Coffee shop chronicles - Hong Kong : Starbucks, Hankow Road

I love coffee! Nothing fancy. Just plain old coffee, which in most of today's coffee shops would be a cafe latte.

For me drinking coffee at a coffee shop is like how it is with people who go for a pint at the pub. But unlike Frasier Crane and his brother Niles, I know nothing about different types of coffees, their beans, their roasts. For me Columbia is a South American country, and Java is in Indonesia.

My love for coffee drinking in coffee shops led me to think, why don't I chronicle it. The thought has been there for ages, but this would be my first attempt at writing it down. Its not nearly as much about the coffee or the coffee shop, but rather about how I feel, while I sit and sip.

Its my second day in Hong Kong after nearly a year's break, and its my second cup of coffee. The first was at a Mc Cafe, and the one I have had just now was at the Starbucks on Hankow Rd., towards the back of the Peninsula hotel and the YMCA.

Its a Saturday afternoon and crowds are expected, but then it doesn't matter which day of the week it is, Starbucks in Hong Kong are always full. Its no wonder that Starbucks Profits are better here than in the US, and they are spending so much in Asia.

The crowd in this Starbucks looked more like the one at a fish market. A constantly moving crowd. All the tables are full, and those who can't get a seat, don't bother waiting more than a few minutes, before they decide to walk out with their cups of manna from Starbucks.

This being Tsim Sha Tsui , the crowd is a mix of locals, with a huge helping of foreign tourists. It sounds like a silly term 'foreign tourists', but then the largest group of tourists in HK are from the Mainland, and you don't find too many of them spending time at a coffee shop, when its the sights and shopping they are after. The coffee shop culture is gradually permeating into China, but it will take time to be in the lines of HK.

Its very tough to distinguish between two Starbucks. They all look and feel so similar that to have a single memory that points to one particular is difficult. The difference more often than not, are the people. The ones who work there, and those that are its patrons.

I know, most Starbucks employees look and behave the same across different outlets, like they have been programmed. But every now and then, you will see a genuine smile, a grateful acknowledgement of a patron's thanks, a helping hand holding open the door for you.

This particular Starbuck's employees look a harried lot. Way too many customers to support with just two counters. But ever now and then across those programmed hellos and smiles, a genuine regard for the customer's well being is visible.

This cafe is in an interesting location. With two of its walls being complete floor-to-ceiling glass walls, you look out on to an ever changing scene of people from all walks of life passing by.

If you have some time to laze in the afternoon during weekdays, its a nice place to hangout, take a break and smell the roses as you watch Hong Kong life walk by in a frenzy.

So until next time, have some more coffee :)

Hercule Poirot Vs. Sherlock Holmes

Ok, this really isn't a comparison. Poirot for me will always be the best detective in fiction, period. Holmes is good, but he lacks certain of Poirot's skills.

Holmes is more like Giraud who is the French police officer in some of Poirot's books. In Murder on the Links, Agatha Christie has created a character very similar to Holmes. This book gives a great point of reference to understand the characters of Holmes and Poirot.

With Poirot, it is always about the gray cells. C'est magnifique, le gray cells. His power of deduction doesn't require him to run helter skelter. He doesn't need to know the thousand different types of cigarette ashes that are there in the world. He doesn't tell you that the murderer was 6 ft 2 inches tall by looking at the spacing between footprints.

What it is with Poirot, is psychology. He was ahead of his times. If there existed a real detective who was like Hercule Poirot during the time that Poirot the character existed, then he would have been laughed at by his peers.
But enfin, it is psychology which plays a crucial role in detection.

What is amazing about Hercule Poirot is that, his understanding (Agatha Christie's understanding of course) of the human mind is so apt. When you sit down and read any of those books, each of those characters could have been someone real. It sometimes gives you a chill.

Poirot demonstrates that anybody given the right circumstance, the right situation, the need, has the ability to murder. However it boils down to the individual choosing the path.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is one of those Poirot books which leaves you with mixed feelings. You wish both that you hadn't read it, and glad that you did.

Another point of why Poirot is the one for me, is the genuine affection he has for Captain Hastings. He may pull Hastings leg, and scold him sometimes, but it doesn't make you feel bad for Hastings. With Holmes and Watson, sometimes you felt like Watson was being ridiculed. Ofcourse when it comes to affection, Holmes doesn't portray as much a love for his friend as Poirot does for Hastings. But then again Holmes was English, whereas Poirot was from Belgium.

I know, the above sounds like a stereotype, but I have seen the English to be much aloof in comparison to other Europeans in fiction. However from personal experience, the Englishmen that I know have been great fun, generous, open hearted and the exact opposite of aloof. Pete, that's you mate. You changed my entire impression of what an Englishman is. :)

Back to Poirot, on a concluding point, the glint in his green eyes takes the cake, cause you know that he has figured it all out when those green eyes shine.

Agatha Christie

When I think of the word mystery, the first name that comes to my mind is Agatha Christie.
There is no equal. I know there are a lot of Conan Doyle fans, but for me its Agatha Christie any day.

Of all her characters, my favorite has always been Hercule Poirot. Its all about the gray cells with him and that's what makes him different. I believe I have finally managed to read each and every one of Agatha Christie's books and stories that have Poirot in them. That was very satisfying, though a bit sad as well.
My collection of Hercule Poirot books is quite large, and I hope one day I can possess each of those books.

Leaving aside Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie's other books and short stories make sure that you don't put the book down till you finish reading till the end.

The Three Blind Mice is one of my favorite short stories. The atmosphere that Agatha Christie created in that short story is simply fascinating. That snowed up house, the individual characters, its a simply fascinating read. She has the ability of taking you there. You can actually visualize the entire setting, and in some scenes you feel you are actually there.
That's the beauty of Agatha Christie. :)

Dead Man Talking

I wrote this poem over 12 years ago,back when I was starting college.
Its the only poem of mine that I remember, others are lost from my memory, and I doubt I can find the books or pieces of paper I wrote them on. So here goes.

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Dead Man Talking
***************

I am a dead Man.
I speak from my grave.
If you are there, then listen very well.
I shall speak but once and not any more.
This message I want you to give to the world.

I lie here rotting for no reason good,
For I had committed the sin of writing the truth.
I wrote well but was known to none.
But when they saw it, they knew pretty well,
What I had written was nothing to what I could tell.

So they came and called me here,
And when I came they said but this,
"We bid you farewell!"
That was the last, the last words I heard,
And now I hear nothing more, but the sounds of Hell!

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Feels good to have put it down. :)

Moodle - an open source LMS

Of late I have been fiddling around with a lot of open source software. Trying to set up my own business, I thought why not work with open source software instead of proprietary ones.

My friend, Narsi sir had been thinking of setting up a Learning Management System (LMS) for ages for his company. That led me to come across Moodle (www.Moodle.org).

Its a power packed application which is great to setup a distance learning program. It can be used by pretty much any organization to set up a training program. A wealth of features and user contributed modules easily makes it better than any paid software.

That's the beauty of open source. Someone has an idea, a group gets together and discusses it, they implement it.
No in depth product plan meetings, budget approvals, marketing department requirements, just a dream and finding a way to fulfill it.

By the people, of the people, for the people.
I think this is the reason why open source tends to be so much better.

Anyways back to Moodle. Its got a steep learning curve, but once you get the hang of it, creating training material is easy, but setting it up and configuring it is not for the layman.
You can control what a student can access, create multiple level of course categories and courses, create lessons, quizzes, forums, blogs, chat sessions. An interactive platform that if used wisely can make learning and teaching easier.

If you want to setup Moodle then I suggest getting the help of someone with some knowledge and experience in it. If you don't have an IT background, then trying to do everything on your own, is going to leave you disappointed and frustrated, and more than likely lead you to give up Moodle.

Moodle has a great user community, but most of them are developers and technical guys who sometimes speak a language of their own, but most of them are a patient lot and will try to help out if they can. :)

Is IT dying!

The world sure has changed. There was a time when someone asked you what you are doing and you said you were in software, people gave this look like you are probably earning by the millions. Anyone outside this industry felt that if you were in software, you were an upcoming Bill Gates.

Since last year, if you say you are in software, the first thing people ask is, 'so is the software market dying?'

It takes me quite some time to explain to them that it is not the case. I point out to them how software is entering more and more into our lives. Just look around you, and you are bound to find something or the other running on some well developed code. Your TV, your iPod, your car, you'll find software everywhere. Heck, if you have those smart switches in your house, then even your lights run on software.

But few if any of these people believe my explanation. You can't blame them. Not when the software industry's behaviour is the real culprit.

Microsoft, Yahoo, IBM, Infosys, even Google, and a host of other software companies all of them have been firing hundred's and thousand's of people. What impression does it give to the world? That the software industry is dying! But that is'nt the case.

A large number of people being fired are the excess staff that these companies have. Most of these companies keep such bloated figures so that it reflects in the company's growth.

When times were good, profit margins were high, and the companies could afford staff on bench. Now its not the case.
From personal experience, I would say an 80:20 ratio exists. 80% of the work is done by 20% of the employees.

Most software companies have a large pool of resources who don't have enough training or skills, so as not to be expendable in a recession world. They are the first in line when it comes to layoffs.

Just like software keeps getting updated from one version to the next, we need to update our skills. Or else we will be obsolete. It reminds me of the story of the grasshopper and the ants. If in the good times we don't work hard, then when the time's bad, we would be down for the count.

Though a large part of the blame on layoffs lie with companies, there are some who still care about their employees. I worked for a Chinese company with over 4000 staff, which last year decided that all staff at a managerial grade or above will forego 1 months salary and their pay raise would be frozen for a year. I did'nt hear of a single layoff in this company, though I bet it had a lot of employees whose skills were obsolete. Just that the company gave them a chance to update themselves.

Back to the main point, 'Is software dying?'
Not a chance. The software market is going to continue growing, perhaps at a little slower pace for sometime, but this growth is long term.

What I do hope is that the industry learns from its mistakes. Cause a hell of a lot of them could have been avoided even this time.

Open Source - Its greatest flaw

There are going to be people who agree and disagree with this point, but for me, Open Source is a great boon for people. Especially for entrepreneurs who try to start out with limited capital, Open Source gives them a lot of tools to grow.

But the greatest hindrance to using Open Source is Documentation. The best way to describe it is that, it Sucks.
Having been a technical writer, I know how software developers write. They may write beautiful code, but a vast majority of them think documenting the software and writing code are one and the same. Some of them forget to realize that one is for an inanimate object and the other is for humans.











I love Open Source and the community that drives it. OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, Moodle, Drupal, Filezilla, Paint.Net, great products each of them. The community that has developed these needs to be thanked and praised. But this community has a serious need for some technical writers to join it and for the development community to accept technical writers.

It may sound silly, but a great number of developers have no respect for technical writers and vice versa. We need to break down this barrier.
From a developer's point of view, they see the tech writer as the guy who criticizes their work and then writes about it.
The tech writer on the other hand doesn't understand why the software is so user unfriendly.
Bad documentation is a problem for all software companies.

Anyways I am moving off topic.
I have criticized a lot of people here, but someone I've missed out is me. Heck I know tech writing and I haven't contributed anything as yet to the open source community. Its time I pulled up my socks and put in some effort in help making open source more usable. So that's my goal for now. :)