Thought Garage

By all measures, the rise of China as one of the leading global economic power houses of the world is a great success story.  And by all estimates, China will become the largest economy sooner than the rest of the world is comfortable accepting it. So, isn’t China, then officially the largest living success stories of communism? Watch this great TED talk by Eric Li, a venture capitalist, I bet,  your understanding of China will never be the same. And so does your understanding of efficacy of democracy. Eric X. Li : A tale of two political systems I can’t resist the temptation of comparing the largest living democracy, India,  with tens of parties at the helm and the largest living communist country, China, and for all practical purposes a dual party system in the US and its current political gridlock, only to realize that the point Eric Li made is quite reverberating. Unfortunately, while China can easily replicate the best of the rest of the world in terms of  ...

I am not a big fan of Upma. Never really liked it so much, though I eat when I have to. But somehow my 3 year old loves it. If you ask what she prefer for a breakfast on the bed, she always says Upma. And it goes without saying, she gets it. So today is one of those days. It’s the second time I prepared it in the last few days, and oh boy! I nailed it today. It was awesome. Even I really liked it myself and my daughter loved it so much she comeback for seconds. Yahoooooo !! While preparing I was wondering, what most people that cook in the family go through , to prepare something that you don’t necessarily like, but you do it anyways because others love it.  Hats off to you all.    Am I getting my first lesson in what matters when you care? Hmm, that may sound little heavy on the breakfast table, but I guess I made my point.  Have a nice day.

Beautiful sight of Godavari rail road brdige. via 92229232@N02@Flickr

When you are writing software, you always get a second chance. In fact, lots of chances to get it correct. You have compiler warnings, failed test cases and some times crashes alert you that something is not right and will give you a chance to correct. And you get literally unlimited chances to apply those corrections.  Well, cooking looks to be totally unforgiving in this respect and on any given day, you may get just one chance to get it right. If you fail, you fail. Try again right away if you have patience of starting it all over. Or start over some time later or next day. But not much of a second chance to correct a mistake.  More ruthless, when it comes to salt. If you put just a little more, even a tiny little more, it never hesitate to show what it got. Totally ruthless. End result will be a failed dish that no one will be able (and/or happy) to eat. And most dishes, you may not be able to add something little more to offset it. Little trick I learned the ha...