Brown Motion

Recently we were made aware of some changes to Indian tax laws that came as a surprise given that people in the know were not fully aware of the letter of said law.  That prompts me to write the below thoughts on working, living or surviving in India. The below applies to the chunky part of the bell curve where most of the billion reside.  So here is some wisdom freely shared - Anything can happen anytime. Always expect the unexpected. No power, no water, no autos, everything closed? No problem.  Go back to sleep. If you are a customer you are screwed.  Try not to be.  A customer I mean.  Very monastic. Jugaad.  We can try to find a way to solve any problem.  If you assume that the outcome is acceptable.  Otherwise go back to sleep. Do not ask any questions.   Most likely you will get - An unrelated answer A wrong answer A stare Another question Scratching of male genitalia standing at street corner is permissible...

Today we decided to feast on Udipi food courtesy place called Madras Cafe in Sunnyvale neighborhood of Silicon Valley.  The growing plethora of people from regions south in India along with slow and sure education of the locals about cuisine from parts of the world where half their colleagues come from is adding to the demand for Dosas and Idlis. Dosa being a lentil batter fried crepe and Idli being a lentil and rice slurry that is steamed to yield fluffy, savory, edible pillows. This was the nourishment prior to exploring some architectural landmarks in the tech hub of the world.  Apple recently finished building their new office campus courtesy of Norman Foster Designs - a British architect and it is marvelous to behold.  The Visitor Center located outside the main campus in Cupertino, CA provides an Augmented Reality tour to visitors allowing to see inside the building while pointing an ipad at a 1:92 scale model laid out in the center.  It is quite something...

It is not a style of critical writing.  It is the possibility that multiple universes co-exist.  We live in one version.  There may be others. This is the premise of a European sci-fi drama I just watched. It is called Mr. Nobody.  The premise of the film is captured in one sentence that a young boy explains somewhere during the course of the film - If you do not make a choice anything is possible. So the dilemma of choice is explained in the form of multiple lives that the protagonist ends up living.  Each in its version of reality.  This is one movie where you could start watching at any point and it would not make much difference.  You could even watch it backward since time is elusive in the film. If you are likely to get confused watching it in linear time then you will watching it in reverse.  And the other way round.  As in if you do not get confused with all that is going on then you won't. This subject is borderline metaphys...

Am feeling sleepy.  Why?  I just got my mouth cleaned.  How?  Well it is the twice annual event called 'Dental Cleaning' aka a professional mouth cleaner enters my oral cavity with tools and performs a thorough scrub a dub that takes 45 min. After all the pounding and drilling and scratching my head hurts to the point where I feel very woozy.  Hence the sleepy comment. So what is this amazing exercise I speak of you ask?   Let me explain it as follows: I call it 'The Mandibular Show'.  My cleaning lady aka dental hygienist is called Mandi and I am not kidding.  She really is.  And she cleans the inside of my jaws.  Aka my gum and teeth.  Twice annually.  I come out presumably with a winning smile once I am awake.  So back to explaining the process. 1. Arrive at appointed hour at dentist office and grab one of many chairs and pretend to read some idiotic magazine till they call you in. 2.  Arrive at the...

A film written and directed by Maya Forbes of Boston and set in the 70s.  It is autobiographical showing the life of a person with bipolar disorder / manic depression.  The protagonist played by Mark Ruffalo is a nervous wreck who is shown to have a high IQ but is completely awkward and borderline alcoholic. He along with his African American wife are raising two daughters in a Boston neighborhood while being on the poverty line.  Some aspect of the film seemed incongruent but may have been intentional.  For example the family lives on handouts from a great grandmother who has all the money tied in a trust.  But Mark's character Cam is shown always wearing Lacoste brand shirts, which tend to cost in the triple digits. The wife played by Zoe Saldana also seems to be dressed well regardless of calling out how poor they are in many scenes.  The film has a sort of home movie type feel which was produced by the director's husband.  One of the children ...

Every few years you start hearing new terminology and unnecessary language around you if you are paying attention.  Pointedly foolish as it were.  Oxymoronic. It is like clockwork. Here are some words that contradict themselves - Premium Economy Shallow Grave Great Daycare New Vintage Secret Service Deafening Silence Tiger Shrimp Now while we wait for America to be the first country to have a minority majority we are left to wonder if more driver less cars will slowly speed into our lives. Of course this whole blog is false.

Every so often there are news articles on research being conducted here and there about who we are and what is the meaning of it all. A recent study in the UK asked the same question and posited a response indicating that everything we think is real is in fact a hallucination.  Some dictionaries describe the verb 'hallucinate' as - experience a seemingly real perception of something not actually present, typically as a result of a mental disorder or of taking drugs. I find that description fascinating.  There are a lot of assumptions in the description.  First is Experience.  Second the use of word Real.  Third the word Perception and then Present.  People that study this stuff would have a field day with it.  Everything is a matter of perception at the end of the day.  Whoa! I just tried to present another weird cliche.  End of the day?  Which implies there is a certain beginning and end?  How arrogant.  Perception too...

Always on the offensive and decidedly a cult making billions of ad dollars by engaging people in an addictive trance the business known to the world as Facebook had to do an about face of sorts. Meek and perhaps humbled the CEO wrote to its flock that he had made some mistakes and was sorry.  That this brand has managed to be a master at studying human psychology and implementing a software that can take advantage is nothing but pure capitalism.  Inherently nothing wrong with that. What they slipped up on was the equally inherent embedded promise.  A promise to safeguard what might be sacrosanct.  People's personal stuff.  Stuff that matters to a politically motivated entity.  And who these days is not politically motivated?  Right.  Really?  It is okay if I decide to share it but just don't come expecting to see what I think is hot or how I slept last night and what I think about my president. Therefore the back pedaling and mea ...

In America the land of marketing this title could be misinterpreted (or perhaps not) if written differently but would sound the same... Butt Weight.  There's more.  Indeed there is.  Obesity continues to kill more Americans than traffic deaths.  Heart related issues largely attributed to arterial plaque build up (the bloody kind, not of the gum - in fact 'gum' is a good antidote for dental plaque if we get all scientific about it.. chew on it). This build is a result of some ingredients found a plenty in the fast food serving establishments.  By that I do not mean all the germs (truck stops and road side outlets et al) although those contribute in a different way.  The large beef purveying chain restaurants tend to have the large angina causing cholesterol spiked food which in copious amount can hasten the mortality.  In a recent book I read called 'What I Eat' the author captured the varying diets of the world and showed that greasy spoons acro...

A two hour soporific production which is a cross between Gulliver's travels and Armageddon that tends to drift aimlessly with the help of star power. Using Matt Damon as the poster boy literally is now getting old.  Hollywood realizing the material is sketchy at best uses a once popular face to peddle half witted and crazy movies to the unsuspecting audience. Watching them as cheaply as possible as a good alternative.  So I rented this DVD last night and found that the tale was indeed mildly intriguing with some light moments but otherwise a drag with holes bigger than those in the ozone layer.  By the way the movie premise was about the latter as in the greenhouse gases emitted by us humans getting us closer to the day when gases escaping from the ice will melt Antarctica and lead to catastrophic floods. Using some real data like Norway's food bunker where unique grain and sperm varieties are stored underground for a real life apocalypse the movie wanders for an e...

We did that (sort of) on a trip to Japan.  Not exactly foothills but close.  Ramen to those uninitiated in the fine art of eating food are noodles. But this blog is about an event close to home. Here in California.  We tried out a new Ramen joint that opened up in the neighborhood. Now noodles traditionally was a cheap food, to the point Japanese women did not want to eat it.  Process to make it was grimy, sweaty and back breaking.  It was made and consumed in the back alleys.  Some forward thinking chefs decided to give it a facelift some years ago in Japan and the noodle craze was born. In India in the late eighties a large Swiss owned corporation called Nestle introduced an instant noodle brand called Maggi to time starved desis.  2 minute noodles the jingle went and a whole host of families adopted it as a foreign food that met with their taste preference.  The broth made by boiling water and hard cubes of solidified masala made the fla...

I will get to that in a minute.   But 'What I Eat - Around the world in 80 Diets', was the title of my most recent read.  More of a coffee table book littered with amazing picture stories of people around the planet and what constitutes their daily caloric intake. Created and authored by Faith D'Aluisio who is a producer and author resident in Napa, CA this is a fascinating view of global food consumption linked to a variety of people, differing age, both genders as well as multiple job profiles. What might be a suggestion label from the US Food and Drug Agency or FDA in terms of a recommendation for a 2,000 calorie diet per day is far cry from what the world actually eats.  As to the ideal food pyramid and the building block elements like Vitamins and Protein too the reality is a manifestation of access to raw material, living condition including geography and economics. The book covers the gamut from the urine drinking ...

I went on a binge watching videos of many influential and iconic figures of our time courtesy of YouTube.  I started with interviews conducted at the Stanford Graduate School of Business where eminent personalities are interviewed by a then GSB student. I found a few traits among all these folk that I want to summarize - Be passionate about your objective or goals (first have a goal) - if there is no passion then it does not matter what you are doing because your heart is not into it.  Examples abound from Steve Jobs to CEOs of other large corporations.. Most enterprises or successful businesses get there by being able to convince others to buy their product or service.  You cannot do the convincing if you do not believe in it.  Passion is also contagious.  That helps in gathering a fan following, no marketing needed. Be humble - humility is the most under appreciated virtue in business.   Bragging gets you only so far but admitting what you do...

An old Agatha Christie classic starring the detective Hercule Poirot.  I watched the latest film adaptation directed by Englishman Ken Branagh. He also plays the role of the Belgian detective with the sharp moustache and a penchant for symmetry and order.  The film is littered with a stellar cast including Penelope Cruz and Michelle Pfeiffer along with Johnny Depp and Willem Dafoe rounding out with Dame Judi Dench. All the cast are passengers on the luxury train that left Istanbul in Turkey to points west.  The plot centers on finding out who murdered Ratchet (Depp's character).  It turns out that Ratchett himself was a rather nasty scoundrel and killer in his past life. Poirot with his keen eye for observation (material and non) and an ability to observe the human condition and its foibles narrows down the motive among all passengers who had access to Ratchett.  He concludes with dramatic flourish after he makes his determination of who the killer is whi...

"Success is not final.  Failure is not fatal.  What matters is the courage to carry on”. ‘The Darkest Hour' is a film by Joe Wright a Brit, with Gary Oldman starring in the role of Winston Churchill, Britain's Prime Minister during the second war.  The film actually lasted 90 minutes.  Oldman won the leading man Oscar for his role.   It is a biopic of the PM during the critical period of the war when Britain faces an almost impossible future and tries to capture the essence of the man that was an unlikely or perhaps accidental candidate to become PM, following the resignation of Neville Chamberlain. It was by all accounts suicidal to take on that role at that dark moment in history when Hitler had had his run of Europe and strangled the Allied forces.  Churchill's courage and denial to enter into a peace with a fascist was coupled with his King's support as he led England into war. King George VI's shy nature is in contr...

A sister in a catholic school admonishes her co-ed wards at a homecoming dance.  Not intended to be a pun perhaps but that and many other quips like that make for a fast moving and hilarious drama titled 'Ladybird'.  A coming of age film depicting Saoirse Ronan in the lead role (an Irish American actor) of a teenage girl growing up in Sacramento. Sacramento is California's state capital and like most American capital cities is a relatively speaking 'nothing much happens' kind of quiet town.  That forms the basis for the rebellious daughter of a middle class couple who wants to ditch her existence in it and move east for college.  The mother and daughter relationship in this film is the constant thread that pulls the audience in and gives them goosebumps and belly laughs all at the same time. While being cliched at times, evidence of being crafted by someone raised on the liberal left coast it still manages to be refreshingly controversial. The film was writt...

I suffer from short term (some might argue selective) amnesia.  I need reminding time and again.  I use the feature on my phone extensively where it starts chiming loudly alerting me to some timely event that I need to pay attention to.  Whilst the software maker calls it an ALARM it need not be alarming.  Merely a subtle hint would do. Most times it is an item on the grocery list.  But a key one.  Like salt.  What would life be without it?  I wonder.  Same goes for sugar.  And so on.  But ensuring the procurement of said items is a task that needs to be done on time.  Else everything else fails downstream. There are also some other more personal reminders.  Like picking up the child from somewhere to take some place.  What with clubs and competitions and birthday parties and the maintenance of the social fabric?  I also need constant reminding of where it is I am taking them.  Otherwise we start drivin...

English is spoken by about 500 Million people across the globe.  For about 400 Million it is their first language and for the others their second or third. But an Australian might have a hard time following a guy in Delhi trying to tell him when a train arrives or leaves a station. Here then are some uniquely Indian-English nuskas - The express will also be pressed into service in Delhi-Chandigarh and Delhi-Lucknow sectors The Deccan Queen left Mumbai Bang on Time at 5.10 pm (and sometimes promptly came to a halt outside the station is not mentioned in the coverage)  I would like to thank all of you all He came today itself A thought leading lady of India called Rama Bijapurkar in fact wrote an entire book titled - We are like that only - in a nod to the oft used expression in Indian colloquial language.  One of her interviews I read captures the most basic problem in Indian culture esp when it comes to customer service - Merely apologizing witho...

It was in the 1980s that I as a teenager visited the hills of Ooty or Ootacamund in the Northwest corner of the state of Tamilnadu, with my parents.  The train station was and is called Udagamandalam.  So you guessed it -there is a railroad that one can take to get to the summit at just over 2,400 feet above sea level. The train and the railway now are part of a UNESCO World Heritage site designation which ensures a lot of visitors and therefore revenue to contribute to the otherwise bankrupt rail system owned and operated by Indian Rail.  Technically it is labeled the Nilgiri Mountain Railway and operates in a jurisdiction called Southern Rail. It is the only rack rail in India and last night I stumbled on a British documentary about the origins and ongoing operations of this magnificent journey in time.  The rack is essentially a flat gear that engages with a cog in the locomotive as it climbs up and slides downhill allowing extra traction on a steep grade. ...

Now before you go flying off the handle reading too much into the title I should caution you to simmer down. Tempest in the tea pot is not what I am shooting for.  Simply shooting the breeze.  These days America is facing a lot of headwinds after all. While POTUS is constantly embroiled in some imbroglio or another spanning Russian collusion to alleged activities conducted in the extra curricular realm there are local issues taking a bite too.  Elsewhere in the country brick and mortar stores are fizzling out leaving large malls unoccupied and vast tracts of land and buildings empty.  While India is looking at making millions of cheap toilets with brick America is working on a brick wall.  Perhaps someone might think green and recycle or hit a brick wall? People seem to be getting scammed following a cryptocurrency fad and housing prices are out of reach for many. Nut jobs (perhaps post scam or after hitting a wall) with guns are decimating the avail...

Roman history is littered with very unusual sounding names.  As are the historical records of many civilizations of yesteryear. As far as Roman folks are concerned here are a few that make their way in today's quotes or anecdotes. Pliny the Elder - This dude lived 2,000 years ago and was a naturalist, botanist and scientist and became a commander in the Roman army in its initial days of being an empire.  He was friend to emperor Vespasian.  The name Vespa (for modern day scooters) has nothing to do with this emperor however (that honor goes to the Italian word meaning Wasp).  He is also credited in finding a word for hops used in beer making - Lupus Salictarius. Pliny the Younger - The nephew of who else but Pliny the Elder.  These two hung out a lot.  The elder in fact died helping people running away from the explosion of Mt. Vesuvius which buried the town of Pompeii in the south of Italy. In our travels through Italy we visited these ruins and...

Not misspelled.  Sircuit suggests the idea that an average person's brain will be fried in short order if they visit India .  Hence short sircuit. The 'sir' suffix refers to the incessant groveling and apologising that takes place when visiting India and begins with any person in the service industry to a merchant selling goods.  This conversation goes something along the lines of - You - Why did you not show up on time? Taxi driver - Sir - sorry sir.  I actually over slept. You - but we discussed this before hand. Taxi driver  - Sir actually sir I was very tired from driving. You - Why is my room not ready? Hotel staff - including managers - a stare that lasts anywhere from 1 min to 5 min followed by - Sir actually we don't know sir.  We will find out for you.  Said finding might take any number of hours and you might want to find a tall building to jump out from. You - Why is this room dirty? Hotel staff  - likely the same clueles...

A movie titled 'Marshall' showcases the biography of a tireless advocate for colored people making history on his way to becoming an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court many decades later.  Thurgood Marshall championed his cause under the umbrella of the NAACP which is a non profit that fights for civil rights of African Americans. Played by Chad Boseman in the lead role along with Josh Gad as his sidekick in the role of a Jewish civil cases lawyer in Connecticut, Marshall successfully steers the case to a win defending a black servant accused of raping a white socialite woman played by Kate Hudson. The film shows this one case in detail while alluding to the work Marshall did on behalf of the NAACP throughout the country representing the under represented class. Josh plays Sam Friedman, a skittish Jewish lawyer afraid of losing what little reputation he has in the small town defending a black man in the 1940s. Marshall successfully coaches him from the defense ta...

It was a short week this week.  By an hour.  A leftover from the days when most people went out farming. California like 47 other states in the union switched to Daylight Saving Time this weekend.  Arizona and Hawaii do not obey this statute. It is stupid.  It is a derivative of Standard Time Act passed by the US Congress a hundred years ago and amended several times to the latest format defined by Uniform Time Act of 1966. The emphasis for this abomination is an apparent savings in energy use when measured on a national scale.  There is not any measurable change and it has been empirically proven. For starters in America where you have 24 hour retail and now with online access to most any service any time of the 24 hour day there is really no sense of ear marking our calendar with this drivel. All it does is throw people off and mess their natural rhythm.  It also leads to mass confusion since half the population overburdened with running their cr...

My better half is more patient and caring than I.  She can nurture and provide care to living things that I am certain of.  Take for example this orchid.  We got it a few years back when it had an amazing purple blossom.  Or two.  Looked spectacular.  Did not know till I researched it but among flowering plants the Orchid family after the sunflower family has the largest species of plants.  Over 20,000 of them. We have a type of Dendrobium since it seems to like the eastern sun and also survived with care and water over a year or more.  Then over a period of weeks the flowers dried and fell off. What was left was this plant with large deep green waxy leaves with no flowers. Today it bloomed again.  Not quite full on yet but five buds appeared and are headed for opening night. It will be a great burst of color when that happens.

Picture this... Now what possible ideas do you get when you see something like this? Is the advert for a Whole Bath?  As in Wholly and the W fell off? Is there a Holly branch involved?  Is the shrub somehow integral to the bathing experience? Is it Holy misspelled as Holly? Is 1 bath possible in 22 wells?  What of the charges?  Am I getting electrocuted and is the idea somehow holy?  Is there a hole involved?  Well?

Luck is dumb.  It does not need smarts.  Hence dumb luck.  A recent study caught my attention.  It was conducted by some academics in Italy and concludes that while you may be the smartest or hardest working guy in the room, you may not be the richest (if that were to be a measure of success). Face it - a lot of us go through life measuring ourselves on a yardstick of our peers' choosing.  That being success, wealth as in money in the bank and toys - whether its cars or homes or planes.  Fame and power come in a close second place and often are integral to it. But all that superiority is not always tied to smarts and hard work.  So says the study.  And to be honest we see it in everyday life.  At work, at play or looking down our street. Turn on the idiot box or the handheld device of your choosing and there are overwhelming examples of people occupying the airwaves some might argue the Twitter too that classically fit the outcome of t...

I was bored this morning.  Actually bored may not be the right word because I had not actually attained that state yet.   I knew if I did not go looking for something interesting or entertaining I would pretty soon be that.  So I fixed it. I found my favorite comic being interviewed by another great comedian Jon Stewart.  This was a recording from 1997 that HBO did for their cable programming to commemorate 40 years of comedy and Jon's guest was George Carlin. In the conclusion of this conversation George went on to share that while he studied in a progressive school in NY there were no grades and scores given to students. He did not get any A's or B's growing up but the only A's he did care for and receive were from his audience. They 'Admired' him, 'Appreciated' his acts and provided the 'Applause'.  He got the A's he wanted. George also was humble about how he got to be so clever and famous in time.  A lot is genetic lottery.  His...

We have all been there.  Tired after waking.  But you just woke so how is it you are tired? There is PhD level research on this subject.  Many a quack has a theory.  Mattress manufacturing is $15 Billion industry. Yet there are sleep deprived people walking like zombies all around us.  What is going on?  Every month it seems some charlatan comes with a new patented method to help us sleep better.  From nose implants to gadgets to perfume and create melodies in the room to hand crafted steel coils made in European factories (which could mean Bosnia but who understands geography?  esp after missing sleep) that go in to sheep skin mattresses for the best sleeping experience ever! Now there is a movement fueled by showcasing supply chain economics to those than can barely add 2 and 2.  Take the middle man out and get it direct online.  Save hundreds.  We will show you how.  We will actually just give you $500 back - now that ...

This is the existential question being asked in a film I just saw titled Brad's Status.  Directed by an openly bisexual director called Mike White it stars Ben Stiller in the role of Brad. The reference to his status is both contextual to the film as a neurotic and ever doubting, somewhere in midlife crisis mode parent of a young boy heading to college and a proxy for the 'social media' phenomenon of the day.  As in FB. While his buddies from college back when he was a student at Tufts went on to be overtly successful as in wealthy, Brad finds himself doubting if he ever made it.  His self reflection steers him to believe that he lost his credibility in the world of peers and therefore his status is not worthy of being noticed. It takes a lecture from a junior in college to reset his focus on what truly is a good life.  Chasing something all the time (the concept of Maya as the Buddha described) is natural to us humans but it is futile. The movie explores th...

I think there is mass confusion on what 'meditation' means.  It can certainly mean different things to different people.  Especially when it is being marketed by some (purportedly) newly enlightened crowd.  In America there are many who have taken to the airwaves to proclaim this as a cure or at least a distraction for what ails many Americans - lack of time and overwork. Frankly in its very elementary form people need to realize that without labeling it meditation or any other (re)new found badge they just need to slow down.  Breathe.  Think.  All naturally available options but always forgotten in the hurry to post to FB or to Twit or email or text. I attended a workshop at work.  Wow - that is very revealing.  No seriously.  It was called - Mindful Communication. There are agreeably some core principles that one can adopt in their daily routine such as - consciously being aware of what is being said and how.  Making deliberate ...

Avoiding an extra petrol consuming appliance from occupying the road is always a win.  This is achieved all over the world by informal and formal means.  Some places are more efficient at it than others. The bay area is no exception.  Infrastructure that once may have sufficed is clogged with the increasing demands placed on it.  Government being what it is remains inefficient and therefore unable to provide a solution.   Another topic for another blog. Meantime private enterprise steps in.  There are number of software driven solutions that can reside on a mobile phone and help the user get into a vehicle to transport more than one individual from point A to point B. I myself prefer driving but have been able to use some of these Apps and pick random strangers in the direction of my travel thereby cutting travel time and also making some money.  You see if you add more individuals to the car you are qualified as a Higher Occupancy Vehicle ...

I am slow.  And I have no fashion sense to the point I struggle to identify with the very word 'fashion'.  So I am the least qualified to talk about it.  Fashion.  Described as what is trendy and perhaps a proxy of the zeitgeist of society.  A point in time.  For someone who believes in the notion of time being fluid it is incongruent to contemplate. But that does not stop me from saying my mind.  LOL - it is my blog and I can do what I want. I cannot understand marketing anything to anyone either.  So that brings me to the drivel I see in the media each week about what a specific demographic might or might not want.  This public service announcement is to the purveyors of wares to a consumption obsessed global society - with America as the torchbearer. Now it seems the spend away torch might fizzle.  This so called millennial generation is to blame.  First of all I find the millennials to possess a characteristic called At...

Once in a while you get a lemon. This time it was a DVD I rented called Kill Switch.  A sci-fi genre film its premise is a mad scientist developing an echo universe that will feed unlimited energy to our living universe therefore solving our energy problems. Once this premise is explained by a wide eyed, almost bionic woman to the protagonist who is doing his best to remain more wide eyed and not get lost the film rapidly disintegrates before your eyes.  It is basically 90 min of bad acting that includes a lot of f*** and s*** and weirdo drones trying to shoot at the protagonist every five minutes. While the viewer may randomly catch on to the sequence of time as the movie flip flops between present day and past the director decides to introduce some sci fi jargon and explosions that throw you off. This movie totally feels like it was pushed out before the gang that made it had a chance to actually review it.  They might have canned it themselves?

Just finished reading the biography of the master by acclaimed writer Walter Isaacson.  Quite a reveal of the person who is admittedly recognized by many as the famous artist who painted the Mona Lisa.  The original sits in the French Louvre. What is not known widely becomes the subject of this book including describing Leonardo's childhood in Vinci, Italy as an illegitimate offspring, who happens to be gay and left handed. While he is readily recognized for his art, he is described as a polymath with wide array of skills that he developed through persistent observations of nature around him. He moved between Florence and Milan, then two epicenters of trade and industry circa early 16th century.  While he worked in courts for royalty and noblemen of the times he also pitched his resume to a king claiming his skills at engineering and designing state of the art weapons. His background working in theater led him to devise flying contraptions for the stage which he ...