As part of all the meeting and hobnobbing with various people from tech entrepreneurship, I had come to know of interesting related events/resources in London such as the monthly Minibar Meetup, the Bootlaw Summer Party, Twestival, a somewhat more underground ‘Kebabcamp’ group, London OpenCoffee Meetup, etc* where I ran into some increasingly familiar faces and names. It is always a small world in the arena of tech and entrepreneurship, no matter how big the city. And I was repeatedly recommended by various people that I should check out Launch48 if I don’t have a team or a concrete idea to begin with. Which I didn’t. And so I did.
Launch48, in their own words, can be described thus:
“The aim of Launch48 is to bring together participants from different backgrounds and levels of experience in the web industry to think/plan/develop and launch one or multiple web apps in one weekend. That’s right, in 48 hours! It’s a frantic, energy fuelled, entrepreneurial event designed to engage all participants while offering the opportunity to learn and meet new people.”
Having left my Computer Engineering-related skills behind a few years ago, I was nervous about feeling completely useless at this event. I was afraid of being one of the many non-techie folks who bring no clear hard-skills to the team, just a bunch of fluffy-sounding vague marketing-related skills and a boatload of enthusiasm. Clearly if I had read this piece by Spencer Fry about the myriad important ways in which the non-techie is valuable in a tech startup, I wouldn’t grappling with such unnecessary insecurities.
Anyway, to know what actually happened over the course, I pass the baton to Andrew Lawson, who has done a fine job of providing an overview of the weekend, in his posts here (read forward from the first post)
Post-Launch48, I am glad to report that the weekend met and exceeded all my expectations of it. For lack of a succinct way of describing the event in the days leading up to it, I referred to it as a business plan competition; in all truth, it is anything but. I have seen numerous business plan competition where the only success lies in the ability to BS your way through. Not so much at L48, where the proof of success lies in the degree to which the prototype developed over the weekend is a demonstration of the final product. It is an attestation to the new-old saying in the tech startup world, ‘Launch Early, Launch Often’. The 48-hour deadline with a final presentation where they don’t care or ask about 3-year cash-flow projections or SWOT analysis? Egad, this is serious, you absolutely must have a viable prototype to be credible. You do not want to get this wrong – considering the event attracts a fair bit of attention in the tech startup world
I shall spare you the details and fast forward you to now, over a month after the event. My team, Protected.CC, is greatly encouraged by the platform provided by the event and all the positive coverage we have received from those who organized the event, participated in it and covered it. We are now preparing for the run up to the follow-up event happening in a couple of weeks.
We are on Twitter, Facebook, we’re blogging and we find this page really cool. Follow us, add us, leave comments and cheer us on. For it’s a long journey ahead before we hit the market proper 
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* For a complete list of similar events in London, check out Hermione Way’s post on Sun Startup Essentials page on networking events.
Last night, I went for the ‘friends & family night’ of Mooli’s, their soft launch before the actual opening on 9th Nov, 2009.
The venue was perfect – centrally located in Soho, clean lines, warm lighting and projecting an apparent obsession with detail. Loved the hooks under the ledge where one can hang their coats/handbags and the colourful bins which added to the decor, rather than detract from the general coolness of the place. Speaking of decor, Mooli’s is looking for an artist to leave his/her mark on their wall – get in touch with Sam or Mathew for more details. The ‘Mooli, Madly, Deeply’ tees worn by the Mooli’s team certainly had a lot of fans. The chic, diverse and urbane crowd in attendance had people of very interesting backgrounds and all carrying an element of the joie de vivre and freshness that is reminiscent of the very concept of Mooli’s.
And so we move onto the most important segment of the evening – food and drink. I had reached a tad late so I missed out on the mango lassi with a hint of ginger (darn), so I started the evening off with orange juice, and not one of the wines, with the naive misconception that I would be leaving the party after just one Mooli, to wrap up some work at home. Naive, indeed, for I stayed and enjoyed myself for a good four hours, I think. Later in the evening, I had a bottle of Negro Modello beer which I hadn’t had previously – a nice discovery there.
The freshly made Moolis were scrumptious and exceeded all the previous versions of Moolis I have tasted so far, in that these were wrapped in their light, no-Gum, no-ickiness, home-made flatbread, rolled off the now-famous Moolita – thank you, Mooli Master. I relished, most greedily, the Pork, Beef & Paneer mini-moolis and chided myself for not skipping lunch, for that would have left room for the Asparagus & Chicken mini-moolis too. I am still stumped by the genius behind pairing spice-soaked pork and pomegranate – delightful! For a mouth-watering, detailed write-up on each mooli, check out this page. And, OMG, I can’t believe I nearly missed the wicked mint & coriander chutney – can’t wait to try out the rest of the repertoire in weeks to come.
The Cheeky Puds, I thought, were a novel follow-up to Indian flavours – unlike most Indian desserts, these neatly-packaged pots of dairy delights did not overwhelm the taste buds with extreme sweetness; I tried the cardamom flavour and recommend it highly. I also tried the Malai kulfi and enjoyed it immensely; my curiosity is piqued by the mention of upcoming kulfis in non-Indian flavours like blackberry and passion fruit * slurp * – I am keeping a keen eye on the kulfi shelf, for sure.
As all the shamelessly foodie talk above might demonstrate, yes, I over-ate. And the morning after, I feel no regrets for having done so. That, I think, is the best testimonial for the wholesome and delicious goodness that Mooli’s is all about!
And I urge all Londoners to stop by 50, Frith Street to try out the wonderful ‘Old Delhi-meets-Tokyo’ food. Their menu shows that good food doesn’t have to burn a hole in the pocket. I am excited by the story behind Mooli’s, which I have been following closely on their blog, Twitter, Facebook and also during a couple of visits to their Sunday Upmarket stall at Bricklane. I like how Sam & Mathew had so much fun along the way to making this dream come alive and how they have been so inclusive in letting everyone share the joy.
I am also a proponent of making accessible healthy, fresh, subtler Indian flavours in the heart of the city – I rue the fact that most people think Indian food is only about grease, extremely pungent flavours and a feeling of distinct discomfort and heavyness afterwards. Mooli’s, I think, will help change this image of desi food.
Looking forward to Mooli’s doing well in Soho & opening many more branches in the months and years to come – I am already in the lunch-time queue for their branch in the City 
‘Top Searches’ tells me someone is frantically searching for the paper I had submitted for the St. Gallen Wings of Excellence award & ISC Symposium and which I had up on my previous homepage. Will put up the abstract here, and the rest of the paper if this person says hello in the comments I am just curious about the identity of this person who reads my stuff.
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Note about the topic: As has become characteristic of me, I started writing this essay exactly 24 hours before the deadline. The choice of topic for the essay continued to elude me for much longer. Having written about 700 words on another topic, a toilet break brought me the much-needed moment of epiphany of what I really want to write about and how.
Abstract for Paper submitted to ISC Symposium 2007
The theme for the Symposium was ‘The Power of Natural Resources’
It has been a long time since this post was written but I consider it the best tribute to coffee, ever!
The ode to coffee starts thus:
O noble cup of velvet brew!
We thank each passing day for you,
If not for you our days would be
sad, and spent in drinking tea!
For the record, I have no violent objection to tea, just this feeling of it being completely insufficient in facing up to coffee as a beverage of choice, when it comes to knocking sleepiness out of me.
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In keeping with the spirit of caffeine lovin’, here’s an informative page on 15 things about coffee.
This is a very useful feature of WordPress; I thought of it as yet another one of the many forms of metadata hard to keep track of, so I found easy to dismiss initially. But the ‘Top Searches’ strings told me that someone had been desperately trying to Google up my film art essay on Wong Kar Wai’s ‘In the Mood for Love’ over this past week and for that reason, I have retrieved my long forgotten and incoherent essay that I had put up on my languishing homepage for a couple of years – I had no idea I had an audience; do stop by and say hello
Note about the essay - Some people never learn; I am worse. This term paper was due on the day after my birthday in 2007 and I succeeded in delaying it till the eleventh hour. Much of the incoherence and choppy style of writing can be attributed to starting a mere two hours before the deadline. My callousness with regard to this essay was shameful, especially considering the fact that it dealt with my favourite film of all time. I wish to redo this essay someday and flesh it out with many of the other things I wanted to write about but had to exclude, to keep within the word limit. Meanwhile, here’s the original draft, warts and all, with no edits since.
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This essay is a paper I submitted to my ‘Introduction of Film Art’ class in my final year of university. The topic asked to analyze the complexity of relationships between Wong Kar-Wai’s characters and to substantiate the complexity in definite terms, and then to analyze the use of film technique. The strict word limit of 1200 words left limited scope to analyze this highly stylized film, which is brimming with complex film techniques and infinite dimensions of meaning. I hope to supplement this essay with more essays on what has become my all-time favourite movie.
This essay aims to explore how the film In the Mood for Love attributes the complexity of Li Zhen and Mo Wan’s relationship to the complexity of the state of Hong Kong in 1960s. It posits that Wong Kar-Wai uses the film medium to make a strong statement on the dynamics of relationships in the context of larger social changes in the Hong Kong society; as the country was wrought by changes in culture and movements of people, personal relationships emerged and moulded themselves to accommodate these changes. The use of mis-en-scene, time and space, in particular, will be analyzed to make this argument.
The 1950s in Hong Kong were a time of great changes; there was an exodus of people from mainland Chinese, especially from Shanghai, into Hong Kong and the country struggled to accommodate the new inhabitants and find its footing economically and culturally[1]. While the 1960s for HK [2] was an era of discovering its own identity and establishing itself, its people still had faced a lot of uncertainty and relocated to other countries easily. This is depicted at various points in the movie – towards the end of the movie, Ah Ping is in Singapore, Mr. Koo in Philippines, Chow in Singapore and Mrs. Suen is moving to the US.
It is to be noted that, throughout the film, all these characters were shown to share their cramped space almost like one cohesive social unit but in the end, all the characters part ways and only the house continues to remain as it was; this aspect of the film underlines the role of architecture as an aid to memory; spaces, which survive through the ages, can be seen as repositories of stories of people, long after they are gone.
Wong Kar-Wai creates interesting patterns of time in the film. Through the repetition of routines and scenes, the audience can see the changing relationship between Li Zhen and Mo Wan; indeed, each of them seems to change themselves in the process of enacting their spouses’ love affair. The emphasis on their routines might also be to depict an underlined effort towards creating some form of permanence in an otherwise changing society.
There is also a contrast in the pace of the film – the moments that Li Zhen and Mo Wan spend together seem to have a languorous, sensuous pace while people seem to relocate to new countries in a snap. This languid pace of their growing love for each other is illustrated by intermittent shots of a clock which seems to be stuck in time.
Given the context of constant change and turmoil that HK was going through, most people of that era probably viewed their relationships as transient and ephemeral. This movie is, therefore, not merely about the depiction of restraint in the light of social norms, but also a nostalgic recounting of relationships that could never fully bloom, because of the impermanence of society at large. It is, perhaps, fitting that the most intimately emotional scenes between Mo Wan and Li Zhen were shown in a temporarily rented hotel room while they donned an air of distance in their own shared apartment; their relationship was restricted to the impermanent space of a hotel room. The complexity of the hotel room’s multiple spaces and use of mirrors was also a reflection of the complexity of their relationship with each other.
The film’s main setting is the apartment with shared common spaces – a quintessential memory of HK that people of that era relate to. These multi-story buildings were part of a public housing program after a major fire in the makeshift homes of immigrants [3]. In these cramped spaces, there is ambiguity in the concept of personal and shared spaces; this confusion is reflected in Li Zhen and Mo Wan’s relationship with each other. They are tentative about their feelings for each other, especially in the light of their neighbours and their spouses.
This film is also a portrayal of the cultural changes that HK was going through. The strong emphasis on family affairs and values among the previous generations of Chinese families had to make way for major changes [4] such as longer hours at work (Mo Wan working late into the night), business trips abroad, women joining the workforce (Li Zhen and Mo Wan’s wife stay away from their respective homes for their jobs) and, therefore, greater dependence on food from fast food joints and restaurants [5] (Li Zhen buying noodles from the shop, Li Zhen and Mo Wan’s frequent dinners in restaurants).
This was an era when HK was gaining increasing consciousness of the Western and foreign influences, shown in the film with references to Nat King Cole’s Spanish tunes, Japan, electric cookers, handbags and ties from overseas, steaks, etc. The biggest struggle that HK faced in this era was finding its identity between its Asian roots and Western influences. The references to its Chinese past are depicted in Li Zhen’s cheongsams, Mo Wan’s hobby of writing Chinese martial arts serials, communal games of Mahjongg played by the neighbours and the moral restraint of both the lead characters, outlined by social norms of propriety ingrained in their Chinese identities.
Architectural spaces like the ancient Angkor Wat often transcend time, to outlive the lives of people, their relationships with each other and hold the memories of all the people that pass through it. However, such spaces which do not yield to the ravages of time often become derelict and cultural curiosities for tourists. In some manner, the film attributes the survival of HK as a thriving city to the constant flux it has adapted itself to, through the ages, much like how Li Zhen and Mo Wan adapt to the changed situation – Mo Wan moves to Singapore and Li Zhen continues to live in HK with her son.
In the Mood for Love explores the complexity of not just Mo Wan and Li Zhen’s relationship to each other, but also to the society and humanity, at large. The reasons for their convoluted feelings towards each other were not limited to just a repressive moral environment they were subject to, but also due to confusion and uncertainty brought upon them by changes in Hong Kong in the 1960s. Their memory of a more conservative times and more proper social behaviour held them back from indulging in a torrid love affair like their spouses did.
In conclusion, Wong Kar-Wai is successful in delicately treating the varied nuances of the situation and characterizations of Li Zhen and Mo Wan and fully explores the complexity of their relationship. He makes no statement or judgement of their choices, but merely places them in the bigger picture of Hong Kong as it evolves through an era.
Word count: 1122
Bibliography
Removed from web version of the paper, links embedded in the essay.
By far, one of my most distracted days at work! Participating in the Launch48 Weekend and wishing I was there for the day-long conference before that, but I’m at work instead. Oh joy.
Keeping in touch through live blog updated regularly by Steve Parks, the most awesome Launch 48 Twitter stream (useful for me, can’t access twitter from work!) and the network group sites.
Notwithstanding this enthusiasm on my part, I am so unprepared for this fairly big opportunity 
Hope I deliver results to match my excitement about the event! Looking forward to learning a lot this weekend!
In his 1895 will, award founder Alfred Nobel stipulated that the peace prize should go “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses”
The decision by the Nobel Committee to accord the Nobel Peace Prize is something that has been discussed unto death, argued, defended, attacked, mocked and despaired, in varying degrees by all and sundry. To write another word about this would be to do nothing but repeating something a 1000 others have already said, surely.
But one cynical viewpoint that not many have discussed and which came out of an email conversation with a Nigerian/British friend is this – isn’t it odd? In what can be considered the highest honour laid upon a black man in a while, is there also a backhanded condescension? Are the expectations from a non-white, non-mainstream politician so low that merely speaking well and not pissing people off for a few months (even while deploying troops to wage war in various places) is seen as worthy of an award which normally has to be earned over a lifetime of working towards peace and progress? Is this affirmative action – oh, he hasn’t shot or knifed anyone yet, shall we give him something nice? Patronising, much? Something like when people called Colin Powell so ‘well-spoken’?
But like I said, this is a very cynical way of looking at things – because it encourages the notion of viewing everything in black and white, which is the kind of paradigm which also allows for racism and bigotry. As much I am riled by the premature awarding of the Nobel to Obama, I am heartened to see that it has gone to a man who has done much to reverse the mainstream perception of his race in his country and around the world. May this be an award for all the wonderful things he is yet to do (ah well, one can hope!)
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While it might seem like I’m giving Obama too little credit, please note that it is only because I have high expectations of the man. And, yes, do know I am the original Obama fan; I wished and hoped way back in 2004 that he would run for President in 2008 so there’s no point listing to me his myriad accomplishments, I am well aware.
…is an untouched and cropped portion of a photograph taken earlier this year during the 18km hike from Henley-on-Thames to Pangbourne. It was during the first Bank Holiday of May – worth noting the time of the year if you’re interested in catching open expanses of the English countryside and nature in its full glory in similarly fabulous weather, all within an hour or two of London and a wee budget.
For those relying on the older editions of Lonely Planet guides or internet printouts, please note that many of the local pubs listed in them are either shut down, converted into Curry take-aways or tend to be seasonal and are closed during early summer. Experience speaketh.
My first exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts was the JW Waterhouse exhibition which seemed to have been highly publicised all over London, and considering the lacklustre line-up this summer at the otherwise more interesting National Gallery, this seemed hard to miss. That I got free entry to the exhibition from my employers made it absolutely imperative that I catch the exhibition while I could, even with the knowledge that I was probably not going to like it.
And why such presumption? In early July, as I was getting back from my London 10k run, I struck up conversation with an elderly gentleman sitting next to me in the tube and since he was carrying the Waterhouse exhibition pamphlet, I asked him about it and in a very English and polite manner, conveyed that he didn’t consider it worthy of waking up so early on a Sunday for.
I dragged a completely non-artsy and newbie-to-the-galleries friend to the exhibitions a couple of weeks before its closing, with much trepidation that a bad exhibition would scar him for life. But with a byline of ‘Modern Pre-Raphaelite‘, Waterhouse’s works had to be pretty if nothing else (unlike what can be said for much of Modern Art works – wow, what a mean generalization!).
And well, pretty was what it was. And that is where it ends. Beauty without an underlying philosophy. Reminiscent of many artworks I have seen many friends and acquaintances, in that there’s great command over technique and knowledge of subject matter, but lacking that je ne sais quoi, which separates regular artistic works from art. Initially, I thought I was missing something, but I found that this very feeling is shared by other reviewers – particularly this one (I read reviews after viewing the exhibition, to maintain some degree of original PoV!). And in this review where the artist is exalted, unusually for him, the author mentions a quip by GB Shaw, ‘that he specialised in reminding one of other artists’.
I looked and looked for his works to change my world view a wee bit, for his masterpieces to move something within, to make me realize an ‘aha’ moment or make me feel awed at his talent beyond being able to imitate the masters well. He lived in interesting times for England, he had the honour of being a Royal Academician, he was prolific – surely all of this would have poured into his art, so that it may create a dent in the soul of the viewer. The only thing that created an impression on me was his depiction of ’sweet doing nothing’ or ‘dolce far niente‘ – this fascination on my part might perhaps be explained by the fact that this is a very unachievable state of being for me. But I am not sure if it is a compliment to ascribe someone with excellence at only depicting ‘nothingness’. The Favourites of the Emperor Honorius (aka Pidgeons of Honorius) was amusing; as an aside, many of his earlier works featured a lot of pigeons, which I noticed only because my newbie friend was fascinated by pigeon presence. Among the rest, I found the composition of ‘Diogenes‘ interesting.
Waterhouse clearly over-did the theme of the depiction of a lone woman – by the end of the exhibition, I found it hard to appreciate the multiple images of women trying too hard to seem mysterious and luscious; all I was thinking was, rather a crass image, what?
Alas, even for someone with low expectations as I had, JW Waterhouse was a tad disappointing. But perhaps to have expected anything beyond what was on offer, from someone who had always been deemed to be commercially successful and not so acclaimed critically, is entirely my fault.
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A good read on the Victorian Summer at the Royal Academy.
