Insight/ shock oriented writing and the aha oriented logic can only be stretched so far before the marks start showing.
Blogging/ writing/ talk shows/ self help books are becoming so different yet following the same formula that shocking is getting to be boring.

Hyderabad airport!

Some lady puring through a magazine on our return flight

Random image in Dubai.

The dune safari. Was kick ass fun!

Me: 2007, I will be a law student
Wife: 2007, I would need to search for a lawyer

Every indian kid has drawn this picture. Did you do it as well? Is this an indian phenomenon? or does this happen the world over?

Did you draw this image? What were the other elements???

It was interesting that EVERY member of my team has made a similar image and surprisingly from imagination not recreating another picture.

Strange!

Decisions are a pain.

Every decision that you made in your life has shaped what you are and what you have the option to do today.

As Sartre says "Man is but a sum total of all his actions. Not intentions".

I have 3 options. Each with pros and cons (I heard that, Of course!!).

I know each decision will entail a minor regret and a major change in the way I live and work and look at the world.

I have few regrets in life. I dont take myself very seriously.

I love decisions which need but a split second to make.

Decisions with a few months of prep time are the killers.

Equation:
Post decision dissonance is directly proportional to the time available for decision making.

Studies which decipher how the space between the ears works are the most engrossing.
Its incredible when you can relate to the experiments and the outcomes. The aha moment is when you reflect back to your decisions and understand the rationale better than what you convinced yourself of.
This particular study talks about how inconsequential, unrelated, peripheral events can cloud your decision making about important things. We always knew the reverse to be true.
I have to confess that I started reading the article after I saw the magic word starting with P in the headline of the article!
Maurice, Thanks.
Read on:
Looking to Make a Sale or Get Promoted? Emotions Will Help Determine the Outcome - Knowledge@Wharton

Dubai is a country/ emirate of contrasts.
You have guys dressed robin blue white kaftan looking things, trotting around like penguins, with buttoned up chinese collars covered till the toe, trotting hand in hand with a babe in a bikini with cleavage going down till her six pack.
It goes against all the typecasted ideas we ever had about an arabic islamic state.
You can be pardoned to think that you are driving across texas. After a 3 and a half hour flight, you arrive at a left hand drive city, full of land cruisers and hot lanes. A city which never sleeps and is at the mall half the time. Other than trading and oil, there seems to be little business activity but the little city supports more malls than the whole of south india, sports more luxury brands than Vijay Mallya.
And after all this, you still feel as though you are in a famous tourist place in.... India.
All the chatter that you hear in a mall is from Panju's, gults and tams. The locals are the arabs and malayalis.
The famous wildebeast migration in Serengeti looking like a pedestrian crossing after midnight compared to the influx of mallus into Dubai. Every cab driver is a mallu, every sales person is a mallu, every gold seller in the famed gold souk is a mallu.
If there was a better example of offshoring than the hitech city, this would be it.

But Dubai was fun like hell. Walking in and out of air conditioned malls, hotels, restaurants, land cruisers into searing 40 degree desert radiation was kinda fun. The moment I walked out of any mall, my glasses were completely foggy for a few seconds, luckily, I bumped into a few nice russian women leveraging on my temporary blindness!

Review:
War of the Worlds

It was a 200 seater movie theatre in Dubai's famed City Center.
I was one of the three people scattered around the largish hall.

I usually brood for a few minutes and try and come with a few smart comments about the movie.
I was left numb at the end of it. Not because it overwhelmed me. I dont think I was ever involved in the movie. I was just an engrossed by-stander.
Did I like the movie when I was in the theater. Yes.
Did I think about it the moment Steven Speilberg's name flashed at the end? No.

The movie did have its positives (Here we go for the smart ones after the brooding):
Tom Cruise was not a Hero. Tom cruise was a just a charactor who keeps getting lucky all the frigging time. Either the tripod aliens shoot very badly or Tommy boy just keeps missing all the shrapnel and the flying bebris by a whisker.

The babe who acted as his daughter did an awesome job though.
This seems to be a new trend, where inspite of kicking the alien asses, the truimph is only when the protagonist succeeds in personal relationships. Should augur well for the insurance companies.

Me is off for a walk in the old Dubai town.