes) and Kahin To (personal favorite, Vasundhara Das is phenomenal) are lovely and Pappu Can't Dance! wins the award for party song of the year, with attendant cool dance move.

Not cool: Genelia was a bit of a weak link, but not weak enough to bring the story down. Very expressive eyes, but her diction didn't quite cut it. The flashback/flash-forward technique got annoying after a while. The script really had no loose ends and trying too hard to explain everything with the airport narrative was jarring.

And really, Tyrewala also takes the award for beating the Gujju stereotype to death with Jiggy. The accent was overdone and there are other lesser stereotypes ripe for harvest. After the horror that was Satish Shah in Kal Ho Na Ho, I'd cop the Gujjus a break and take on Punjabis  for a bit. With upcoming classics like Singh is Kinng, a bit of parody won't hurt their butter chicken-fattened egos.

To sum: Aamir Khan strikes again, in style.

See Micro...Spot?

One of the biggest challenges Microsoft faces as a company is how we can humanize ourselves to the world. Being called "The Borg" or similar doesn't do wonders for our public image.

I mean, we are a company of human beings. The company is full of really smart and passionate people working on things they genuinely care about. Things go crazy once in a while and we are shown up as being incompetent (Mac vs PC, anyone?) or even worse, malevolent. But the fact remains - Microsoft is a great company with its set of great attributes and flaws (some of which are great too).

Aiming to capture that is microspotting, a blog that focuses on interesting employees at Microsoft. Check it out. My favorite so far is the Dare Obasanjo story. He is the son of a bona fide Nigerian President. He talks about the Nigerian scam emails:

What’s weird about those is that I have to actually read them because I can’t be sure. They could actually be legitimate mail for me — I mean, I know Nigerian Senators and Governors who worked with my dad. So it’s irritating because I actually have to read those emails to be really sure!

The way we live

Musings on gas prices, communities, density and sprawl

What does the price increase in gas mean for us US residents long-term? The obvious is known - more people have started driving smaller vehicles, the market for big SUVs and gas-guzzling Hummers and trucks is going down, more people now take transit or try to.

However, I'm interested in what this means in the macro, long-term sense for the way communities have developed in the US.

If we see this oil price trend continue or even stay at a $4.00 per gallon baseline for a couple of summers more, I foresee a huge change in the way housing gets built and for housing demand in general. General trends I see developing:

- Density goes up. People are moving closer to city and community centers with an emphasis on easy access to transit, proximity to schools, shopping and community-type activities. While driving 30-40 miles every day to drop off + pick up kids, for doing your groceries and going shopping may make sense when gas is $2.50 a gallon, at $4.00 it's murderous for your wallet. People will prefer staying in places where all these things are much closer to home or maybe closer to transit options.

- This in turn means average size of homes goes down. The past couple of decades has seen the average size of a single family house in the US balloon. Astronomical heating bills and long driving distances will see more people opting for town-home style housing, smaller house sizes ( no more 1.5 acre lots) or at least 'friendlier' housing with smaller lots which are more amenable to smaller communities with walker-friendly neighborhoods.

It's already beginning to happen. While sprawl was a direct function of urban decay, urban revival in many towns and cities in the US is seeing a trend 'inwards'. Places like Denver, Portland and other smaller towns have managed to do a great job of revitalizing the city core making it easier (especially for younger people or empty-nesters) to make their way back to living in the city.

To me, this is a good thing. After over two years of living in the suburbs (suburban New Jersey, then Redmond, WA), moving to the city was revitalizing in many ways. This post wouldn't have been made if I hadn't moved - my thinking would never have evolved to this point.

Communities are a function of inhabitants. However, residents too become a function of their communities. There is something vital about living in an area that's denser and occupies a smaller footprint. It's something that's missing in a lot of the 'bedroom communities' that a combination of the real estate boom, cheap gas and a predilection towards big houses conspired to create. Huge McMansions where your house is your fortress and you have no real link to the place you live in isn't going to help make a place seem more like home.

The "walk-ability" of a neighborhood does seem to increase your affinity to the place and foster a sense of community - it's definitely done so in my case. As I've mentioned before, there's a sense of place about here that I have come to genuinely like. There's pieces missing of course - like the fact that I hardly know or talk to my neighbors, which would be unthinkable while growing up in India (though I see similar trends developing there). This lovely piece in the NYT talks about that.

If this increase in fuel prices results in more places like Seattle and Portland which have a reasonable trade-off between sprawl and skyscrapers and a push towards mass transit, at least some good will have come from all this pain.

Overwhelmed? You're not alone

Ah finally. There's scientific evidence. It had to come in - that multitasking beyond a limit is bound to hit the law of diminishing returns. Coincidentally, there were two articles on one day in different publications about the same:

The New Atlantis - The Myth of Multitasking

The NYT - Fighting a workplace war against distraction

The articles make their case - I'm not going to repeat ad nauseum what they say. I've had my share of issues with trying to do any serious 'thinking' work with the amount of interruption a typical office environment provides - hallway chatter related to work that you may want to tune out, your neighbor's phone ringing, email...

There are, however, things that help me cope. These articles talk about cutting back distractions, but you need to push back hard yourself. My favorite tricks:

- Close that office door: OK. I work in a company that has long held a policy of individual/shared offices to be better than having cubicles. I have an office all to myself. I close the door. "Open" workspaces with the collegial atmosphere they provide are IMO overrated. When you need to get work done, you shut yourself off for 3-4 hours if you need to. Simple. If people need you, they can knock.

To make my office seem more "open" even though the door is closed, I always leave my blinds open. People can see me working in there and I've not visually shut myself off from what's going on.

If you're not in crunch mode, door stays open. Maybe you put candy in your office and people swing by to chat you up. Of course, if you have a cubicle, a nice pair of noise-canceling headphones should do the trick.

- Manage email: People can be harsh and talk about shutting down email while working. I'm not that hardcore. I use Microsoft Outlook for my email and one of the first things I do now when configuring my email client is - lots of rules, no alerts. I have rules for a gazillion things - emails go into different folders based on who sent the email, whether they were sent directly to me or to a particular alias. Different aliases have their own folders. There's a whole level of complexity I have in my rules with exceptions etc. so that stuff is classified and I know what to prioritize based on which folder that email falls into.

And yes, no alerts. When I mean no alerts, I mean that. Absolutely. No. Alerts. No sound when email pops in your inbox, no pop-up from your system tray with subject and some blurb of email. Nothing. I don't know I've received email unless I actually go to my inbox and check. This may not work for some people whose life revolves around replying promptly to emails, but believe me - except in very rare cases, answering someone in 15 minutes or even an hour versus 30 seconds is not going to be the end of the world. Plus, we have corporate messaging at work. Urgent things go on IM immediately.

- Calendars are not just for meetings: I'd like to think I'm not overscheduled. However, there are things that are important long-term which I'm likely to neglect simply because there are other things that suddenly gain urgency. The simple thing to do is block time on your calendar. I have 30 minutes blocked on my calendar post-lunch for answering customer questions. I drop everything I'm doing then to look at queries on newsgroups, internal mailing lists and some external forums I monitor. Unless there's something earth-shaking happening, I spend this time on that.

Focus is something that's becoming an obsession with me at work. Any ideas on how you fight distraction?

Zindagi Badi Honi Chahiye, Lambi Nahin

What would you do if you had only one opportunity left to pass on what you've learnt to the world? CMU's 'Last Lecture' series stems from that - "What if you (in this case, a professor) had only one lecture left before you died?". Various academic luminaries and alumni have delivered this lecture in the past.

This year one of these talks took on particular urgency, since Randy Pausch was literally going to give his last lecture. Diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer, Pausch battles on. In parts heart-warming, funny, poignant and triumphant, Randy Pausch delivers his Last Lecture, the talk of a lifetime.

Links to video and various other Randy Pausch information here.

Viva La Vida!

Coldplay's new album Viva La Vida drops tomorrow. Excited!

Sneak preview here - very promising. The title track is lovely.

A tale of two concert films - as close to musical heaven as a non-concert experience can get.

First, let's get the commonalities out of the way. The two bands - U2 and Rolling Stones come from across the pond - Ireland and Britain. Both have defied expectations in terms of how long a band is expected to last. In one case (the Stones), the key band members have unchanged for over 40 years. In the other , all members of the original line-up are still around after over 25 years. Even as age catches up with them, they are still vital, wowing audiences worldwide with their skill, craft, virtuosity and showmanship.

U2:3D plays on the near-myth status of U2 as one of the biggest rock acts in the world. Using latest digital technology, the dazzling visual feast that is a U2 concert is milked to the limits. Spare (there's no one on the dimly lit stage through the whole concert except the four band members) and grand ( huge video screens with dazzling visual effects) at the same time, the concert film too is akin to the religious experience that a U2 concert is purported to be.

Visually, it's stunning. The 3D effects that are used only for a few kicks in movies like the latest Harry Potter film are showcased to their full potential as Bono reaches out his hand and you high-five him in the middle of Vertigo. Vertigo does ensue as a camera on a lift zooms in on Larry Mullen Jr.'s drum calisthenics from behind him as the camera gives you stage access like you'd never dream.

Then there are the songs. Be it old staples like Sunday Bloody Sunday, Pride (In the Name of Love) and Where the Streets Have No Name or new favorites like Vertigo and Love and Peace (or Else), bombast isn't a term lost on the Irish quartet. I wouldn't tolerate this from any other band, but to paraphrase another superstar, they make this look good.

For a U2 junkie like me, it's manna from straight above.

Shine a Light is a complete contrast. While U2 has always been about changing the world and making a point, the Stones, it seems, are just out to have a good time. Musically inspired by the blues, they make being melancholy look like fun too. Brightly lit stages, red costumes for Mick Jagger and a whole retinue of backing instrumentalists all combine to make Shine a Light an absolute joy.

As Mick Jagger shimmies his way through classics like Brown Sugar, Miss You and does a twist with lesser known songs and covers of blues pieces, a different kind of genius shines through. The visual pace here too is frenetic with quick cuts from multiple cameras under the assured guidance of movie rock star Martin Scorsese. Old yet new, cocky yet respectful (of the blues) and sad yet happy only in the way blues (and ghazals) can be, the Stones show just why they are such a class act. 

As the encore winds down, they've also played a few radio and soundtrack staples including Start Me Up, (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction and that rocking ode to Lucifer, Sympathy for the Devil.

In the process, they win over a fan for life.