Learning Dispatch - January 12th, 2019 - New Year Learning

To write is to share an intimate slide/slice/moment with the world around you. I feel it is a way to capture a life experience and to hold the nuances of it in time. Memory is not a worthy companion in the long run. It become weaker as time passes. To write for me is to present this moment, this experience, this person and this day in the way you perceive it now. I also write because I feel this burning desire to learn about the world around me and then to share what I've learned with a few people that really matter. As a reader, subscribing to these posts, you are really important to me and matter a lot to me.

It has been a while since I published my last post. It has been a rough year personally. I hope I am able to write more often this year. It is both therapeutic and fun for me personally.

I started reading the following three books this year namely,

1. Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee about Casey Han, the daughter of two Korean immigrants and her travails, relationships and experiences after getting out of Princeton on a scholarship into the real world where she doesnt have a similar support structure
2. The Art of Captaincy by Mike Brearley about the role of a captain in a cricket team
3. Into the Silence by Wade Davis about the journey of one of the earliest expeditions to the highest point on planet earth

I am quite excited about reading each of these books. More recently I have also developed an interest in geo politics and bought two large maps of India and the World. I try to pick out a country each day and then learn as much as I can about it through the day. It is quite insightful. Each country has its own set of economic, political, historical and cultural beliefs. It is almost like traveling to another country by reading about it over the internet. Also you push yourself out of your comfort zone and expose yourself to these new belief systems. 

Map Image 1

Learning Dispatch - August 31st, 2018 - Watching The Glass Menagerie at Prithvi Theatre

To write is to share an intimate slide/slice/moment with the world around you. I feel it is a way to capture a life experience and to hold the nuances of it in time. Memory is not a worthy companion in the long run. It become weaker as time passes. To write for me is to present this moment, this experience, this person and this day in the way you perceive it now. I also write because I feel this burning desire to learn about the world around me and then to share what I've learned with a few people that really matter. As a reader, subscribing to these posts, you are really important to me and matter a lot to me.

Learning Dispatch - November 25th, 2017 - Books, Films and Medical Memoirs

Notes on Sessions at the Tata Literature Live 2017

The Tata Literature Live 2017 festival was organized in Mumbai from 16th November 2017 to 19th November 2017. On Day 1, I attended a panel discussion titled Reading like a Writer and a debate on whether we were living in a nanny state. On Day 3, I attended four talks titled, 'The mystery of JD Saligner', 'Berlin, London and Mumbai: How Cities inspire new narratives', 'Poets translating Poets' and 'Judging the Judges'. You can read the description of each of these sessions in some of the links provided above or on the Tata Lit Live website. We ended the day with a two hour play on an Irish Freedom Fighter in the Tata Theatre at NCPA.

Learning Dispatch - October 27th 2017 - Notes from MAMI

The 19th Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival was held in Mumbai from 12th to 18th October 2017. There were over 200 films being screened at over 18 screens around the city. 

Image Credit - https://www.mumbaifilmfestival.com/Programme/ecatalogue

These are some notes from the few films I got to watch at the festival this year. I have attached a link to the trailer for your reference and further exploration. 

1. Thelma is a science fiction film about how a girl's super-natural powers to make people disappear affects her life. 
2. Loveless is the story of a broken marriage in Russia and its repercussions on the neglected child of this failed relationship. 
3. Redoubtable is a fictional depiction of the French Filmmaker Jean Luc Godard's relationship with his second wife who was much younger than him. 
4. mother! is a psychological horror film about how a couple's relationship is disrupted when uninvited guests start arriving at their home. 
5. Up, Down and Sideways is a film about a group of rice farmers in Nagaland who worked as a cooperative but had a tradition of singing love songs while farming in the field. 
6. A Suitable Girl was my highlight of the festival. It is the story of three Indian women in their mid 20's. They are well educated but yet face a lot of pressure from their families to get married and settle down. The three women come from different geographic (Rajasthan and Mumbai) and professional backgrounds (Finance, Education, Marketing). But the struggle to choose between their family's expectation of them as daughters of the house and their own dreams and desires is a common theme that unites these three stories. 

I am glad Mumbai has its own film festival. I really enjoyed my time at the festival this year. I wish I could have seen a few more films. But I am glad I got to watch whatever I eventually got to watch. 

Abhishek 

October 27th, 2017

Learning Dispatch - August 27th 2017 - On Reading Murakami

Reading

I spent some time reading two short story collections by the Japanese writer, Haruki Murakami. The titles of the books were, 'Men without Women' (2016) and 'Blind Willow, Sleeping Women' (2006). A close friend had recommended picking up some of his work after she read his novel, 'The Wind Up Bird Chronicle'. I was first introduced to Murakami through his memoir about writing titled, 'What I Think About, When I Talk About Running' that described his passion for running. I once read a quote by him that said that his writing largely depended on Characterization, Dialogues and Description. I wanted to get a glimpse into his world and I thought short stories was a good way to get started. He commented on his love for the form as follows in a piece about his earlier short story collection, 

"I find writing novels a challenge, writing stories a joy. If writing novels is like planting a forest, then writing short stories is more like planting a garden."

Image Credit - www.harukimurakami.com

Learning Dispatch - August 13th 2017 - On watching Master of None

This weekend I had a lot of free and I decided to binge watch Master of None.

Master of None is a comedy web-television series created by Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang. It was released for streaming on Netflix in 2015. There are 2 seasons with 20 episodes.  IMDB describes the show as a comedy about the personal and professional life of Dev Shah, a 30 year old actor in New York. Without giving out any spoilers, I'd like to write about my experience watching this show. The characters reflected some of your own personal dilemmas. Dev felt what you feel on a daily basis living in a big city. Some themes the show dealt with include:

• Being an ethnic minority
• Being in a job you like and don't like
• Finding time to meet my three best friends
• Going on a date
• Dealing with your parents expectations of you
• Falling in Love 
• Falling out of Love
• Falling in Love again
• Work pressure
• What do you do in a big city on a free weekend
• Taking time out to cook
• Growing old

Learning Dispatch - May 13th 2017 - Money and Player Value in Sports

Hi, 

I want to understand how we can make our learning more social. I love having conversations with friends and colleagues about new insights and learnings. So these dispatches are part of an effort to get those conversations started. 

How do you determine the value of a player in a game of sport?

Money and Player Value in Football

Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski published Soccernomics in 2014. The books explores some counter intuitive truths about football. There were some passages that made me think about sport leagues and how top sports teams evaluate the worth of a player and set aside money to bring the best to their club/team.

On total transfer fees in 2013
"In 2013 clubs around the world paid each other about 2.2 billion pounds in transfer fees." (Kindle Location 200)
                                                                                             

On buying the world's top ten players
"When the club does buy, it rightly tends to focus on 'top ten' players: men who are arguably among the ten best footballers on earth, like Zlatan Ibrahimovic, David Villa, Fabregas, Alves or Neymar. These players cost a lot, but the risk of their failing is small (unless you buy them when they are getting old like Thierry Henry). Part of being one of the ten best footballers on earth is that your perform almost whatever the circumstances." (Kindle Location 874)

On the money Real Madrid spends
"Real Madrid are of course the supreme consumer of shooting stars. This is largely because the club's fans demand it. Madrid (or Newcastle, or Marseille in France) probably aren't even trying to be 'rational' in the transfer market. The club's aim is not to buy the best results for as little money as possible. When their president Florentino Perez handed over a combined total of 136 million pounds for Christiano Ronaldo and Kaka in 2009, he probably suspected he was paying more for the duo than the benefit he was likely to get in results or higher revenues. But big signings of this type (like Newcastle buying fragile MichaelOwen from Madrid for 17 million pounds) are best understood as marketing gifts to a club's fans, sponsors and the local media." (Kindle Location 436)

On Arsene Wenger's Degree in Economics
"The master of that trade today is Wenger. Arsenal's manager is one of the few people in football who can view the game from the outside. In part, this is because he has a degree in economic sciences from the University of Strasbourg. As a trained economist, he is inclined to trust data rather than the game's received wisdom. Wenger sees that in the transfer market, clubs ten to overvalue a player's past performances. That prompts them to pay fortunes - in transfer fees and salaries - for players who have passed their prime." (Kindle Location 540)