Blog Post #46 - Where is home? Where are you Originally from? - Geography and its importance

If you watch a Ted video from Pico Iyer  you will be amazed by the question he poses about the famous question

Where is home?

Where are you from?

This is a topic that has been in my mind for a very very long time specifically when we went to San Antonio in 1998. There we went to river walk and boat ride and the boat captain asked an innocent question

When are you guys from?
We were about 17 of us and I answered "Dallas,Tx".

He smiled and asked "Where are you originally from?" . I didn't understand but I did quickly reply "India" ( I didn't say chennai,tamilnadu etc as I thought he might  not understand any of that).

I was thinking - Why would he not believe me? I am not a tourist. I am a tax payer and a good citizen. Never cause any trouble and even throw litter in thrash (while I may not do when I am in India!).

Also , I wanted to tell me "Hi Buddy - "we are all from Africa!" - read genealogy. Like JFK I wanted to say
" Ich bin ein Berliner "- I wasn't sure if he would understand German either. .This is San Antonio and JFK did impress Germans by saying "We are all Berliners" in German. I don't know the african equivalent of it.. Also another speech from and before that read this blog

http://blog.ted.com/2009/10/07/the_danger_of_a/

and dont forget to watch her video.

She mentions repeatedly Africa is not a nation - it is a continent. People say let's help India,Indonesia,Srilanka and Africa. What? - Are you going to help 54 countries many of whom speak different languages even within the same country.

She mentions in her talk that while she was in an American University some one asks her
"Hi - I have seen in movies African , do African husbands really beat their wifes?"

She answered " Yes. By the way I have also watched and read lot of books and movies from America
- "Do you really have many psychos?"

That is the power of the single story. We collect a story and try to generalize.

When some one asks me "Where are you from" I always think that they are trying to add more information to learn about me without talking to me. He is an South Indian. Madrasi!. May not know Hindi. May be good in English. Doesn't know much about Norh,East or West of India. Eats Idli ,Rice ,Sambar. Loyal,Honest and Hard working.

We all try to assess other people as to where they are from.
Pico Iyer (read the beginning of the post) was born in England ,Raised in USA and lives in Japan for last 20+ years and loves Japan.

If you ask him where you are from  - he says do you want to know where my doctor,dentist and mall are?(something to that effect) to underscore the point that in this diverse world people travel,live and die in all different places.

The next time you ask someone where are you from - check what you are concluding based on this answer in your mind (and how quickly you try to assess the other person based on just this fact!)

Learn well ,Live well and let other live well
Sivakumar Manikanteswaran

Blog Post #45 - What are you thankful for (usual question),What is personal accountability and how can it help you? What did you this year some one else is thankful for ?

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving.

Folks in US celebrate the arrival of Pilgrims in Plymouth Rock and the feast that was held with the help of Indians.

It sounds so nice when you hear the Pilgrims (who eventually became the conquerors) were taught what to plant in this new found and navigate around in this part of the world were finally put in reservations and became casino owners. These Indians were eventually treated better than the Indians who are not given all these perks by the Mexicans. 

Why are they folks called Native Indians? Because Columbus was adamant that he found India and continued to call these folks Indians while like Russell Peters says Indians in India are saying "Columbus, where are you? When are you coming?

Back to Thanksgiving . The story of Pilgrims and the thanksgiving feast is now a retailers biggest sales days in US . 

While folks are getting ready to shop for black friday and cyber monday for big ticket items to aaa batteries here are 2 questions to ponder in the order listed below

1. What did you do this year that some one else is thankful for?
2. What are you thankful for?

Did you donate money to charity?
Did you help by donating time?
Did you stuff to good will?
Did you teach a kid that is not yours? - mentor middle school or high school at risk kids
Did you think about helping people? - just the thought.


If no one is thankful for you except your company,your friends and family and retailers whom you supported then you should consider being in the list of some one who thanks you for your help.

Making this a thanksgiving tradition to ask this question to yourself ,your friends and family? If you are not in US and you have nothing to do with thanksgiving then make this the New year's Eve question for yourself and your friends and family.
This question and the fact that this is important has bee recently published in a study by Psychology today and it has a lot of practical  uses to help you be more happy by feeling more useful (not feeling used)

Now to the second question

What are you thankful for?

This question has a lot of importance too

1. If you make it a practise for the next 20 days to daily document 3 things that you are thankful about it trains a new habit in finding thankful things

In the book
QBQ! The Question Behind the Question: Practicing Personal Accountability at Work and in Life Hardcover

the author John Miller asks us to add the following 2 things and the word I whenever you find yourself complaining

Example - If your complaint is The traffic is bad. He asks us to ask these questions

What can I do to make traffic better?
How can I make this situation better for me?

Adding the concept of personal accountability is critical to feel more powerful than the situation.

Let says your complaint is 

The Government is corrupt.

Add 
What can I do to make the government better?
How can I make this government better?

This means you can act on this and you are making yourself part of solution. If you don't want to be a politician then stop complaining but atleast vote for right candidates, submit petitions, create blog and post useful stuff(or useless stuff like me) to let everyone know how they can help along with you.

I think you get the point

2. Look for positive side of any thing that troubles you and starting finding thankful stuff

My Kids are annoying me and not letting me work - 
Change it to thank god and I have kids and also I have a job.

The weather is very bad .It is raining.

Change it to - I am happy to atleast be in a place where I can sleep and work which is not affected by this rain. The grass will grow green and there will be less drought.

My job is not exciting

Change it to - I am thankful I have a Job and adding the QMB principle what can I do to make this work more exciting ? 

There is a concept of Learned Helplessness and Learned Optimism popularized by Martin Seligman
I will talk about those books in the future posts and for now eat your turkey (if you are a vegetarian eat whatever you eat) .shop your retailers  and ponder over these questions

1, What am I thankful for?
2. How can I take personal accountability ?
3. What did I do that some one else is thankful for?

Happy Thanksgiving
Sivakumar Manikanteswaran

Blog Post #44 - What is Rosetta Stone? Why Should you care?

If you have not heard about it we can learn it now.

If you think it is a company selling language packages - learn spanish in 20days . You are correct. Some one did create a successful company using that name. 

There is a long history and story which involves Egypt, England and France. 

Here it is in brief - with all names and places removed except  the town of Rashid (Rosetta) in the Nile Delta where the stone was found.

This stone has same message in 3 languages. The 3 languages are

Priest's language  - Hieroglyphs

Ruler's language  - Greek

Common People's Language- Demotic 

The Priest's of Egypt were very powerful and they crowned the 12 year old king and blessed him and told him that they will serve along with him. Now there is also something gold silver that needs to be given to the Priest by the king (who may not have even know that he is a king but a prince).
At that time the language people spoke in Egypt was Demotic. The rulers were Greek.

There you go. Now when the stone was discovered - while it was being used as a building material by French, taken over by British and finally now in British museum was the key to a lot of stuff that we know about Egypt.

How? Ok. You know the Mummies and the pyramids and the phoenix and the King Tut stuff.
Guess what , if someone didn't take time to use the greek and map out the Hieroglyphs we would never know what was written inside the pyramids.

So in a way Rosetta stone is seen as a concept - a sample which represented a key with which the whole was uncovered. Now the next time you see the Mummies or the Pyramids think Rosetta.

Without somebody repeating themselves in 3 languages we would know the lost one. Think how it would have been if all 3 had been lost.! 

Remember the Greek always survived including the 2008 recession!

Happy Learning
Sivakumar Manikanteswaran

Blog Post #43 - Spend 15minutes to learn how to remember 10 things and recall in exact order - Memory peg technique

 Dale Carnegie who wrote how to win friends also had developed a technique for memory recall using memory pegs. 

Before we begin I Wonder  how many friends Dale Carnegie would have in facebook today ? 

In  a program about facebook sometime back a reporter checked and found Mark Zuckerberg had about 700 friends as he was accused of not being a social person but managed to create the largest social portal on earth. 

Let us come back to our little world of memory and remembering 10 things.

Here is how it works

Memorize 10 rhyming words like below. Create a story around these . Picture them vividly in your mind with minute details. Descriptive details with even sometimes disgusting images. Anything works other than the mundane ordinary stuff. 

"If you follow the crowd you will be lost in the crowd " 

Always differ from the crowd to be remember - bad or ugly   not good.

Memory Peg technique -
Memorize the following

1. One- Run
2. Two-Zoo
3. Three-Tree
4. Four-Door
5. Five-Hive

Now for the 5 more
6. Six - Sick
7. Seven - Heaven
8. Eight- Gate
9.Nine - Wine
10. Ten - Den

Let us try this with an example - a grocery list that you want to remember

1. Milk
2. Bread
3. Potato
4.Salt
5.Soda - Fanta


6.Onion
7. Ice Cream
8. Rice
9.Tomato
10.Sugar

In the next 15minutes
1. You will be able to recall not only every on of these
2. Recall them in the same order
3. Ask a friend to challenge with item number you can tell them the item
4. Ask a  friend to challenge with item name and you can tell them the order


Isn't that magic?

Our mind is not a computer. Fools who created computers started comparing the same. We don't follow Moore's law

Next. You need a peg rhyme which you memorize.

Then for each peg you need a one line story.

Start with one - Run.

Imagine a white horse (ok.. if you like Black pick that one). Now imagine a race on your local road with lots of horses .. imagine your car/bus/you stuck in the traffic watching this race where the finish line is next to you. Suddenly the horse come to you and stops and you realize that there is no jockey...no one riding the horse. You look close and you are amazed to see a "put your first thing here" which is a cow with a milk can 2.5 gallon whole milk..

Proceed Two - Zoo

On to your local zoo when you visit the primates .. yes you guessed it right the chimps,apes and monkeys ( do you know the difference between these three and do you know if all monkeys are primates? If these are primates what are not primates ?) there are 2 monkeys in a cage each throwing something at each other .You look closely and find a Plastic bag with its contents rolled like a ball - squished . On close observation one of the monkey who doesn't like close observations throws the "second thing" at you which you are amazed to see is nothing but a loaf of bread.


On to Three - tree

On your backyard there is a new tree which wasn't there yesterday . This morning when you woke up there t  it was 10000 ft high and it had a big tire tied to it which could be used as a swing. You are looking at this big swing when it starts to move and sprays 'third thing" - potato at you.


Four-Door
When you go to you the local airport you find that the big revolving door which always hits you ,your suitcase and cart without mercy is moving smoothly. You start using it and while you are ready to exit from this claustrophobic experience you realize that you cannot get out because something is stuck under the door and it is "the fourth thing". a big box of salt.


Five-Hive
Imagine a bee hive. a big bee hive with 1 million bees. Can you hear them buzzing . you are carrying something in your hand - the fifth thing and without you realizing it fell down into the bee hive? How come? Were you flying? did you drop down and the thing flew. We dont know but we do know now the hive has the "fifth thing" - you cover your face with your hand and go close to see feared with buzzing bee reading to sting and you find the fifth thing - "Fanta Soda Bottle" . All for a sweet fanta in a honey bee hive..orange color on a honey bee hive.. wow.

The list was

1. Milk
2. Bread
3. Potato
4.Salt
5.Soda - Fanta


Now stop reading. go walking. Think about these 5 pegs and the stories. Try recalling the 3rd thing. Three-Tree. the 1000 ft ok. there was the tree. a tire swing. something was hitting you. and it sprayed ya potato.

What was the cow doing with milk can. It was on the horse. Ok. that was milk first thing.
On the airport - got it . The door didn't open because of salt box.

Please follow along and if possible write another 5 things to experiment. Believe me - you wont need the next to -do list app in your smartphone and you can be smarter than the phone.


Ok. now you know 5 things in order and you can recollect any of them. Where was the Bread and Fanta ? Do you know?

Let's go to the next 5

6.Onion
7. Ice Cream
8. Rice
9.Tomato
10.Sugar

and the pegs

6. Six - Sick
7. Seven - Heaven
8. Eight- Gate
9.Nine - Wine
10. Ten - Den

You guessed it right.
Six -Sick

You go to your hospital . There is a patient lying on the bed. Very sick. The doctor and nurse are sad and they get a big injection syringe.  It is made of glass and you can see it. It has your sixth thing. 12 Onions and looking at it the patient starts crying. Why we do cry when we peel onions ? you keep thinking about onions.

Seven-Heaven
There is a ladder on your living room which appeared suddenly . All things appear suddenly unless you pay attention to the minute things about how things change on an everyday basis. So the ladder against your living room wall actually leads you to - you keep walking and walking and start seeing smoke,clouds,demi-gods,st.peter,(include all religious stuff here) and finally when you see if there is god ( i know you never believed you can every meet god in human form) you find the throne empty(isn't god considered an emperor like humans. have you ever imagined another animal - say elephant being a god?)

you see the seventh thing in the throne and since this is heaven there is no limit to eating what is on the throne in nice containers. an ice cream . You scream  at the ice cream! we all do!

Eight- Gate
You want to go an important place and you guessed it right. You are late. You need to go ..go ..go and as you are going on your brand new bicycle (so what happened to your car/bike?) you find yourself stopped by a train.. going super fast and there it is a huge gate and what is hanging on that Gate? Funny. Rice has grown on the gate . Rice. white rice .. you are impressed about new agriculture methods as more and more land is now used for non agriculture. There you have it the eighth thing - rice.

Move along to Nine- Wine
You are an adult. More than 18+ or 21+ and legally allowed to look and buy wine. So you go to your friends place and find a wine bottle waiting there to celebrate your birthday. You wonder how grapes turned to white instead of grape juice. All your friends join and you cut the cake. Every one eligible and interested can drink. Open the wine.. no wine opener. Yes they got it now. Open and no. nothing comes out as there is a big tomato. Nine -Wine- Tomato is in the wine bottle

Ten-Den
You open your closet. Yes. you have surprises in your house. you want to get something from the closet. What happened - a lion?

A huge lion in your closet ( in my closet there could be even a zoo and I still find my stuff)
The lion is roaring and has something in its mouth. A big sugar packet. You are thinking since when did a lion become addicted to sugar.

Sugar- with a lion in your closet which is like a den!

Done. now what was the 8th thing. Eight - Gate - Gate - bicycle late..stop something growing white..rice.

Where was sugar. Sugar..lion.den...

You got the idea. Try the 6th one. Six-sick -cry- ok. Onion.

I paid a lot of money to be Dale Carnegie training to learn how to win friends and influence people.

I don't know how you will feel if you are the 'Won' friend or the 'influenced ' person. we will talk about that later in another post . The fact is this is this is something Dale Carnegie developed - memory peg and there are rhyming stuff all the way to hundred. You can try to find them online..

What was the 4th thing?

Happy Learning
Sivakumar Manikanteswaran

Blog Post #42 - Back to School with Buddha - Nalanda Univesity is back - Harvard, Stanfort,MIT,Cambridge and Oxford combined!(Thanks to India,Japan,Singapore and China)

Amazing news!

Nalanada Univesity will reopen in 2014.

Big deal !! What does it really mean?

Lets start with history

Growing up in India most folks when they learn history learn lots of useful and useless history

When was first war of Panipet fought? - who cares. They also had a second war of Panipet too.
It never registered in my mind what they were attempting to teach there.

One piece of history lesson that has always lingered in my mind is the chinese traveller XuanZang 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xuanzang

This fellow was an intentional student/traveler who came to India from China . This guy was a residential studied in Bihar,India --- studying in Nalanda more than 2000 years ago and most of what we know about Indian history from that time comes from him.

Imagine Chinese telling Indians about what India was all about!!
Yes - that is history Chinese version!

He was also responsible to take Buddhism from India to China.

Now why is Nalanda Important?

I would ask you why is Harvard , Stanford ,MIT, Cambridge and Oxford important to history? It is because innovation,culture and progess dependent on it today. What about 1000s of years back . That is where Nalanda and Takshashila  come to play.

I will write about Takshashila  and what it had to do with Alexandar the great and Chankaya .

For now, stay with me in Nalanda.

It was India's previous President Abdul Kalam idea to reopen Nalanda and  I respect him a lot for that

For non Indians remember India's prime minister is the elected seat of authority and President is a figure head - useless rubber stamp whose job primarily is to receive and dine with foreign dignitaries if Prime Minister is busy!

While APJ Abdul Kalam acted different and proved to be influential in not only helping India develop nuclear capability as the chief scientist but also a grand visionary!
Vision 20/20 for India for which he being a muslim sought out the blessing of every religious leader in India  - from hindus to christians to the buddist!!

Thanks to APJ and the governments of India,Japan,Singapore and China the university to set to reopen in 2014. and guess who is the chancellor - Amartya Sen - the economics Nobel laureate from Harvard. The next set of leadership all coming from big universties including Harvard and Singapore university.

According to wikipedia

At its peak, the university attracted scholars and students from Korea, Japan, China, Tibet, Indonesia, Turkey, Greece, and Persia.The subjects taught included religion, history, law, linguistics, medicine, public health, architecture, metallurgy, pharmacology, sculpture and astronomy.

Persia = Iran for those of us who don't know the old name
(Fun fact - Prussia is the old name for Germany )


Amazing to know that. Indian students may not have to go to USA if they prefer to study in a world class university in the future and so can Chinese and Japanese students .This will create a new center of excellence. May be the Americans and Europeans will have a new elite university for which they can choose to apply if they want to . 

I hope in the future a studious student might include Nalanda in his list of school applications along with Oxford,Cambridge,Harvard,MIT,Stanfort ,Princeton and all other elite universities.

Being an American of Indian Origin I would love to see greater collaboration between these universities just like how India's ISRO and USA's NASA work very closely ,collaboratively and competitively at times.

This time around there will not be Buddhism taught in Nalanda but more secular religious concepts just in line with India's secular ambition. 

That is different from its past!!

Keep Learning
Sivakumar Manikanteswaran

Blog Post #41 - Maslow was wrong,Meeting rituals are weird ,80/20 Pareto is a heuristic and TGIF is not a good attitude

This is Abraham Maslow and this is the triangle most referred to in most people's conversation as Maslow's Hierarchy of needs.

He believed and most people believe that we satisfy our needs one by one from bottom to top and you have a mall like sticker on your back saying "you are here" at the triangle.

Do you believe this? 

If so read on..if not read on..

Here is a very famous quote from victor frankr from the book "Man’s Search for Meaning" (He didn't write Woman's search for meaning. I wonder why? )


“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.” 

This contradicts Maslow.

Humans are not mere ladder climber who go from step 1 to step 2. 
As a race, we are as unpredictable as nature itself.

Message : Don't believe Maslow other than the fact that he can draw a good triangle! 


Let us now talk about Meeting rituals.
Most of us spend our time in corporate world in meetings

Remember fire,wheel,gravity and anything worthwhile was not created as a result of any meeting known to humankind.

If you are in a meeting and it has no agenda and you are presented the agenda in the first 5minutes  stop and ask for one.

Yes. It is a crime against humanity to get people to go under the influence of anesthesia without consent.

If after the meeting everyone is smiling and there is not a single person with an action item then the meeting is like a B rated movie which you watched for no reason and wasted your time on. You didn't like it ,they didn't produce it well and everyone is unhappy .

Every meeting must impact at least one person  an he/she must act on something because of this meeting

Agenda and action items - Remember them in your next meeting because meetings  make us look busy not productive. If we attend meeting it makes us feel as though we are doing something useful. It is not. Unless you have something to act on based on the meeting and at any cost keep the meeting to not more than 45 minutes. Yes Outlook has an option to increment of 15 minutes.

Being busy with meeting is not being productive



Now to 80/20 - 

The term "Pareto principle" can also refer to Pareto efficiency. (From Wikipedia)

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80–20 rule, the law of the vital few, and the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.^[1][2] Business-management consultant Joseph M. Juran suggested the principle and named it after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who observed in 1906 that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population; Pareto developed the principle by observing that 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas.^[2]

It is a common rule of thumb in business; e.g., "80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients". Mathematically, the 80-20 rule is roughly followed by a power law distribution (also known as a Pareto distribution) for a particular set of parameters, and many natural phenomena have been shown empirically to exhibit such a distribution.^[3]

Why am I explaining Pareto?
To make us realize 20% of daily work will produce 80% output and 
80% of our daily work will  produce 20% output 

and since you are reading this blog you know what to do.

Check at the start and during the course of the day what is the most critical work for the day and invest just 20%  of your time.

Simple!


Now to the last part TGIF

If your attitude is "Thank God its a Friday". Don't forget "Oh My God it's a Monday" is just around the corner!

Yes.

Let us first think about Gregory.

The calendar we use today in most part of the world is called Gregorian Calendar.

The Pope hired a mathematician to design a calendar which will help all Christians to celebrate Easter on same day.

Remember Easter is a critical day than Christmas. Easter represents resurrection.. we will talk about it during Christmas.

There is a tamil calendar and islamic calendar. 

Yes Mayan calendar has now crossed 12/12 proving itself to be cyclic and not linear! Hindus and Mayans believe in cyclic calendar. 

Back to Gregory.

Since we are not in middle east Friday is not a holiday . But on Friday most folks feel as though we have come to end of the journey. 

We forget life is the journey and not at a destination. 
There is nothing special on weekends except that we don't have to earn our living. (Maslow - welcome back!)

Now to the book "Happiness at Work" Professor Srikumar Rao asks the following questions
to practice in your work

What are you doing in your office that helps fellow humans?

If you answered meetings you are right but those fellow humans were your colleges. 
We are talking about non "me" centric world where during the work day if you can find how your company makes money and how your non meeting work is related to actualization of benefits to humanity you will not have the attitude of TGIF. In fact , you will be saddened by the fact that you are not able to work one more day to benefit humanity. We are not talking Not profit. Even For Profit companies help fellow humans by providing something of value to them and makes their life better..(think laptops, APIs,restaurants, anything)

Happy Learning
Sivakumar Manikanteswaran

Blog Post #40 - What does it take to be a leader? - are you one?

I was reading this book from Guy Kawasai - Enchantment  and in the first few chapters he mentions about another great book .

Let us side track.

Page Rank - The idea behind Larry Page's indexing structure for google apparently came from academia. If you have  a white paper and if that white paper is referred or credited in other white papers then the first white paper must be a credible source. Replace white paper with websites and if this is 1998 you have a billion dollar company google.(ofcourse you need Ram Shriram and other Angel investors).

So there it was google in less than 50 words . Once we understand stuff it always appear simple! Isn't it?

Now back to book referring another book.. here are the notes I took from  Enchantment about the summary of
The leader of Mensh : Become the kind of person others want to follow

(so you don't have to read 2 books)

1. Always act with HONESTY

2. TRUST other people who have wronged you with civility

3.FULFILL your unkept promise from past

4.HELP someone who can be absolutely of no use to you

5.SUSPEND blame when something goes wrong and ask "What can we learn?"

Now 5 more..

6.HIRE people smarter than you and give them opportunity to grow

7.  ALLOW people to have their moment (which means of all of the following..wow)

• DON'T interrupt People
• DON'T dismiss their concern offhand
• DON'T rush to give advise
• DON'T change subject

8. Don't HARM in anything you undertake

9. Don't be quick to SHOOT other's idea

10.SHARE your knowledge,expertise and best practices with others

Guy Kawasaki gives 2 more to this list

11. FOCUS on goodwill (not only the store)
Positive actions make world a better place

12. Give people benefit of doubt.

This is when I cry. Literally.  If you haven't watched the last lecture by Randy Pausch youtube Link you don't know what I am talking about.

A Carnegie Mellon professor who gave this speech before he died and when he gave this speech he was relatively young and healthy (even though his health was deteriorating ) and he died in a few months after this speech.

You owe it to yourself to watch this speech and he stresses the importance of giving people benefit of doubt.

Good people can do bad things because of circumstances I don't understand is how Guy Kawasaki frames it.

Randy Pausch says people will surprise you if you believe in them. Yes , trust people and they will almost always surprise you.


Happy learning!
Sivakumar Manikanteswaran

Blog Post #39 - How to memorize a whole book - Teach yourself and your kid (or the kid inside you!)! Memory Palace and Mind Maps

Ever since I read the book 'Moonwalking with Einstein' and Tony Buzan's Mind Maps it gets easier than ever to memorize a whole book or atleast the outline of any book?

A Memory map looks like this.

So when you open a book check the table of content and make a mind map for each chapter.
Elaborate the sub topics for each sub topic into each of the primary chapters.
If you can draw different colors for each topic it will be great.

Once the memory map is created it makes you understand the landscape laid out by the author in a canvas and learn it in your mind!

Once a mind map is created then the next step is start creating "Memory palaces"
Now that you know the topics and sub topics you need a place to keep it. This is the weird part

Our brain is wired to quickly learn any landscape and layout very quickly.  The next time you go to anyone's house observe how your mind (that you have not previously visited) has already captured the nook and corners and a quick layout in your mind.

Why is this important?

In each of the place "memory palace" you can keep stuff.. like the topics of a book.

Let us try this with an example

There is a book i read about multiple intelligence

A mind map showed the author wanted us to learn about

1. Nature Smart
2.Logic Smart
3.Music Smart
4.Word Smart
5.People Smart
6.Picture Smart
7.Body Smart
8.Self Smart

Now how do i remember these?

Imagine your house. Outside your house there is planet Pluto, a lion and a dancing Rhino.. ok. nature smart!

The door is locked and has a magic code. A puzzle to be solved . Answer is 12.Logic smart.
Since 12 is not the answer I used the door bell. Music smart.
The music didn't work either.
So I take my phone and call the my son inside the house. Word smart.
Arnav opens the door and double checks through the blinds of my house "who is outside" - People smart.
After I enter our house I find a huge canvas lying on the path with dark red color.. color spilled everywhere. Picture smart.

A few drops were now on my shirt. Oh my god! Let me change... Body smart.
Before going to show I was thinking about "how I felt" (clumpsy.. annoyed..now i got to go upstairs...) - self smart.

The next time you grab a book try this technique
As I mentioned earlier Intelligence = Memory recall + applicability

The book dealt very well with Memory and how any one can all the known places ( the houses you lived, your local malls. your commute ,your local grocery) and use every one of these place to store "things".


Spend 15minutes to learn how to remember 10 things and recall in exact order - Memory peg technique.. click here for the article that explains how to remember 10 things  and retrieve in any order - Link



Good luck!

Blog Post #38 - Karbala,Kabba and Arc of Covenant - ( Religion series )

I have waited a long time before I started posting about my passionate subject - Philosophy,Spiritualism and religion.

Even though I have read differences between these abstract concepts and how one differs from another and how one affects another, I am assuming you the reader couldn't care less!

The basic questions which not been answered by any known ideology are the following

1. Who am I?
2. Why am I here ?
3.What am I supposed to do here?

Let us keep these questions in mind while you read most of my post as I will try not go into depth into any of these useful and deep questions. 

We will stay at the superficial surfer level ,discuss and learn about some stories terminologies,places,incidents which help us understand more of what it is out there.

In this post I would like to cover

What is the difference between Shia and Sunni muslims?
What is in the importance of Karabla? 
What is inside Kabba?
What is Ark of the Covenant? 


The next time when you watch the news you should know why Iran and Saudi Arabia are not friends?

(not just Iran and Iraq)

Why Pakistan has pockets of Shia and Sunni?

What majority of Indian Muslims are?

These are random stuff picked up from different sources to learn in the spirit of Philosophy.. 

Who is a Philosopher? - 
The world as we see it has 
1. Doers  - Folks who do stuff
2. No-Doers - Folks  who dont do any stuff
3. Wonderers  - Folkers who wonder what the doers and no-doers do
4. Philosphers - Folks who analyse and understand the other 3 and write useless blogs(including me!)

From this vintage point let us learn religion and I will not make fun or any religion. I love to present what I learnt about each of them and treat of them as kindly as I would treat my children (not yours!!! - My children are special to me and so are yours to you)

Most of this holistic approach  comes from a book which profoundly changed my thinking process ' A history of God' by Karen Armstrong. Thanks Mam- you have been a huge positive impact on me and I love your NPR programs where you show dignity and respect to each religion and its leaders and understand concepts from each of them the way they would like to see it.


1. What is the difference between Shia and Sunni Muslim

Sunni Islamic is 75% to 90% of 1.62 billion Muslims around the world. - yes, it is big. 
They accepted Abu Bakr as the first Caliph after Mohammad as the leader. Abu Bakr. 
Who was Abu Bakr? A rich Merchant and eminent leader who was the first one to accept Mohammad and helped conversion of lot of people to Islam .His daughter Aisha married Mohammed.

Shia is about 10-20%

The debate starts if Abu Bakr should be the first caliph (leader) or if Hazrat Ali has to the first leader
Who is Hazrat Ali?
Mohammad's son in Law. Imams - Mohammad's family members and other people of divine power.

So when you read about Iran  realize they are Shia . They believe in Hazrat Ali as the first successor.
Sunni believe Hazrat Ali is 4th. (he is still in the list of caliphs for sunni but not first)

The biggest islamic country - Indonesia

What about Saudi Arabia - They follow a modified Sunni doctrine - Wahhabi


Now that you know Sunni and Shia difference let us move on to.. yes Karbala

2. What is Karbala ?

Very touching story of how Mohammad's grand son and his army were killed . It is a central piece story in Shia culture and yes you guessed it right. It  is currently in Sunni land  - Iraq.
I saw this amazing netflix program about ' Pilgrimage to Karbala'. It teaches us how the two countries have to negotiate travel trips for believers.

3. What is Kabba?
For folks who are non muslims i encourage you to watch a netflix program ( i think netflix has to pay me ...i keep mentioning these documentaries for them!) which is titled ' National Geographic: Inside Mecca' . This is the only way for non muslims to see Hajj and Kabba.
With that said ,yes the Kabba is the black stone in Mecca . What is in it? Why do muslims go around it? What did Mohammad have to do with it?

The stone existed before Mohammad. 
Muhammad is credited with setting the Black Stone in place in the wall of the Kaaba
 Pilgrims must walk seven times around the Kaaba in a counterclockwise direction. They attempt to kiss the Black Stone seven times, once for each circumambulation of the Kaaba, emulating the actions of Muhammad

4.What is Arc of covenant 

Fist lets learn the ten commandments

which are

1 Love God more than you love anything else 

2. Don't make anything in your life more important than God. 

3. Always say God's name with love and respect. 

4. Honor the Lord by resting on the seventh day of the week. 

5. Love and respect your parents. 

6. Never hurt anyone. 

7. Always be faithful to your husband or wife. 

8. Don't take anything tht isn't yours. 

9. Always tell the truth. 

10. Be happy with what you have. Don't wish for other people's things.

This in the book of Exodus. 

These were in written in stone and brought by Moses from Mount Sinai.

According to old testament - Tohrah-  remember both Jews and Christians follow the version 1 of the book (it is the new testament which has Jesus) God commanded Moses to created a Arc which will contain the commandments .

Where is it today? No one knows. Ethiopia claims to have a site where it passed by. The Jews took it from Jerusalem during the Babylonian attacks through Egypt into Ethiopia.. 

The mystery remains. So what is the significance with Solomon temple and wailing wall have to do with Arc of Covenant. we will know about it in the later blogs.

For now chew on these..

Blog Post #37 - “A person is a person, no matter how small.” - Is it really true?

I consider myself more on the side of knowledge hunter gatherer. A tribe of my own with a sole and soul  purpose of accumulating knowledge and disseminating the same.

I try to gather as much as people want to give and give back as much as they can take ( believe me I can over stuff people with information that they stay away from me from weeks and ask me to write in blogs so they can read later..!!!)

One interesting observation was - when I was coming back from Bahamas we had a stop over in Atlanta. We had to grab dinner and had plenty of time.(3 hours)

When we stopped to eat in the food court a Nepali lady came close to us and asked if we needed help. Apparently Atlanta has  implemented a system where the food court is consistently cleaned up by paid staff who are paid by the food court restaurants. Interesting.!

So this lady wanted to know if our 2 year old needed a high chair and stayed close to us and didn't want to leave while watching skeptically if her supervisor was watching.

A few two pieces of information that we discussed

1. Being a South Indian she was surprised I didn't have a mustache
2.She mentioned all south Indian movies had god shown often and hero worshiping god more than Hindi films. It seems we show more god in south Indian movies than in North.
3. She was happy to drink her free 'hot chocolate'

Why am I telling you all this?

If I had replaced  the lady's name with some one famous Sachin,Clinton,Tiger Woods or Oprah you will sure be excited to know these details.

We teach our kids to learn the house keeper (Janitor's name) in their school . 

How many times have we taken the effort to know the Janitor's name in a mall or in office?

We value people based on IQ .

 Based on celebrity status.

 Based on position/office they hold.

What about the rest?

Do you ever think you are an average person or a normal person?

It is interesting to note no body considers themselves average.

I am sure you didn't think you are Einstein but neither did you think you were average.

 You were slightly above average.

Normal people spend a lot of time working for office and don't have a work life balance.

 But you believe you have a working work life balance (more on work but not as bad as the normal!).

Here is the key concept

When you meet someone more powerful than you we respect them.

When we meet someone not doing well in life we may not care about them as much as we care about the rich/powerful/famous/positional holding person.

Blog Post #36 - Vegetables and fruits - What you know, What you don't know ,what you know that you know and what you know you don't know.

You know the difference. It was in some biology class. Had great definition. Some thing about seeds something about part of plant. Something so basic our teachers ensured we knew the answer.

You know tomato is a vegetable while pear is a fruit. What about mushroom? Do you know what we call avocado?

These subtle knowledge differences Cheetah vs. Jaguar, Crocodile vs Alligator , Management vs leadership.

In the book   'Thinking Fast and Slow' the author talks about

1. What we know?
2. What we don't know?
3. Do we know if we know in memory? ( this category is ..that song lyric you know but you are not able to retrieve. the primary key is found the foreign key is lost)
4.Can we google?
5. Is it easy to ask some one else?
6. Is this worth knowing?
7. Will we remember this exercise of knowing about knowing?

The central idea I used to believe is ' Knowledge is power' . I believe now that 'Acted knowledge is more powerful'.

What use is the knowledge?

A central database of knowledge is now available at your finger tips.
Intelligence = information retrieval + applicability

Do you know that stuff? Have you seen it? Where did you hear/see/read about it?
Who know if you know? Who cares if you know? Should anyone care that you don't know?

With Wikipedia and Google we believe we don't need to learn number of countries in the world today. ( default answer before USSR was split i used to know now i dont know.. that should tell you how old my friend are)

When you watch Olympics next year in Brazil check how many countries participate?

Do you care? Should you?

When world soccer is played again in Brazil look for football players ( erase the word soccer for few days) and enjoy the world sport.?

How many countries will come? Why will they came? What dreams will they bring?

In short, learn how many countries are there in UN today and compare against how many come for Olympics. Check how many sports they play and brag to your friends about your intelligence (which in this case is knowledge!)

Blog Post #35 - Google and travel!! - On Road and On Space

Driver-less car : Google has been working with Stanford and won the 2 million prize set by DARPA.

Electric car: Other than Toyota Google has been one of the investors in Tesla .

Mundane cars: Google has been actively working on integrating Car GPS with their Google Maps service

Google cars already took images of my house, points to all the places where I get get my electric car charged.


Earlier I would to go to google to find address and then use car GPS.  In future ,I don't need to worry.

Gesture or speech or Thought control technology will let my electric driver less car know where to go and play my favorite songs from my playlist depending on the route and occasion.


NASA has been receiving a lot of Grant from Google and Google execs own a private parking spot in NASA because of their investment. Google Earth and Google Mars are both a reality now. On to Google Universe!

2 unrelated news

I read an article on how Goldman and other financial companies are struggling to get talent as Google,Facebook and other silicon valley are snatching the IVY league's towards them. Goldman has implemented a no saturday work policy. They check the logs and ensure new recruits don't work on Saturdays.

Do you work on Saturdays?  

For every android phone sold Microsoft gets $4-$8 to tallying $2 billion a year.

Yes you read it right. Android phones have patents that are owned by our dear MS.

Blog Post #34 - Sunni Web, Halal Internet and Great Firewall of China

As we progress in the world of internet it is interesting to note how new internet/parallel internet are being created by different countries.

The guardian article quoted here explains the concept

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/apr/23/web-censorship-net-closing-in

Pakistan has vowed to create its own internet just like Sunni web and Halal Internet.

Halal Internet is Iran's answer to providing an internet for its citizens.
At the end of the day Internet needs physical routers and servers which countries can control on their land.

The book The New Digital age keeps mentioning about this new concept of how there will be regional Internets and we may need visa to visit one from another in the future.
Even though the idea appears strange countries like North Korea, Belarus, Burma (Myanmar), Cuba, Iran, and Zimbabwe work closely for advanced technology transfer.

Peer to Peer technology is one alternative to using Internet for people in these regimes but the concept of middle man (faking and misidentifying as the recipient) is getting prevalent.

While people are mostly regional and consume news and information only local to each other the viewpoint about how political asylums may be provided in the virtual world first before giving in physical world is interesting.

From wikipedia
"Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) is a mechanism defined in 2003 for handling internationalized domain names containing non-ASCII characters. These names either are Latin letters with diacritics (ñ, é) or are written in languages or scripts which do not use the Latin alphabet: Arabic, Hangul, Hiragana and Kanji for instance"

Next time when you type webaddress in your favorite browser don't forget that a new world of Internets and new world of Domain Name Identification is already in works for people in different parts of the world.