Brown Motion

Ending 2018 we decided to do what we love to and can do best. Explore new foods and have a jolly end to the year. With that in mind we enjoyed Burmese cuisine courtesy a neighborhood place that opened recently. Curries do taste somewhat unique although a lot of the spice portfolio is similar to that found in India. The countries do share a border where India's far eastern states butt up on the western edge of Burma aka Myanmar today. We sampled chicken curry with Burmese masala and coconut milk, a garlic noodle prep with crispy shrimp and a green string bean dish made with garlic. The food is delicious although our server by her own claim hailed from Hong Kong and spoke sketchy English. I do find this annoying since I expect a service organization that operates in America to know its lingua franca.  It is rude to expect the customers to make accommodations to get their message across or a question answered because the servers are illiterate with language ski

In America people love their sport.  Be it a ball game or something more adrenaline inducing like going down a sharp mountain slope at high speed on a surface made of ice.  The latter is available courtesy of nature during the winter months in states that have majestic mountains to allow for said exercise. The kid had been wanting to try downhill skiing for a while.  The parents having attempted it on slower slopes in hills of Michigan were not at all keen on the endeavor.  But nothing ventured nothing gained or something silly like that made me take her on a father daughter tour of the Sierras near Lake Tahoe yesterday. She took to it like bee after honey.  What follows is a picture based narrative of the day long activity - of which six hours were spent on the slopes (by child only whilst the father was relegated to sherpa duties and amateur photog). The bus picked us up early.  5.30 AM to be precise from our neighborhood and after 3 + hours of squirming in coach class seats

Imagine all the people living life in peace.  Signature solo from John Lennon released circa 1971 is a haunting and daring and optimistic view of the world we could live in. But this is not the topic I wanted to write about.  Rather about an imaginary Jew born to an imaginary immortal figure (known to some as God) somewhere in Jerusalem this imaginary calendar day in history. It is amazing the power of storytelling.  Just imagine that most of the 7 billion inhabitants of this planet actually take a break from work letting their respective capitalist and communist machinery idle to celebrate or at least mark the birth of an imaginary figure. Imagine. Well instead of doing the imagining we took advantage of the quiet outside (since many of the denizens in our neighborhood decided to gather with like minded souls and exchange the superfluous gifts that they had purchased with imaginary currency) and went walking and exploring the neighborhoods of San Francisco. First up was a c

A common and often rhetorical question posed by Americans to fellow Americans during the course of a day.  But my intent to pose it was to list out a few things that are well - Up.  While I am at it I might list a few that are well - Down. So here we go up and down the well.. Up 1.  Porn Use - Turns out Americans, Germans and Indians are the most prolific users of pron sites.  Yes good old johnson is UP the most in these three countries courtesy of high speed streaming of porn content. I say the overall effect may be beneficial to society if the cumulative user base can get off by watching things in 2D and not exercise their muscles without permission in 3D.  Better for society if they stay close to their valuables and locked in. 2.  Virgin.  Well not that kind but Virgin Galactic.  With their latest effort, after 14 years of trying to foray into space tourism, the company founded by a Sir from England finally broke the atmospheric barrier at 51.4 miles above the earth when i

Everyone it seems wants to go to one.  Many businesses host them.  But wait.  What is it?  Why is it? Who the heck knows.  The whole notion of our species wanting to enter a rather confined space  with loud music and varying degrees of cheap (but overpriced) alcohol and sub par nourishment to spend hours is hilarious.  What makes the hilarity exponentially more funny is there are like minded folk jostling to get in on the action aka add their own exhaust to the congested space. All this in the name of some approaching holiday.  Uh? Food is piled high on tables in corners with plates that look like paper frisbees and have the same diameter as a hockey puck.  This seemingly to avoid wasting food.  But it creates for some rather frustrating customers who were hoping to load them up. Now it simply gets piled high instead of wide to allow for more mass per plate.  This leads to major accidents and waste.  So there.  Bad idea. Then comes the liquids imbibing phase of the project. 

I read the third international bestseller from an Israeli historian called Yuval Harari. A modern day thinker, this man has unpacked a lot in his writings over the past few years.  All his writings revolve around trying to answer some of history's most complex puzzles.  Who are we?  What is our purpose?  What comes next? In this latest installment he takes us on a journey way into the past to the point of creation and brings us crashing into the modern day earth and then paints a scary picture of what is to come.  Or at least a possible future. While it is hard to completely digest the entirety of this man's writings here are a few takeaways I can enumerate - 1.  Humans are really bad with large numbers.  Each of us to varying degrees has a switch that fails at computing 'scale'.  We can think of ourselves and our surroundings over a period of time but it is far too limited when appreciating our role as a species over extended periods.  Millenia, Eons etc.  Tha

It is said one must focus on what one likes and have a positive outlook about life in general.  I say its worth trying.  In the spirit of that concept below I will share some of my simple joys that I can partake as I go through life. These also tend to actually improve the quality of my life.  In no particular order these are things I see, read or do.  Food or Drink I consume or people I meet.  I must say the latter is a relatively low percentage in attributing to quality of life but that's just me. I am sure people can figure out a similar matrix for themselves and figure out how to boost the engagement with things that matter to them most.  Perhaps we will all be happy that way! Humor is a big part of my life and I seek it out in many ways - sometimes it just happens to be in your face when you least expect it... While Bourdain is gone he left an amazing legacy behind.  I thoroughly enjoyed watching him delve into a new frontier using a cuisine as a common language

America yet again celebrated Thanksgiving this Thursday.  A moment for families to attempt to get together and sit at the dinner table for some traditional or not so traditional meals as a family.  Which can be hard sometimes. We usually tend to eat as a family of three daily given the bulk of the extended family is a half planet away.   But we are thankful for a lot.  This time in California the big thanks goes to nature.  Nature who decided to shower this land with a bounty of fresh rain, a much needed downpour to drown out the fires burning among several communities and clear the air literally. Using that as an excuse to step out we went walking in a nearby wooded region to smell in the fresh moist air and give those stagnant limbs something to do.  Here are some pictures from that walk in the woods... Trading the indoor shopping craziness and clearances for the vast outdoors was and will remain the clear choice for us for any Thanksgiving..

A hazy fall day in the bay area courtesy some seriously climactic climate to the north of us.  Left bunch of humans dead is how bad it got with a sudden wildfire burning out of control in a sleepy town north of Sacramento. There was poor air quality advisory prompting many to familiarize themselves with a hitherto unknown short form called AQI as in Air Quality Index in the area where they live.  Ours was showing air quality worse than New Delhi and that is saying something.  New Delhi as in India's capital, has its denizens burning wood and cow dung patties along with garbage as a source of fuel to cook food and bake bricks for construction sites.  Result is an atmosphere with cancer causing particulate abundant in volume so much as to block out the sun from shining through. So we scoped out some pockets of relatively clean air in the bay area and decided to hit the coast of Santa Cruz.  A former mission lends its name to the town that was established in the late 18th centur

For five thousand or so years mankind has been making rules that are based on nothing more than someone's desire to control.  Control others. So as to convince large masses to obey and fall in line.   Some are in fact just stories.  Stories made powerful by clever marketing before marketing was a term.  Facebook has nothing on it. Here are some examples. 1. Monarchy 2.  Religion 3.  Sports - anything from the Pee Wee leagues to Major leagues to the Olympics 4.  Organization structures including those in Government like the Presidency etc. 5.  Marriage 6.  Divorce 7.  God 8. Taxes 9. Flags 10. Countries and smaller geographic zones 11. Money (anything from sea shells to digital) 12. Time Some rules and inventions were made to help the species thrive and actually not collide into each other - literally.  Examples are: 1. Define and develop pathways to get around (e.g. road, highway etc)  2.  Drive on one side of said road (right or left - you decide but stick to

A street in Las Vegas or Amsterdam or Mumbai.  A lonely soul looking for some action.  The sexual kind.  The purveyors of said service are many.  To the highest bidder go the spoils.   While the world's oldest profession has benefited humankind as being a pleasure or a vice (viewed differently) it is fundamentally about a transaction.  A transaction where just like buying eggs at a supermarket the buyer and seller exchange value. The value is determined in Euros or Dollars or Rupees and is considered legal or illegal depending on the lat and longitude of the location where said transaction takes place.  But in the end the parties to this transaction are left feeling adequately compensated.  This transaction also adds to the economic value of the society in its own way, again whether legal or otherwise. This is the ideal and easy to follow scenario. While human flesh and fluids are an integral part of the above described experience there is now a new contender in the 21st ce

These days you might have heard the phrase 'Peak Economic Activity', or 'Peak Apple' etc.  signifying a point in time that the economic cycle has reached a climactic and maximum efficiency threshold.  A 'Peak Apple' idea suggests that this trillion dollar machine cannot continue producing more i products and generate gargantuan profits at the same rate as it did before. This idea extrapolated tomorrow and decades from now are the primary thesis of historian Yuval Harari's writings.  In the primary narrative there is a concept that suggest our current political system has simply broken down.  Not broken to manage our current day to day activity but rather provide for a grand vision for the future. A future that defines what our humanity might look like and what the needs might be.  People in general will figure out that the civilization as an idea might itself not exist.  The idea that our very existence will be drastically different and might likely no

This morning with the winds changing direction it was finally good air quality to take a morning constitutional.  So I did.  And I took my camera with.  Reason being that there is a certain park with flowering beds where a large contingent of west coast residers weighing in next to nothing inhabit.  And when the warm sun is out they come flying out with speed and put on a dazzling display. I present Anna's hummingbirds.  This amazing animal can rotate its head up to 50 times a second as it shakes of pollen and can flap its wings even more times to maintain balance as it hovers like a helicopter in one place. Morning Gossip Sucking nectar from the red blossoms all day they gain weight through the day and then go rest over night in the bushes surrounding these flowering plants.  Ever protective of their young ones or eggs in a nest they can dive and attack if they fear another species approach their nesting site.

Is frightful.   So goes one of the incessantly played jingles in American shopping centers during the winter months at the onset of Xmas. We took a stroll in our neighborhood as we had nothing to do on a weekend evening and wanted to try some food options in a new mall that opened nearby. As we strolled we realized that the intense wild fires burning 100 miles north of us was sending massive dust particulates south toward us and had turned the giant star, our sun into something like a large citrus painted in oil on grey canvas. Other spots in the mall were festively decked in string lights and play areas for kids, including fog machines and fountains - perhaps not that delightful on a wintry evening.

Dictionary definition reads that a Voice-over is a technique to add narrative not part of the original script to describe something.  Usually involves a voice that is not part of the main production.  The latest movie we watched called 'In a World' starring Lake Bell who is writer, director and lead character portrays the role of a female voice with the right sound attributes needed to do voice-overs. The movie which I picked from a recently returned film cart at the library was surprisingly funny in an oddball way and introduced me to a world of film making from an altogether new perspective. It can take armies of people to produce a film from the busboys serving beverages to the staff of a studio to the actual directors and producers and lead actors.  This enterprise also has to market itself successfully to its potential audiences worldwide and the role of the preview or trailers as they are called in India is to do just that. In a world - as the title reads - are t

I might have pontificated on the subject of what America witnessed yet again but that was in the past.  The subject of Daylight Saving Time.  What a timely topic. Among the fairy tales man invented like Marriage, Religion, Money, Taxes there is one that is omnipresent and seriously unavoidable and that is Time. The other fantasies can be avoided religiously if one chooses to but no sir not Time.  It passes without you even knowing it and if you wanted to get something or from somewhere to somewhere you need it.  Or at least a vague idea of it. I just saw a movie about three US Navy sailors among hundreds flying to attack Japan in WWII who were thought to be lost at sea when their plane goes down in the Pacific.  Turned out after 45 days at open sea these three made it back to a Polynesian island on a raft.  They too counted time with a pencil and tally marks scribed on a life vest they saved.  Their very existence was at stake and yet they found time to mark time. See time is

A span of 100 years.  A century of changes.  Human beings have been through a lot of it.  Good, bad, mediocre, atrocious, hilarious, climactic, dazzling, exponential, exceptional.  Pick your adjective. From spare change to QR codes. From interpersonal dialog to text. From lack of clothing to fashionably less clothes. From starving in hunger to fashionably bulimic. From walking miles for water to running on rubber belts and then consuming (smart) water. From life threatening illness with no cure to overdosed deaths. From Teddy to Trump (or bear to a duck if you prefer animated analogies). In so doing one could easily argue we just came full circle.  And boy did we learn a thing or two? Or nothing? Not long ago in India kids woke up to the chants of the lord's name like a Pandurang or Vishnu, alternately that of Allah, in certain households and had to use that to their advantage or so the theory went.  The lord god watched them as they grew to be useful citizens. Enter

A movie review is like asking if you like Durian.  Or Ice Cream or Bacon.  Very personal.  In my opinion couple of films we watched this weekend fall in the bucket I will call stunningly stupid. As in no redemption qualities whatsoever. They cost me nothing.  Borrowed from the public library.  That was a plus.  And one of the films had a mildly watchable Alicia Vikander.  That film was titled 'Lara Cross Tomb Raider'.  While some infantile curiosity made me pick up the film it did have an element of action that kept it somewhat watchable.  Using the hackneyed trick of creating mythical oriental sounding names from an alphabet soup to depict long lost islands in the sea of Japan, to overusing CGI to a somewhat skimpily clad skinny woman running around falling debris the director was able to keep me watching the predictable ending. The story lacks any originality or purpose and is stupid on many levels.  I will not divulge all the nonsense save for an odd reference to the

Why do people do or say things on other people's behalf?  What about bewhole?  This whole half assed business is disturbing I tell you. And if they did go and do something on someone else's behalf what happens to the other half?  As to the quality of halves which one is the better one?   Gents to be polite always introduce their spouse as the better half.  But then that could simply mean they themselves are the best half? There are so many other halves out there at this point that there is no point in even discussing it.  But yet here we are. Doing just that.  Speaking of the haves and have nots they too have their share of halves.  Which means the have nots have effectively a quarter.  Of whatever it is. Which leads to the haves getting three quarters.  See four quarters make it whole.  No wonder there is disparity and a whole bunch of tension around having. But when it comes to have and to hold there is no guarantee people will do the latter.  The most important p

To sell out crowds.  LOL.  Not quite.  In fact the opposite.  Cold hard truth.  In bay area aka Silicon Valley the pressure is apparent and present.  How to get in to an elite Univ or College without fail when you have straight As.  But wait -- what if I do have a stellar academic profile.  That is not enough. Today we sat in on a session (myself in full disclosure to get material to write another blog) hosted by an Asian entrepreneur that talked about his and his team's unique value add offering to a child in school.  As in anywhere between middle school and high.  We are talking kids as young as 12 who literally had all their permanent teeth come in a few days ago.  Thus begins the new age of grooming.  Used to be brides (some in their teens) were prepared and still are in many parts of the developing world to find a suitor and get them wed.  From diet to beauty it is all a choreographed sequence with hopes to ensure a good home for the new bride to be. This is no differe

To an Indian ia lifestyle choice is to broadcast unsolicited advice to others.  No matter what the venue or the occasion the average Indian whether from the north or south will unabashedly dole out his perspective, recommendations and critique regardless of decorum. What decorum? This advice takes the form of hilarious to foul language or yelling from roof tops or streets to putting up signs to admonish any random reader of said signs. One such appears in a local Shiva Vishnu temple of the bay area.  The attendees (aka devotees if you asked them what they would prefer to be called), at said site which is a sprawling campus by the way, tend to park their vehicles and wander in with shoes which are left in myriad locations around the perimeter of the temple.  Since the Indian tradition advises removal of dirty footwear outside God's home these accouterments get left behind like a trail of bread crumbs from the parking lot all the way to the very threshold of the lord's

Is there truth in advertising? This is the modern day yoda question.  I just finished watching a docu/mocumentary about advertising paid for by a bunch of advertisers.  It was titled - POM Wonderful presents - the Greatest Movie ever sold. Created and directed by Morgan Spurlock who is a comic, film producer and director.  This movie was fun to watch.  When I was in my MBA program I had to decide a subject to major in and I chose not to pick Marketing.  Why?  Some innate idea that prevented me from pitching in to help others pitch.  What I do not know but just this wonky notion of why should anyone pitch anything to anyone? Well I guess to that extent I am a sell out.  Only a little.  You see I started an experiment recently that my loyal readership will have noticed and that is the annoying ads scrolling on the right banner and the bottom of this blog. I did not have any ad space prior to a month ago for the many years I had this blog but as I said I am experimenting to see

Despite some wild fires burning north of us and the wind gusts blowing south I decided I was going to go and complete a hike I had been planning to do for months. The result of the wildfire was that the entire surrounding area in the east bay hills was lit up in a dull orange haze as if the light was filtered from a stained glass.  The air quality left much to be desired but the wind kept the air cooler. I set out after lunch from the parking and passed some old growth Oaks, among other native species.  As long as I kept in the shade of the larger trees I was actually comfortable and cool.  Some had lived a full life and since given up and gone flat.. I startled some deer in the open meadow when I walked down one of the trails that was not in the shade. A creek that runs through the hill was bone dry except where the omnipresent shade did not let the surface water dry out.  Cows could be seen slaking their thirst on the dribs of moisture left in the shallow areas.