Parenting, Ahoy!

And so we became proud parents of a lovely boy last week!

The week gone by has been topsy turvy and I have lost all track of time and date. There is no semblance of any sanity around, S and I are learning to get things done around the house in the brief bursts of respite we get when the baby naps. Time seems stuck in an endless loop of baby cries, changing nappies, recording feed and sleep times, with little time for anything else. We have become so forgetful that we make lists of the most mundane tasks, and at the end of each session, look at the to-do list and gnash our teeth thinking when we would get it all sorted. Yet, it is a glorious feeling to see him smile, to watch his expressions change in seconds as if someone was talking to him in his sleep. It takes all of our irritability and teeth-gnashing and shoves it out of the door.

We had anticipated this when we made the decision to raise the baby ourselves (not flying in either parents or sending S home), but the support we got from friends blew us off our feet. Friends turned in to visit and check on us; took care of the food department for the week we were at the hospital; offered to come stay at the hospital with S to help me catch some sleep. I am yet to respond to many of those who called in to wish and offer support, but whose calls I could not take. Colleagues advised me not to worry about work and that it is all taken care of. The knowledge that there is someone to fall back on to gave us confidence and we are grateful for this cushion of support. It means a lot to us.

Thanks, everyone. More on baby later.

The Car-boot Sale!

Summer is around the corner, and the most visible indicator of summer having arrived is the car-boot sale. It is exactly what it says - selling out of the boot of a car/van (Why it is not called a van-boot sale then, I do not know). All summer, you can see a number of people selling stuff out of their cars. Unwanted stuff, outgrown stuff, collectibles, damaged goods and what not.

First up are the guys that sell new. These are wholesalers, who have small businesses or shops at the local centers. They are mostly out there to display their wares and make whatever they can from the people who come out Sunday morning in search of a bargain. They sell the same stuff which is available at their shop, and at more or less the same price. Wholesale stuff like reams of bubble wraps, A4 sheets, envelopes, shower gels, detergents, AA batteries, bread, huge packets of crisps (chips, if you like; but then call your chips fries)... you get the drift. They could not care less if you do not buy from them, they're just there to let you know they're there. They would probably give you a deal, if you ask them nicely, and keep buying from them.

The next are the the guys that sell used. These are usually Do-it-Yourself guys who have some sort of expertise or make a living by fixing things. They probably contract all week to various agencies and look to make some extra in the weekends. You get to see electricians with pedestal fans they've fixed; plumbers with various sinks, wrenches and mixer taps; carpenters with furniture they've mended. Refurbished laptops, unlocked mobile phones, adapters, chargers, car tyres, engine parts, wheel plates, number plates, bicycles, loose DIY items, you name it.

The first summer I was here, we bought three bicycles from an elderly couple, who probably fixed bicycles for a living. They would be there every week, and you could leave your bicycle with them and the old man would fix it, lubricate it and keep it ready for the road. They even bought old bicycles, and I would probably sell it to them if my two bicycles would not have been stolen from the front of my house. (Yeah, well! there are thieves everywhere).

Finally, the guys that sell cheap. These are people who just want to get rid of their stuff. People who are moving home, people who have spring cleaned their home, people who've lost interest in their toys/books/CDs and want to convert them into cash. The range is mind-blowing, from baby car-seats to hand mirrors to hand-made teapots to Chinese fans to Harry Potter books, you never know what you can run into in this lot, and more often than not, they give away things for less than you imagine. Some even have the car on sale, you only have to ask.

It's fun to watch this third category of sellers and offer them a price. You see a middle aged couple out to sell their clutter. There's a remote controlled helicopter. You ask the man how much it costs, and he quotes the price he bought it at. Truth is, he has not had enough of the chopper and still wants to hang on to it. It is the wife that will not allow it into the house. If you really like the chopper, you're better off making an offer to the wife. Chances are she will let you get away with it for a steal.

It cuts both ways, though. A number of home decor items are on sale. Things like glass trinkets, lampshades, vases etc. They usually have a lady hovering around, but never make the mistake of asking her the price. Deep inside, she does not want to sell any of it so she can take them back to her house and stock up the display cabinet. Make the man an offer, he will let you take it all for the price of a beer.

Sometimes, you do get fantastic deals - a colleague got a decent cricket kit from a man whose son outgrew playing county cricket. The guy even threw in a couple of used leather balls for free. Then there was a lady whose daughter played tennis, but would not use the balls after a few rallies. For many weeks, she almost exclusively supplied us tennis balls to play cricket with. Come summer, and the car-boot is a regular Sunday fixture. We usually come here with lots of change (better to offer a multiple of the lowest passable coin, than to expect change), just in case we get anything interesting. If not anything else, it offers you a long leisurely walk around an open area the size of a football field, and works up the appetite for a Sunday roast.

The Childhood Kind of Poverty

Two articles I read lately have set my mind thinking.

The first was a tweet I picked up from Ultrabrown. It went "waiting outside hotel for cab so lady comes out of cab. Hands me her bags & asks me to take them up. Never thought I looked like a bellboy." I googled to find out who thought that about himself. Turns out it was Gurbaksh Chahal. In about 26 years of his existence, this gent has founded two ad companies, sold them to competitors (one of them Yahoo!) for a whopping $340 million! Here is his interview to the San Francisco Chronicle.

"In India, his father had graduated college with an engineering degree and worked at the police academy, while his mother had run the nursing program at a city hospital. Here, they worked double shifts, shopped at the Dollar Store and McFrugal's and clipped coupons. But they encouraged their children to go to college to become doctors or engineers ... Nirmal Chahal, the family's eldest daughter, recalled the night that Chahal told his father. "He brought the bank statement and showed my father he was making money," she said. "My dad's reaction was that he literally screamed. My mom came rushing from the kitchen, her hands still wet. My dad said, 'G is going to jail! He did something illegal!' They'd been working 20 years, double shifts, and had not had that kind of savings."

The second was about Xerox's chief Ursula Burns. When she was named CEO of Xerox, The New York Times notes, it marked two milestones: the first time an African-American woman was named CEO of a major American corporation, and the first time a woman succeeded another woman in the top job at a company of this size.

Here is a lady who started out in the eighties, joining Xerox as a summer intern, working her way up through executive positions to leadership ones. Today, as CEO, she tries to tackle what she terms 'terminal niceness'.

“When we’re in the family, you don’t have to be as nice as when you’re outside of the family,” she says. “I want us to stay civil and kind, but we have to be frank — and the reason we can be frank is because we are all in the same family.”

Ursula credits her mother as her biggest influence. “150 percent my mother. My mother was pragmatic, focused and extremely, exceedingly practical, and she was the ultimate self-determining person.” Her mother made ends meet by looking after other children. She also ironed shirts for a doctor who lived down the street and cleaned his office, bartering for things like medicine and even cleaning supplies.

Chahal has been on Oprah but still flies economy. He says "Waiters at Nikki Beach would clap for you, if you bought Champagne at 3,100 euros a bottle. I could do that, but it would put me through mental shock."

Ms. Burns was worth over $5 million back in 2008. Even so, she’d still show up in line at the grocery store in Rochester, where she’s lived for roughly 25 of her 30 years with Xerox. A housekeeper comes in just once a week, and Ms. Burns will often do the laundry herself, knowing that it sends a good message to her daughter, a high school senior. “There’s a little bit of this childhood kind of poverty — you know, pragmatism — that you never can get rid of."

This line by Ms. Burns sums up the strange paradox of many immigrants. Or the upwardly mobile Indian middle class.

We all go through our childhood seeing our parents struggle to make a better life for us. We all struggle through our adulthood trying to ensure a better life for our kids. Yet, somewhere deep in our heart, we restrain pulling out all stops. Somewhere deep in our heart, we feel they may take their privileges for granted. Somewhere deep in our heart, we still want our kids to fight their way through fire, so they can be tempered individuals and not snobs revelling in easy money.

The feeling is extant. You can always debate about the extent.

The iPhone User Review Contd

Ever since we bought the iPhone for S, I always found myself reaching for it to play with. This annoyed S no end, especially with me taking the phone into the bathroom to catch up on my emails in the morning. If there is one thing that the iPhone has changed in my lifestyle, it has been the ability to check email first thing in the morning. It helps me prioritise what to start with as soon as I reach my desk, rather than doing the prioritisation on the desk. Sometimes, it works the other way too. Every now and then comes an email which puts me in a bad mood as soon as I read it. Perhaps, if I'd left it unchecked, I would have left home more cheerful!

Generally though, its a good thing to have, and it irritated me no end that the Orbit could not bring such brilliance into itself (although it was aged two). So, I was on the lookout for a phone which could do email. Blackberry was a first choice. I considered the Blackberry Storm for quite some time, but an initial putoff was that it had no wi-fi at all. You may argue that O2/Orange gives you a data option, but no sir, that is nowhere compared to wi-fi speeds. AppStore and YouTube would creak their way to render what would be a snap-of-a-finger job on wi-fi. Two, not having a wi-fi option at all is a no-deal in this time of free markets. The phone would be a brick once I am out of contract. Why would I pay for a data tariff once I'm out of contract, when I already pay for my wireless broadband. Three, network coverage is not all that great either. Imagine me at a friend's place or at the local Wetherspoons, and I find the coverage is bleak. Would I not want to switch over to the free, faster wifi? By the looks of it, Blackberry has fixed this grouse in Storm2 by adding wi-fi. Just this above line makes me wonder if all business is going Apple's way by not including basic things and hyping it up when they finally come on par subsequently.

The Blackberry packed in a lot of features - it did email great, had a great UI with its shiny linear icons, external upgradable memory, long lasting battery life, a camera with flash, and allowed me to re-use my old memory card with its drag-and-drop music. But there I was at O2 looking at both the Blackberry and the iPhone. With the sleek shiny iPhone morphing itself to the touch of my fingers, the Blackberry suddenly seemed very outdated (do I have to press buttons? BUTTONS??) Seriously though, what won me over to the iPhone was that the browsing experience in Blackberry reminded me of the Orbit, and the iPhone was miles ahead in its capability to render pages. And the looks, of course.

And so, about a year into S's iPhone, I got myself my own iPhone 3GS.

There are still a lot of things which I would like to have on the iPhone. Like longer battery life, for example. I barely manage a day, it stretches to a day and a half if I don't go to the gym. My Orbit gave me around two and a half days on a full charge, but then, truth be told, I did not use the Orbit as much as I use the iPhone. I'd like the ability to receive/read a business card (The gawky Sony Ericsson P990i did that!!). I would like the ability to forward or delete calendar items which have been pushed from my work email account. (Blackberry does this :( ). I would like the ability to save attachments into the phone. (This doesn't happen because Apple does not give you a Windows-ish file-system view). I would like the camera to zoom in and zoom out by the pinch gesture (Talk about wishful thinking). And so on!!