My Son Is No Longer Innocent

My son came home in hysterics this evening. He was crying - couldn't catch his breath. He started repeating over."Oh my god, oh my god, ohmygod..."

Tonight, as my son was walking along M.G. Road in Gurgaon, he saw a man crossing the road. He wasn't a beggar, more like one of the walking poor, carrying a basket of stuff. Suddenly a car came out of nowhere and Will said, "He went right up over the hood and his head exploded when it hit the windshield."

He couldn't wrap his head around what he had just seen. "I just saw a man die today, Mom. The driver didn't stop. No one stopped. No one even went over to see if he was okay." Will couldn't have done anything. He didn't have the cell phone and we don't know what the emergency numbers are anyway. He waited a moment, in shock, waiting for someone to do something, then ran home.

When our cat died earlier this year, Yu Yu and I kept vigil over him until he passed away. I asked to Will to go get some rest, and he fell asleep around 1:00 AM. Our wonderful brother passed away in my arms around 3:30 AM. Will was upset that we hadn't awakened him. I have been with many pets when they passed away and it never gets easier. My only other experience with death is being a half hour late to the hospital when my grandfather/best friend passed away. The next day, since he was giving his body to Columbia Medical School, we were allowed to view is body in the morgue at the hospital. One eye was open - he looked like he was winking at me, but he was surely dead. His sarcastic smile was missing. And he was cold. When someone you love dies, the fascinating thing you remember is watching the light that vanishes from within. Their eyes go far away, sometimes they cry out... some call this the spirit, the soul or life essence. Whatever, I am grateful to have been there for those on their way to their next journey. I don't want to die alone. I want someone holding my hand and telling me they love me and it's going to be okay.

This sudden death of a stranger hit my son really hard. He talked about how it could happen to anyone at anytime and cherishing every day as if it were your last. Even though this year has been very hard for us, at least we're together, healthy (somewhat), and relatively safe. We're certainly not secure, we never know when our next meal will be coming from (especially at the end of the month), and who I'll have to skip paying this month in order to pay his school fees, or if some major snafu will happen where I need capital - we literally run month to month with no savings whatsoever. It's been that way ever since we moved here to India. I've been cheated, extorted, and robbed since I moved here; I was promised things that never came through. Yeah sure, it happens everywhere - I get it.

When Will said I just saw a man die today, I knew his world would never be the same again. You see death and horror every day on the news, but until you personally witness it, it's an abstract. Death, even a stranger's, has a way of making you wake up.

Events & Groups in Delhi for Bloggers

Delhi Blogger Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/delhibloggers

Delhi Blogger Group on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/groups/delhibloggers/

Delhi Blogger Group on Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/42110/5633581025ED

Delhi Blogger Group on Orkut: http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=143972

Delhi Blogger Group on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8176649883

Delhi Blogger Group on Twitter: http://twitter/com/delhitweetup

EVENTS IN FEBRUARY:

WordCamp
http://india.wordcamp.org/
Wordcamp India is here! Now in the planning phase.
Date: 21st, 22nd Feb ‘09
Location: Delhi (TBD)
Matt Mulenweg (of WordPress) has agreed to join them for India’s first WordCamp.
Planning to register and hopefully speak about marketing your blog.

BarCamp Delhi
http://www.barcampdelhi.com
Date: 28th Feb to 1st Mar ‘09
Location: Delhi (TBD)
I'm registered to speak about building your online identity.

Black Lips Chased Out of India by Police

Black Lips Chased out of India by Police
http://vice.typepad.com/vice_magazine/2009/01/black-lips-indi.html <- read this for a more juvenile report of events :-)

/snip

"When garage-rock knuckleheads the Black Lips smash beer bottles over their guitars or piss in their own mouths onstage in the U.S., the worst that usually happens is they'll get banned from another venue. But when they bring that anarchy to their tour of India, they incur the wrath of all sorts of authority figures.

That's what reportedly happened Friday night in Chennai. According to the Indian music site Indecision, the Lips got themselves in trouble while playing at Sir Mutha Venkata Subbarao Concert Hall. Guitarist Cole Alexander stripped his clothes off, dove in the crowd, then got back onstage and made out with other band members. This kind of thing does not fly in Chennai. As of right now, the rest of the Lips' Indian tour is canceled, and the band's label, Vice Records, has no idea where they are.

This Indian tour had always seemed like a pretty nuts idea. The Lips were topping the bill at a Battle of the Bands, playing after a bunch of Indian metal bands. And the first show of the tour, in Pune, found the confused crowd pelting the band with plastic bottles. In an interview with Time Out Mumbai, Lips drummer Joe Bradley said that the band would be tuning down their live show for this tour: "We want to respect the people and places that provide these shows for us." The weird thing is that the Chennai show actually sounds fairly low-key as far as Black Lips shows go."

/snip

Now, my opinion on this. Don't know the band; don't care. I do understand what it's like to be f*cked over by people running the show here. I have also experienced the "not-so-fun in dysfunctional" companies and the retarded young men who use their daddies' money to become film producers and rock promoters with absolutely no experience. I think both the Black Lips' manager AND ESPECIALLY the promoters should have understood what they were going to perform where they were going to perform it. That was just plain stupid. ALSO, the bullsh*t about telling the band they owed US$10,000 for not continuing to perform all their tour dates, and finding out they didn't even have a written contract? WTF? And trying to keep their passports? OMFG... (shakes head) Nothing new there - welcome to India.

I know there will be flame mail for this, but don't expect any artist (no matter how good OR bad) to kowtow to your personal values. I'm not defending this band but I would never expect ANY artist to change their vision to fit a culture's moral view point. That's not their mission in life. It's up to their managers and agents to commercialize their products - that's why they are the "professionals" and I'm using the term loosely. It's the artist's mission to stay true to their personal truth, whatever that may be.

The whole reason for living the life of a musician or artist is to express yourself through your art. Whether or not the audience finds what you have to say or do personally offensive or worth paying for is their problem.

There have been MANY artists banned through the centuries because they offended popular constructs and morals, including many modern(ish) artists such as de Sade, Robert Mapplethorpe, Georgia O'Keefe, Walt Whitman, William Rice Burroughs, Lenny Bruce, Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, but they live on because what they produced strikes a chord in other human beings.

If you don't like it, don't see it. I love fine art, but I'm not a fan of Impressionism. I won't go to see their work. I can't stand Country music, but I love late 70's/early 80's Punk - The Ramones, Plasmatics, Circle Jerks, Dead Kennedys and the Sex Pistols are gods to me. When bands like these were banned in Boston, members-only private clubs, like Media Workshop, bent the rules by being open after the bars closed at 1:00AM with a BYOB policy. You got to see the bands, even though they were considered lewd, immoral, obscene and broke all sorts of public decency laws. It was great :-) I'll defend to the death the right for someone to listen to Country Music, but I won't play it on the radio, buy a CD or go to a concert.

The arts are also the first to be controlled by dictators, religious fanaticism and other totalitarian regimes. Take a look at countries attempting to "program" writing, music, design, and architecture and you'll be seeing the first signs of a less that free society. The Christian Right did huge damage to the NEA, educational programs, and public libraries (even more damage was suffered in public funding of creative expression in places like Kansas, Nebraska & Alaska).

Leave morals out of artistic expression. Banning any artistic view is abhorrent, whether or not we are reviled by its subject matter. Burning books, destroying sculptures, painting over fine art are all ways that are used to subjugate freedom of expression, to subjugate one's cultural identity, to remove your identity and connection to your fellow man. It's a personal expression and no one, absolutely no one, gets to tell me how to say it, to whom I can say it, or what I am allowed to say.

ARTISTIC EXPRESSION = FREEDOM!

Response to a Reader: Making an SEO Plan

I'm assuming you're looking to increase organic search results. The way I develop a plan is start by confirming what the goals are with the stakeholders. Let's illustrate by using a simple example. The company manufactures gardening equipment: hoes, wheelbarrows, spades, lawn trim, etc. They sell in bulk to retail stores and also sell retail from the web site and ship to consumers in the U.S. The online business is not doing the percentage of business they expected. After speaking with the stakeholders, you agree to drive consumer traffic from the U.S. to your web site, convert them to members and process a membership fee. Your goals need to be that specific.

The next thing to determine is how you plan to measure these goals. Do you need a special confirmation page after membership completion and the membership fee processing? What analytics tools will you use? (Tools will vary based on volume - on a smaller site, Google Analytics will be useful; WebTrends works well with more complex sites.) Their tracking codes need to be added to your site as soon as possible. You need to establish a baseline before making any changes.

Next, establish the demographics you are targeting. For games, there are many sectors that will be attracted to certain games and not others. For gardening sites, the sectors will be quite different but could be just as varied.

[NOTE] At this point I was bored myself. Hasn't this already been done to death on better blog by better SEOers than me?

What do I have to do to get a decent book to read?

Way back in Kolkata, around two months into my life here in India, I visited Crosswords, a large book franchise found in most malls and cities here in India. As I perused the books, I noticed a number of volumes written by John Grisham, Sidney Sheldon and Danielle Steele. Eric Segal. I thought he only wrote that peice of trash that was popular in the 70's called "Jonathan Livingston Seagull", but he's written a TON of books and they're very popular here. Every minute or so, a clerk was aking me if he could help me find something. Instead of feeling that they were serving me, I felt like the African American in the fur section at Burlington Coat Factory where everyone was watching to see if I was going to steal something. (Trust me on this one. I had a friend who worked there and they were told to racially profile. Very bad.)

I went to the classics section looking for Steinbeck. No Steinbeck. Keyes? No. Vonnegut? No. Salinger? No. Okay.... What about Yann MArtel - has he written anything lately? Hmmm. I searched my mind for other writers I loved. Pearl Buck? No. Lots of Shaekspeare, and Elizabethan writers and Romantic poets, but nothing recent, nothing considered an American Classic. I didn't even bother to look for David Sedaris. But who else WAS there? The chick from Desperate Housewives, Terry Hatcher's memoirs. Huh? Classics?

Okay. Poetry. Any Whitman? Any Langston Hughes? e.e.cummings? Robert Service? No. Not even Dante, who seemed old enough to be in the classics section...

I checked the philosophy section for maybe Hediegger or at least Bertrand Russell. I spied a Jean Paul Sartre, but it was a book about him, not his work. I thought maybe I'll find some Indian writers that I had previously enjoyed, like Krishnamurti. No K-murti.

Dejected, I walked to the wall of magazines. No Vanity Fair. No Dwell. No Wallpaper. No architecural magazines, not even that toilet paper called Architectural Digest. Was there an Indian version of an architectural magazine? No. I found a few Indian decor-oriented magazines, but nothing else.

One of the most infuriating things about the bookstores here is that any beautifully printed art or architecture book is shrinkwrapped, so you can't see the pages (I've been tricked before and bought books with all black and white versions of artwork). I'm not buying unless I can see it.

I've been trying to locate a David Foster Wallace book from 1996 called "Infinite Jest". It became even more important since he passed away this year. Actually he finally succumbed to his depression, which usually accompanies genius, and committed suicide. His story reminded me of another writer of genius, O'Toole, writer of "Confederacy of Dunces", another brilliant work of art, that either love or hate.

I talked with the staff and asked them if they could special order it for me. I'm still waiting.

I hadn't been introduced to good Indian writers at this point. I decided to immerse myself in Indian writers and just before I left for India, Vanity Fair had an issue that interviewed all the U.S. based NRI's who had been able to get published int he United States, and a couple of people introduced me to their personal favorites. Out of those, I have found three AMAZING Indian writers.

Amitav Ghosh lives in New York City and writes historically relevant novels about Kolkata and it's relationship with Myanmar (Burma), the British Raj and the Opium Trade, and Partition. I was first introduced to "The Hungry Tide", that discusses the delta of the Ganges as it flows into the Bay of Bengal. It was very good introduction to the culture that is Calcutta. Because I was living in this city, I was hungry for more. I read another of his books, "Shadow Lines", which discusses what happened to Bengalis during Partition.

(Note: I hired an intern at my company BuzzBoltMEDIA, who was the son of a Muslim NRI. He did not know that during Partition, there were two Pakistans, East and West. I'm not sure whether to blame the parents or the school, but geography especially the other side of the planet, is not a prerequisite to graduating high school or college in the U.S.)

"Shadow Lines" talks about the myth of borders and their arbitrary placement, changing the lives of the people surrounding it. It focuses on a single family trapped between two countries. After reading that book, I was told, actually required, (:-)) to read "The Glass Palace", a sweeping book that showed me the deep connection/split between the two countries surrounding the Bay of Bengal. It was recommended to me by a Burmese National and it exposed me to a piece of history and the depth of it the encircles the epicenter that is now called Kolkata. A few months ago, this same friend, also a fan, was lucky enough to meet Mr. Ghosh at a book signing in Kolkata and connected with him regarding Burma. She gave me my favorite present of all time, an autographed first edition of "Sea of Poppies", the first in a trilogy by Amitav Ghosh. It discusses the Opium Trade between the English centralized in Calcutta who shipped Opium all the way to England and China. I am excited to read the second, not yet out in India. All of his books were all the poignant because I was living in the city around his novels revolve. It made the city all the more interesting and visiting places mentioned in his books were all the more vivid because of its historical context.

I was also introduced to Arundhati Roy's "God of Small Things" that focuses on South India, a place I've never been. I could viscerally see and hear the sounds of the deep south of India, and while it had a universal story, the specifics were purely part of the culture of India, that after reading, really haunted me.

A very good friend of my son's gave him a book called "White Tiger" by Aravind Adiga, who lives in Mumbai. It's his first book, a book about the tensions between the rich and servant classes and takes place in Gurgaon, where I now live. At the time, we had a servant living in our home, and slept in the room next to me, and it seriously freaked me out. I understand the servant's point of view from the book, and, if my servant had these thoughts, we were seriously in trouble. (If you've been reading my posts, this is the same guy who was responsible for dropping a large piece of wallboard 14 floors crashing into a car, and is at fault for the death of my cat.) The idea that this book caused here in India was something of a sensation. It was virtually unavailable - book stores could not keep it in stock.

When I was traveling with my parents and had arrived in Dharmsala, the Norbulinka Institute had its own library, mostly of books left by other visitors. I loved the fact that some of these other people passing through had written notes inside. I picked up Rohinton Mistry's "A Fine Balance" and the person who had left it said that it has changed their life. I'm speechless as to how to describe this novel. I finished it in two days, cutting down my touring because the book meant so much to me. I can't describe the story - the cast of characters are huge and each individual is vital to the story. Just find it and read it.

Okay, as I posted to twitter earlier, I'm still waiting to find a copy of David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest". I still don't know how or when I'll get it, but I am sure looking forward to finding it. :-) If you can recommend good Indian writers that focus on the history of Delhi or Mumbai, as Amitav Ghosh does about Calcutta, I would love to hear your suggestions.

Another Expat Blogger in India

I was doing a bit of research on a company I was interested in, the internet browser, Opera. Turns out, they have an office up in Chandigarh. If anybody knows me at all well, they know that I am the offspring of two architects - my dad being a huge fan of Corbusier.

The first time I visited the city was thirty years when I was 15 and going to college at Sir J.J.'s in Mumbai as an exchange student. I had already had countless hours of discussion with my father regarding Corbu's work elsewhere and the only knowledge he had of the Radiant City was from books. But being there, understanding the reasons Corbu designed the city the way he did, really didn't take into account the way the culture of the citizens lived. It seemed a bit sterile and every block looked the same. I was a bit disappointed until I saw Corbu's work at the Secretariat. At that time, we were able to access the roof and see the entire grid of Chandigarh at our feet. We then went to the Chandigarh College of Architecture (where I was mesmerized by a young Sikh student unfurling his turban and combing out his hair)... Sorry, I went off on a tangent there. Okay back to the story.

This past November, I managed to talk my parents into visiting India on their trip around the world by promising to take them the Chandigarh. This time the city had grown into itself. Trees were no longer saplings, and the city contains about 4 times the population it was supposed to hold. It was quite lively and interesting. My 15 year old son said the women in Chandigarh, were by far, the most beautiful so far that he'd seen in his travels (and well, I still vividly remember that Sikh). We also drove by the Tech sector and I was surprised at the amount of buildings. (This had all been fields 30 years ago.) Chandigarh was the highlight of my parents' trip in India. (They had absolutely nothing nice to say about Gurgaon.)

Back to Opera. I researched the company, and found out they just grew to 1% browser market share (it may seem like "who cares...", but options are important). I looked at where they are heading and they've made some shrewd choices in their long term strategy that could make them a big player (the kind of move made by Microsoft by adding IE into all Windows operating systems). They're actually taking on IE now in the EU for that behavior. I like the fact that you don't hear of them that much, but with Google falling from grace in the public's eye, and Microsoft being considered an evildoer, there's firefox, opera, safari and a number of smaller browsers out there that can pick up the slack. I, for one, never use IE, tried chrome, but like the add-ons for firefox. I've always had Opera on my system for testing, ever since I worked at Lycos, but typically ran Firefox over the past few years.

I'm becoming a convert after reading about the company. I looked up their web site and found out that they made a lot of other products, including email, and a couple of really robust mobile browser products along with another one for other devices (including your internet enabled video game players - Woot!). I applied for a Marketing manager position and received an email with a list of questions to answer, and of course, it's about three pages long - I really need an editor. That was about 12 days ago.

Of course, as I've said many times in my blog and elsewhere, learning how a company works from the inside, networking with current staff, understanding whether the company likes disruptive personalities and quirky, yet brilliant staff - it's important in making your decision to join. Kind of like visiting your boyfriend's parents. You're going to be spending a lot of time with these people - are you going to get along with them, or are you doomed from the start? While searching for bloggers, I found this interesting chap, Wolf, who works at Opera and seems fairly new to India as well. His blog can be found at:

http://blog.njyo.net/

He only has a few posts up so far, but that's par for being a busy professional trying to settle in to a new country. Give him a read and see what you think. So far, he's the only expat I've found in the Chandigarh area writing about his experiences there...

Enjoy. :-)

What India Does Better Than Anyone Else

In a word, education. The basic education called CBSE (or something like that) is very heavy with multiple classes in math and science in each grade (or standard as they call them here). Families place a premium on getting good grades and getting into the best colleges. Students may stress out completely before exams because they are told how very important they are for their future well-being.

This education, however, provides an excellent curriculum for individuals who love logical, left-brain thought processes. For those who are right-brained, creative individuals, they are limited in their success.

Nevertheless, the teams that I've had the good luck to work with here are brilliant. All marketers I've hired come with good, solid backgrounds understanding more than simple marketing. They can work with new technologies and learn quickly. They can function in a number of the aspects involved in web development. For example, one Team Leader, as part of our reorg, ended up being part of another team as their technical lead. He had mad design skills, could program, and was able to do a lot of the work that, if we had depended on other departments to build, would never have launched. He built web sites from start to finish in a few days, rather than weeks. My only interaction was providing feedback prior to final launch, reviewing the rework and approval. People who have absorbed this vast knowledge are every where. It's just a matter of finding them.

The challenge I have, is getting them to share whatever creativity they have to come up with what Americans call "the big idea". What else can we do to increase market share and drive traffic? I would have meetings with groups and no one would talk, afraid of looking stupid in front of their peers. To me, that meant that I had to provide a setting that felt safe for them to do this. We cleared out the second section of our office and added a conference table and chairs. We installed a big white board. We had all of our planning meetings in this space. It felt less formal than using my office and people responded. They came up with good ideas, like widgets, and social media concepts to enhance social proofing for our site to make it more sticky. We tested many of these ideas and some really succeeded.

Because of that success, they were spurred on to come up with more unconventional ideas. I publicly gave recognition for their ideas and efforts. I ensured that the big bosses knew who was responsible for coming up with the ideas in the first place. I promoted natural born leaders who could articulate where the web was going and took mentoring to heart. They trained their staff individually and with care to ensure that priority was given to the more important tasks. I trained my Team Leaders to think for themselves - develop plans to push projects on their own. Some had immense challenges to overcome when I told them they owned it, but when they succeeded, they came back with a new intensity and sense of accomplishment. When they failed, I told them that they will learn more because they failed. We did post-mortems on dead projects to see what could have been done better.

Overall, my teams make a lot less than Americans do and typically I've found that I need two people for to produce the same quantity and I think this is purely because of the cultural gap. Originally, our "blog" content writers would write about their daily lives, not understanding exactly what an American does in their daily lives. They didn't understand the starbucks on every block syndrome, they didn't go to the drug store or pick up their dry cleaning. They didn't know what an laundromat was and had never experienced the pressure young professionals deal with when moving into their own place and staying with a job you hate 'cuz ya gots to pay the rent and your school loans. They didn't know what a road trip was, or going to Canada on a bet. They didn't understand heading to Denny's after a thorough night out drinking heavily and dancing. Their only references were TV shows like Friends and Seinfeld. They thought everyone lived that way.

I had to go back to the U.S. for an interview, so I picked up American candies, like root beer barrels, red hots, rasinettes, m&ms, etc., plus a ton of magazines from the supermarket, like People, US Weekly, Redbook, even the Enquirer, along with Vanity Fair, Martha Stewart Living, O, etc. It really helped them to see the content Americans engaged with. BTW, no one liked the root beer barrels - too odd a flavour as far as they were concerned. :-) I miss root beer. (sigh)

As long as Indian companies that want to work with American companies, it is critical to understand the importance of identifying with that culture. Provide time for regular training sessions - it's more than just readjusting your accent. My Indian teams have been eager to learn and excited to do so. It has been a joy to watch them grow and succeed. :-)