Wisdom 2.0 Conference

I spoke at the Wisdom 2.0 conference in San Francisco  today on Envisioning the Conscious Corporation. It was attended by 1800 people. Speakers included Bradley Horowitz, VP of Product for Google+, Jeff Weiner CEO of Linked In, and Evan Williams, Co-founder of Twitter.

Here is my speech.

Beautiful Sand Mandala created by a group of Tibetan monks over 5 days and then destroyed to symbolize the impermanence of life Video

Yoga practioners in America – Vote in the 2012 Presidential elections. It is your dharma. The yoga community in America has historically looked towards India and learnt from the teachers and wisdom traditions that originated there. It can draw some wisdom for the upcoming Presidential elections from the same source. India is the world's largest democracy. It has a population of 1.1 billion people and a voting age population of 738 million, according to the Institute for Democratic and Electoral Assistance. India is a young democracy that became independent from British rule in 1947 and a full-fledged republic with its own constitution in 1950. I was born and raised in India and was lucky to have been exposed to its democratic institutions and electoral processes from an early age. One of the facts I am very proud of is that every few years the whole country has gone to the polls and power has transferred to a different group of leaders elected by the people in a peaceful process. India with its huge and diverse electoral population and multi-party democracy presents a challenge of biblical proportions to conducting free and fair elections. It is the largest exercise in democratic franchise in the world, with more than 738 million people being given an equal opportunity to participate in the elections. Many of them are illiterate and have to be trained to vote for a symbol they can visually recognize (like a bicycle, an open palm or a lotus) rather than read the candidate’s name on the ballot. Electoral officers have to sometimes carry ballot boxes on horseback and by camel, crossing rivers on foot and trekking up mountain paths to make sure that even citizens living in remote areas have a chance to vote. Indians take their voting rights seriously. In the 2004 elections, 60% of the voting age population participated and in 2009, 56% used their vote. This is in contrast to the US, where 57% participated in 2008 and only 38% in 2010, according to the Institute for Democratic and Electoral Assistance. One of my vivid memories as a child is my great-grandmother Vattompadath Kalyani Kutty Amma participating in the elections. She was 92 at that time and had rarely traveled outside the the small rice farming hamlet called Chittilencheri in Kerala, Southern India, where our family is from. In my living memory she had never left the village or even gone more than two miles from our family home. And yet for the general elections that year, poll workers came and took her to the neighboring village school where she cast her vote. Every vote matters. She knew exactly whom she voted for by choosing the symbol of the candidate as she could not read and write - and she could tell me why she made that choice. Drawing from that electoral and democratic wisdom coming out of India, it is important that the yoga community in America actively participate in the upcoming elections. Why do I say this? It is your dharma. If you live in a democracy, voting is a right, a privilege and a duty. It is our dharma to participate in the democratic process and cast our votes. As a yoga practitioner you must do your dharma. It is very similar to how Krishna tells Arjuna in The Bhagavad Gita that it is the duty of a Kshtatriya, or a warrior, to go to battle and how everyone must do their duty. Personal Power from exercising your choice. You have a choice, so exercise it. Yogis live from a place of personal power. Personal power comes from knowing your values, showing integrity towards it, setting an intention, making a choice and exercising it. Speak your truth. The Yoga community has reached a tipping point with an estimated 20 million practitioners who spend an estimated $27 billion on yoga products. Plus an even larger amount of buying power across all the other products and services we consume. We make choices in conscious living. We choose consciously what we eat, how we take care of our environment, what we drive, what we consume, how we use energy, what resources we consume, and how we take care of our personal health. We need to speak our truth about these choices and how we respect other people’s choices. When we participate in the democratic process, in the political debate and make our electoral choices, we will be speaking our collective truth. So on Tuesday November 6, wake up early, and roll out your yoga mat or meditation cushion. Do your yoga or meditation practice. Get centered in your being. Feel a sense of gratitude that you have the gift of voting rights that someone else fought hard for. Go to the polling booth tall, erect and poised in your yogic energy. Exercise your personal power. Speak your truth. And receive the electoral results with a sense of grace, ease, calm, equanimity and peace. Just as yogis have always done in India. Published in Yoga Votes http://yogavotes.org/yoga-practioners-in-america-vote-in-the-2012-presidential-elections-it-is-your-dharma/

Burning Man

This is an extraordinary video about Burning Man which you will appreciate if you have been or if you are merely curious. This will explain why it is such a magical place and why Time Magazine chose Burning Man as one of "Civilizations 100 most important sites."


Video - In the Dust

Wanderlust Festival Speakeasy 2010, Lake Tahoe

Here is a talk I gave at the Wanderlust Festival Speakeasy 2010 in Lake Tahoe along with Soren Gordhammer the founder of the Wisdom 2.0 conference and author of the book by the same name.

Video
Wanderlust Festival 2011 site

Antarctica
December 2010




Antarctica, it is becoming clear to me, is at the end of the earth. I have flown from San Francisco, California to Lima, Peru to Buenos Aires, Argentina to Santiago, Chile to Puenta Arenas, Chile and finally to King George Island in the South Shetlands to arrive in Antarctica.

There were a few other options for getting there that I considered. The most popular one is to get to Ushuaia, the southern most city in the world in Tierra Del Fugo in Argentina and board a ship. But two weeks ago things looked treacherous in the notorious Drake Passage, which divides Antarctica from Tierra Del Fugo at the southern tip of South America. The Clelia II had run into thirty-foot waves and floundered as this dramatic video showed (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkPVwE8XQCs ). Wharton Leadership Ventures from my alma mater, The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania offered a spot on their student expedition to Antarctica. But the prospect of camping on a glacier - a moving sheet of ice, no matter how slowly it was moving - and discussing leadership through the examples of legendary explorers Shackleton and Edmundsen was not appealing. Or I could fly or sail directly to one of the many research stations all over Antarctica, including a few on the South Pole. But that would have meant volunteering at the research station for six months as my colleague from Google, Pablo Cohen, was doing at the McMurdock research station. So it was that a rugged sea captain called Ben Williams from Puerto Williams in Chile found me a seat on a six-person plane flying to King George Island.



Antarctica has always held endless fascination for travelers and explorers. It is the largest wilderness on the planet and is owned by nobody. Despite its abundance of natural and mineral riches, somehow a group of otherwise quarrelsome superpowers have agreed to share the continent and use it only for peaceful and scientific purposes. This is a land covered by a sheath of ice so thick that you can drill for five miles before you get to the actual continental surface; a brooding mass of land with an ethereal silence, larger than Australia and Europe combined, tucked away out of sight on most maps and globes at the arbitrarily defined bottom of the world; and a land of endless sunlight and glistening glaciers during summer and a haunting black night throughout the winter.

As our tiny aircraft touches down on a gravel strip piloted expertly by two retired Chilean air force pilots, I look around the diverse group of five other people making this trip with me and wonder what drew them here. Michelle is in her final year studying human biology at Stanford University and lives just five miles from where I live in the San Francisco bay area; she is here on a quest to get to all the seven continents. Slava, a taciturn Russian man, is here to trace the footsteps of his parents; his deceased father, a Russian scientist and metrologist, had spent six years on different Russian research stations in the Antarctica and his mother had lived for one year. Slava himself has lived for eleven years in the Arctic.

Then I discover even more unique ways to see the Antarctic: a few minutes behind us lands a larger chartered plane and out tumbles a friends and family group led by someone from New York. They are boarding a private yacht that will take them around Antarctica. The yacht itself has been brought in from Fort Lauderdale, Florida by a South African captain who was to hand over command to an Ice Captain more familiar with the Antarctic waters. I do a quick math on what the trip must be costing them and the figure of half a million US dollars emerges. Hedge fund manager is what I conclude; who else could spend that kind of money on a summer vacation?

At the runway we are met by a grizzled man with a long white beard looking every bit the part of an Antarctic explorer. If you were making a movie about the legendary Ernest Shackleton, this is who central casting would send you. But Alejo Contreras Staeding is not just any Antarctic explorer; he is a living legend. For the last thirty years he has spent every summer on Antarctica, making him the one human (living or dead) who has spent the most time on the continent. He has made seventeen trips to the South Pole including one in 1989 when he walked all the way to the South Pole from the Weddell Sea, becoming the first South American to do so. For 97 days he pushed uphill on cross-country skis along with Indian Army officer Col. Bajaj, the first Indian to walk to the South Pole. They hauled behind them on sleds all the supplies they needed for their trip. He says that more than the physical endurance, the biggest challenge was mental in trying to deal with the monotony of plodding through an endless flat expanse of white for more than three months.

One of the people visiting with us is Josephine, Alejo’s 22-year-old daughter who is spending the summer with her Dad on the continent. She is a psychology student at the University of Chile in Santiago. I suggest to her gently that for her research thesis, perhaps she should study the psychological makeup of her father and other similar explorers and what gives them such remarkable sustaining power.

Alejo has also climbed Mount Vinson Massif - the tallest mountain on Antarctica - sixteen times including six times with celebrated climber Rob Hall, who died on the Everest summit (made famous in the book and movie, Into Thin Air). As if that was not enough, in 1994, Alejo also sailed around the entire continent in a clockwise direction against the wind, which no sane sailor would wish to do. I am endlessly fascinated as I listen to this living legend the entire trip.

From the Magellan Straits to the South Pole, when someone needs help of any kind from logistics to rescue operations they seem to call Alejo. The Chinese research station is nervous about their vice premier visiting in three days and want a solution to house the 43-person entourage in case the weather turns bad and they are not able to fly out; they turn to Alejo. The expedition from The Wharton School needs a large quantity of food and fuel; Alejo has organized it. Late at night, although the midnight sun is still bright in the Antarctic summer, the radio crackles with the call signature “Big Fish” wanting to talk to Alejo. It is a crew member from the Hedge fund manager’s yacht, whose signature is Big Fish - with no trace of irony. So, even in the Antarctic where Orca, Minca, and humpback whales roam freely, hedge fund managers from New York like to be known as the big fish. “Big Fish” wants an option if they decide not to tow a smaller motorboat behind their yacht; again, Alejo is the man they turn to.

Two sailors from the Chilean Navy take us on a Zodiac to a beach at nearby Ardley Island where there is huge Penguin colony and hatchery. Things look busy in the colony. All the adult penguins I am watching have arrived here after swimming thousands of miles from places like the Falkland and Christmas Islands. With uncanny natural instincts as perfect as a human-built GPS, they return to the same place where they nested before.




Penguins are monogamous birds and Dad arrives first to get the nest ready before Mom finds her way here swimming on her own the entire journey. This is when things can begin to get a bit nasty as neighbors encroach on the nests or steal stones from them to build their own. There is much puffing of chests, expressions of indignation, tut-tutting, and penguin name-calling before it is all settled and the chicks arrive. Penguins are hopelessly devoted to their young, with either the Dad or Mom being constantly present and holding their young close to their chest with their flippers while the other parent is out on their fishing shift. After all, when your nest is a pile of rocks on an exposed beach or rock with predators circling overhead, you are a sitting duck - or in this case a sitting penguin. A momentary lapse of attention could mean your chick disappears in an instant.

The top of the hill on Ardley Island is packed with resident penguins; a virtual skyline of penguins nesting in a neat row. This is a particularly puzzling decision because there is plenty of space on the beach below; sure, the view is spectacular and having a summerhouse on top of the hill overlooking the ocean and bobbing icebergs must buy you status back in the penguin society on the Falkland Islands, but you are now an even worse sitting penguin with no place to hide your chicks from predators. Moreover, penguins, while graceful swimmers in the water, are terrible walkers. Five million years of evolution and they still have not mastered it; with their fins spread out for balance and their underbelly thrust out like badly anchored diapers, they waddle clumsily around the beach on their webbed feet looking very much like two-year-olds lurching around their parents’ living room.

As I look up the hill to a penguin path leading to the top of the ridge, it looks like a freeway at rush hour in Los Angeles. Penguins are waddling up and down ungracefully all day long heading down to the water to fish and heading back up to relieve their husband or wife from babysitting duties. Along the way they stop and exchange news and gossip with a friend going the other way. Perhaps whispering scandalously “Puffy has been hanging out with the hot Emperor penguin who just arrived from South Georgia”.

Across from Ardley Island on the other side of the bay we are in, a 60-storey tall sheet of ice glistens menacingly back at us; a really massive ice cube that could be 5 million years old. All the glaciers on Antarctica between them account for the largest collection of fresh water on the planet. I want to get close to the glacier. but as the wind whips up we have a small crisis when our engine dies and the Chilean sailors work hard to get it restarted. They turn the nose of the Zodiac back to the base; weather changes quickly in the Antarctic and winds can whip up to a speed of 300Km per hour. Instead, the sailors take us to the Navy clubhouse and away from the roar of the elements. Here, they graciously serve us hot coffee and biscuits and ceremoniously present us with certificates that show we landed in Antarctica. Given the bleakness of the social life in an Antarctic base, new visitors are a welcome relief to them.




Back on King George Island, after hiking down a field of ice I find myself on a beach overlooking Nelson Island that looks neatly sculpted and thrust out of the ocean like a dining table for the Antarctic gods. A big colony of Weddell seals and elephant sea lions are tanning on the beach and moulting. If you think penguins are awkward walkers, seals and sea lions do an even more terrible job of dragging their fat bodies along the sand. Yet still they choose to drag themselves as far as half a mile from the water. Small cliques lie together on the beach pressing their bodies tightly, scratching each other with their flippers and looking like the poster children of fat, sloth, and laziness. They allow us quite close to them, having no predators on land. Apparently their reserves of fat (for the long winters with no food) also act as a kind of protection - land-based animals don’t want to eat a sea lion rich in fat and end up with a clogged artery.

China is an economic and industrial powerhouse. This may seem out of context, but I reach this conclusion while in Antarctica. We get invited to the Chinese research station on King George Island thanks to Alejo’s connection and because one of the members of our small group is a venture capitalist from Beijing. The newly built Chinese research station and aptly named Great Wall Base is a monument to the country’s industrial machine: it is breathtaking in scale and impressive in its organization. The base is a beehive of activity, with young Chinese geologists, meteorologists, biologists and oceanographers buzzing around. The chefs are whipping up delicious Chinese cuisine in their kitchens and the leaders of the station are in a frenzy. Two days later, a Chinese vice premier who is also the highest ranking woman in the Chinese government, and a 42-person entourage of Government officials are arriving to inspect the station.




Mr. Shiu, the head of the base, on deputation from the Polar Research Institute in Shanghai, has many questions for Alejo: “What is the weather going to be on Saturday? Can we house the delegation if the weather turns bad and they are not able to fly back? Can we use your white truck as backup?” The Chinese base apparently has an impressive physical fitness center with basketball and badminton courts but, alas, we cannot see it. Having made it sparkle in anticipation of the Vice-Premier’s visit, Mr. Shiu has locked it up till her arrival. No time for fun and games for the Chinese scientists. The conference room has been made ready more than three days in advance with nameplates in beautiful Chinese calligraphy already set up in front of each chair. Perhaps most impressively, an auditorium with a lectern and Chinese flags on the stage has been erected. No doubt the Vice-Premier will stand there and thank the Great Wall Base researchers for sacrificing a year of comforts to support research in Antarctica and to work hard for the glory and greatness of China. I remind myself that I am witnessing all this in the Antarctic frontier and not in The Great Revolution Chinese Comrades and Friendship Hall somewhere in XinJiang province.

When I step outside the cluster of buildings that form the Great Wall base, our Chinese guide leads us to two carved stone dragons brought from China presumably to protect the base. The smell of Chinese food is heavenly. The feeling is almost like walking through any Chinatown in the world – San Francisco, Vancouver, Calcutta, or Jakarta. Just like in most countries I have visited, I realize there is now a Chinatown in Antarctica and soon it will be mentioned in the Lonely Planet guide.

The Russian research station called Bellinghausen meanwhile looks eerily quiet, as if it has seen its glory days and is now hanging on to its badge of honor as the oldest research base in Antarctica. I find it puzzling that the two bases – Chinese and Russian - are both products of communist systems and yet are so different. I only get to walk around the outside of the Russian base. Slava is the only person invited to visit inside and later he comes back to report that pictures of his father are still on the walls inside the base. He even spoke to one scientist who had worked with his father in Antarctica many years ago. As I ask Slava about his visit he is visibly emotional.

The Russian base is dominated by a Russian Orthodox Church on top of a hill overlooking the entire cluster of research stations on King George Island. It comes complete with a Russian Orthodox priest brought in from Russia. A tiny but magnificent structure, it is made entirely of logs of wood, with no nails used in its construction and anchored by chains that rise to the roof to keep it stable in the fierce Antarctic winds that could blow it away like a paper bag. There is something delightfully ironic about the presence of the Church. I don’t think of Russians at large as particularly religious people. This is what I would expect from a group of devout Ecuadorean catholic immigrants in California or a group of Hindu migrant workers from around Varanasi being brought to Fiji by the British. But a group of rational Russian Scientists wanting their own church in a remote research station in the Antarctic is an unexpected twist.

There is anxiety I have about how Antarctica - the last pristine place on earth - could be destroyed carelessly by us humans as we have done so with such ferocity and talent elsewhere in the world. All these permanent settlements mean that we have to cart in so many things from outside and much like the ethos of Burning Man are expected to cart it all out with no trace left behind. As a monument to how humans easily fail at these things, two rusty Chilean amphibious vehicles sit in the middle of the bases. Originally Russian built, Chilean dictator Pinochet purchased them and they ended up in Antarctica for usage here. When they broke down, the friendly Russians from the nearby base offered their help but to no avail; the amphibious vehicles sit exactly where they broke down. The intent was to ship them back to Chile on a cargo ship, but ten years later they sit there rusting - an eyesore and a painful reminder of our power to add ugliness to our beautiful natural gifts. Still, I have a sense of hope. Since western man first set foot on Antarctica, and the Antarctic treaty came into force in 1961, nation states have largely respected it, using the continent for scientific and research purposes, leaving its mineral wealth alone, working hard to preserve its pristine environment and mostly cooperating with each other.

When our small plane lurches off the gravel runway in wet, windy, squally Antarctic weather, Alejo stands by himself along the runaway and waves us goodbye in an exaggerated overhead gesture. The sky is grey, cold and rainy; Antarctica is brooding and the sea looks angry. Alejo cuts a lonely, pioneer figure. While we go back to the comforts of the other world we know, Alejo looks perfectly happy and at home in one of the most inhospitable terrains on the planet - and a place where he and Josephine were personally able to show us enormous warmth and hospitality.

Continuing on the TEDx Berkeley 2011 theme Renee Blodgett, CEO/Founder of magicsauce Media writes an excellent Blog at down the avenue which is about bringing passion to technology, business, and life.

She has written a series of excellent posts on the conference and I include here a good summary of what I spoke about.

Another one her great blogs is We Blog the World a blog network dedicated to global storytelling across a wide array of topics ranging from technology, business, the economy, culture, politics and the arts, to nature, education, sports, marketing, music and more.

We Blog the World covers 30 topics across cultures worldwide. Here is a post from the blog on the TEDx conference as well.


Thanks Renee.

TEDx Berkeley 2011

I spoke at TEDx Berkeley on Saturday (Feb 19, 2011). Tedx events are independently organized but officially sanctioned "baby TED" events that take place around the world. An amazing group of speakers which included Chip Conley, founder & CEO of Joie de Vivre, Erin Ganju, co-founder & CEO of Room to Read, and Robert Fuller, former President of Oberlin College enthralled the 1200 person audience at Zellerbach Hall on the University of California, Berkeley campus. All day long an amazing set of thought provoking and out of the box ideas flowed from the speakers challenging the audience. And more importantly all of them collectively have the potential to propel the human race forward. It was interesting to see how many of the speakers focused on the theme of elevating human consciousness and the need to apply technology for the greater good of humanity.

MeiMei Fox who is the author of the blog intent has done an excellent job summarizing the ideas from the day in her post today.

Videos from the event will be on the TEDx Berkeley site shortly. Watch them! They will fire up your imagination. Congratulations and thanks to the great group of volunteer organizers led by curator Kevin Gong who put the event together.

Outsourcing your life away

How to outsource your life away

A guest post I wrote today on "Life after College - no one said it was going to be easy"


http://www.lifeaftercollege.org/blog/2010/06/02/guest-post-how-i-outsource-my-life-to-over-13-people-by-gopi-kallayil/



Guest Post: How I Outsource My Life to Over 13 People (by Gopi Kallayil)

Note from Jenny: When my friend and fellow Googler Gopi Kallayil first told me he outsources his life to over a dozen people, my jaw dropped in awe. I’m having a hard time figuring out how to outsource to one! (An unpaid intern if anyone is looking for a cool gig. And by cool, I mean I need your help to even figure out how to help).
So I asked Gopi how he does it, and he replied with an email summary of his outsourcing tactics. I was absolutely blown away! Talk about priorities – Gopi has figured out how to employ dozens of people to make his life easier – and let me tell you – it works. Gopi is one of the kindest, happiest, most generous, and energetic people I know! His enthusiasm for life is contagious, which you can see for yourself in his award-winning Toastmasters speech, My Cup Runneth Over.
Even if we are all at varying places in our lives to afford this kind of outsourcing (though some would argue we can’t afford NOT to), I hope you’ll get a kick out of seeing how Gopi manages his life.
How I Outsourced My Life Away (by Gopi Kallayil)
There are some things that are perfectly egalitarian on this planet. Birth and death for one. And the fact that in between we all have 24 hours each day of our life. President Obama gets 24 and I get 24. But as our lives get busier and there are more choices for us it becomes difficult to do everything we want to in 24 hours. So we lead frenzied, busy lives, lurching from one commitment to another under the tyranny of schedules.
That is when I stumbled upon a concept that shifted my paradigm. You can BUY time in a free market capitalist economy and as a result have 28 or 32 or 36 hours in a day. I first read about it when A.J. Jacobs tried personal outsourcing and wrote an article in Esquire titled “My Outsourced life” which has done its rounds around the Internet. His point was that corporations were outsourcing so individuals could do likewise. Rock stars and Hollywood celebrities have assistants. So can regular folk like me.
My inspiration came from Timothy Ferriss, author of the best seller “The 4-Hour Work week“ when he spoke at Google (video). His compelling logic is as follows: Take your annual salary and divide it by 2,000 hours which is the number of hours people in America work on average. The resulting number is the economic value of an hour of your time based on your current compensation. Let us say that number is $40 for example. If there is something you need to get done but it is not your passion and someone else can do it for you for less than your hourly cost ($40 in this example) then you should give it to them and use that hour to focus on your passion and joy.
Simple! So I read his book, followed through and did much of the outsourcing he does, plus some more I have invented. It is likely, you may assume, that this is the lifestyle of the rich and the famous. I am discovering it is not and that you could get help as little as $4 an hour or even $0.
Here is what I have done to outsource my life:
Personal Assistant — I have a personal assistant in India through Getfriday. Her name is Nancy. Nancy sits in Bangalore but can handle anything that can be done on the phone or web. For example, if I am going on vacation she will stop my mail and all my subscriptions. Once my car got broken into and my navigator was stolen and she arranged for a repair shop to come in to my office in the San Francisco bay area and replace the glass before ordering a new navigator on the web. She saved me so much money by calling around and finding the best provider that with one transaction she paid for her fees for the next two months. In addition it may have taken 45 minutes of my time which would be difficult to find on a work day. So the problem would not have been resolved for several weeks.
Personal Organizer — There is stuff that accumulates around my house – books, mail, photos, CDs, bills, etc. Stuff that keeps piling up on my desk and kitchen counter and dining table. Erinne is my personal organizer and she comes in for a few hours on some weekends. We work together around my home office and in two hours my study is clutter-free and all my to-do items are in two small folders labeled “Urgent” and “Medium Priority.” The psychic energy of having a clutter-free office is tremendous.We execute as a team for a few hours and I am done with home office work for another two weeks till things pile up again. But thanks to this system I can find find things when I need them such as a favorite CD, book, that picture from my reunion or the receipt for the music system I bought two years ago and need for warranty repairs.
Webmaster — I have my own website where I am interested in writing content but not in dealing with the technicalities. So I found Viggie in Madurai, India to maintain my personal website.
Housekeeper — Alma my housekeeper comes in a couple of times a month to tidy up, She is fantastic and does a terrific job. Thanks to her expertise and my own effort to keep it so in between her visits my house feels like a home. It is a haven for me.
Personal Chefs — I like entertaining but lack extensive gourmet culinary skills. Through Craig’s List I found a few excellent personal chefs. When I host a dinner party we do menu planning together; one of us does the shopping, and we cook and get the place ready as a team. In this case I am not technically outsourcing to a caterer; however, since entertaining is something I enjoy (but don’t have all the expertise) I am using an expert to complement my meager skills in this area.
Interior Decorator — As I mentioned before my home is my haven and sanctuary. I want it to look and feel that way. Kulvi my designer and I work closely together on the aesthetics. It is primarily my self-expression but Kulvi layers on her ideas. Other advantages including getting furniture from some show rooms that are open only during business hours (so hard for me to go) and open only to designers. And special prices only available to designers.
Editor — I love writing but need a skilled editor to polish my articles. My friend Nicky in the UK does a fantastic job like she did here.
Speech Coaching — I am a competitive public speaker and very active with Toastmasters. There are experienced toastmasters like my coach Henry who take me under their wing and provide the coaching when I am in competitions.
Graphics Artist — When I need very sophisticated graphics for my presentations I reach out to my long time graphics artist Kathy who I know from my McKinsey days. She takes my rudimentary designs and magically transforms them.
Bike, Run, Swim Coaching — I am a member of the Silicon Valley Triathlon Club which costs me around $5 a month. For that nominal fee I get free biking, running, and swimming coaching by some extraordinary athletes.
Handyman — Scott the handyman takes care of all the stuff around the house that need fixing and does a much more professional job than I could if were installing garden lights on my own.
Gardener — I have only indoor plants as the property association takes care of the ones outside, but historically there has been cultural herbicide at my place. Plants readily shrivel and die under my care. So Louis helps me pick the right plants from nurseries and keep them alive despite my efforts. I have him come over about once every three months.
Wardrobe consultant — Now you are all laughing real hard. So I will stop here. But I do I get some help from a friend and from a professional; both of them have a good taste in styles and labels, which saves me the trouble of dealing with the bewildering experience that clothes shopping is for me. Jenny doubts if it has made a difference. (Note from Jenny: Not true – Gopi always looks amazing!)
But don’t you need a fortune to live this way?
Now I am sure you must be wondering how one affords all this if you are not a rock star or the Sultan of Brunei, which I am not. The well keep secret that I learned from Timothy Ferriss is that you can take advantage of free market capitalism, labor market arbitrage, and currency exchange rates and get all this for some relatively inexpensive rates.
For example, my website designer is $4 an hour and spends about 5 hours a month on my website, so that is a $20 bill. The triathlon club fees are about $5 a month and for that you get free coaching in three sports 2-3 times a week. Toastmasters dues are $3 a month and experienced members are always happy to be mentors. A personal assistant can be as low as $10 a month and for a 5 to 10 hours of their time you pay a nominal fee but get lots done.
More importantly, what do I do with the time that I’ve freed up? Focus quite exclusively on five things that are important to me and I want to spend most of my time on. Those five are:
Personal growth and spiritual practice
Family and friends
Physical, mental, emotional, financial health
Professional passions, which currently is my work at Google doing marketing
Personal passions, which includes global travel, yoga, public speaking and live music
Here is an example of the kind of trade-off I am making: I teach free yoga lessons and have done so ever since I trained to be a yoga instructor in India. This is my gift to the world. I am consciously choosing to pay someone to take care of tasks that are not my passion so that it frees up two hours a week when I can teach yoga for free.
How successful am I with this concept? Modestly successful, although this is still a work in progress.
Good luck if you choose to go down this path.
***
About Gopi: During the day, Gopi Kallayil works as a marketer at Google. He also teaches yoga, travels the world, speaks, writes, sings, lives freely and joyously. At other times he espouses radical ideas like outsourcing your life and can be a general threat to orderly, civil society. Visit his website or follow him on Twitter.

Cyprus - Part 3 - Beaches and Mountains




It is the contrasts in Cyprus that stand out the most. Contrasts in nature, contrasts in time, contrasts in life. At one point I am standing on the lovely sandy beaches of Kourion visually uncluttered by the resort developments that I find in other towns like Agia Napa. A few minutes of driving up the hill takes me to the excavation of the city of ancient Kourion, perched on a hillside overlooking the beach. It became a Roman settlement in the 13th century BC. Let me do the math for you. That is 3300 years ago. Walking through the remains of the ancient city, I note the number and elaborateness of the Roman baths. Clearly the Romans in the city were obsessed with personal hygiene. Or did the lack of water to keep the baths going lead to their downfall? I am not able to see any obvious water sources for miles around.

Pushing past Kourion into the mountains of Troodos Massif I am looking at the country’s highest peak, Mt. Olympus. For a small country, the variety of landscape in Cyprus is astounding. Winter dumps snow in these mountains and Troodos becomes a ski resort only hours from warm Mediterranean beaches. Around the bend, and up the hill past the village of Kalopanayiotis with just 290 villagers is the richest and most famous of Cyprus’s religious institutions – Kykkos monastery. The fabulous wealth of the monastery is displayed in the Byzantine museum where again with effortless ease the artifacts state that they are from several centuries B.C.


Kykkos is also the home monastery of Archbishop Makarios III, ethnarch and religious leader of Cyprus as well as its larger than life President in its brief period of independence as a united island from 1959 to 1974. While this juxtaposition of religious leadership and political leadership may seem strange in many parts of the world, Cyprus has had a long history of this model of governance. And then of course history had to rear its head again in Cyprus . A CIA-supported Greek Junta plotted a coup. The coup backfired. Makarios escaped. The Turks invaded the north. Cyprus was divided into two. The Greek Junta in Athens fell. Makarios returned to preside over a now truncated state. And so on it goes with Cyprus’s history.

Even the sleepy fishing town and seaside resort of Larnaca does not fail to surprise with interesting tidbits of history and contrasts. It offers the tomb of Lazarus. He of biblical fame, raised from the dead by Jesus and expelled by the Jews from Jerusalem, came to Larnaca and remained its bishop for 30 years. Then he died a second time and was buried here.




And then of course there is Agia Napa, once a tiny fishing village, with a few houses, fishermen, and a monastery. Now it is the gravitational center of Cyprus’s fun and sun tourist industry with the predictable and often not very pretty run away development, that has resulted in a Flintstone cave bar with the name Yabba Napa Doo and another one called Organ Grinder. For a town with a resident population of less than 3000 people it offers three dozen bars and nightclubs with a rotating stable of DJs from Europe.

Towards the end of my trip Evie and her erudite husband Costas invite me over for dinner. Evie tells me that in her 20 years as a tour guide I am only the second person to receive this honor and the previous guest was the secretary to the Archbishop of Canterbury. I am clearly not worthy and feel a certain sense of burden. A very well read and intellectual couple, their house is a delight. It has an excellent collection of art from Cyprus artist Christos Christou, classical music and a stupendous collection of books on art, philosophy, history, and geopolitics. The conversation veers from Oscar Wilde to Epictectus to Noam Chomsky. And in a telling reminder of the powers of globalism, their daughter Laura works in the hi-tech industry in Silicon Valley just miles from where I live and work in the San Francisco bay area and their son is a chemical engineer faculty at the University of Edinburgh. Together Evie and Costas roll out the very best of the famed Hellenic hospitality. Their kindness and graciousness to a complete stranger from half way around the world moves me deeply and remains etched in my heart as the most defining and memorable aspect of Cyprus.

Now I realize why Constantine P. Cavafy wrote around 1899 in "Going back home from Greece":

"Well, we're nearly there, Hermippos.
Day after tomorrow, it seems—that's what the captain said.
At least we're sailing our seas,
the waters of Cyprus, Syria, and Egypt,
the beloved waters of our home countries.
Why so silent? Ask your heart:"

Cyprus - Part 2 - Nicosia



Walking through Nicosia and traveling around Cyprus, I am struck by the modern day waves of immigrants. Instead of conquerors and colonizers using military might, a shifting of labor markets is happening, perhaps not well documented by the International Labor organization. At an individual level it is a human story full of hope and emotion, and devoid of the coldness of statistical tables that don’t tell the richness of individual stories. I find them everywhere: The Cameroonian sales clerk in the music store who makes recommendations to help me pick contemporary Cypriot music by Anna Vissi and Alkinoos Ioannides; Basheer from Bangladesh, who is both a student and mans a news kiosk (He loans me his cell phone to call a taxi); Meekness from Zambia who staffs the Clinique counter at the airport advising newly rich and badly sun burnt Russians going home after their holiday in the sun on how to care for their skin; Pepe from India who provides home care to an elderly Cypriot woman; The beautiful Hungarian waitress who shares a taxi with me from Larnaca and discusses the Paul Coelho book she is reading; The Nepali waiters who scurry around the seafood restaurant in Agia Napa; Yannis the former professional football player from Georgia, who arrived to play for a local team until his bad knees killed his football career; ( Now he drives a taxi and has become my official taxi driver); The Sri Lankan nanny who takes care of the two year old brother of Diamandis, the psychology student at the University of Cyprus I meet during a shared taxi ride. Each story is labyrinthine in its detail of hope, opportunity, economic migration, and cultural displacement.

If there were an Olympics for culinary events, the Cypriots would be in the finals. And their winning entry would be Meze. I am at the Xe Foto restaurant in the old city of Lefkosia. Andreas Loizides the owner is explaining to me that he picked the name because of the play of light streaming through trees into the courtyard around which the restaurant is set. Foto is the Greek word for light he clarifies for me. His house band has been performing Rembetika and more contemporary Cypriot music for 20 years. Andreas himself gets on the mike in between and his guests break out into Syrtaki and other Greek dances.




This is one of the best places to try Meze, which is as much about food as it is about bonding with friends and family around a dining table in that uniquely Mediterranean way. The waiter keeps bringing in Mezedes, little delicacies. Much of the experience has to do with the sharing and passing around, savoring each dish, and recommending it. First comes the olives, salads, bread, tahini, talatouri, and hummus. Next comes the vegetables, garnishes, raw pickles, all served with haloumi. The meats follow in an assembly line of lamb, chicken, beef, pork dressed up as souvlaki, klefliko, sheftalia. Just when you think it is over the waitresses reappear with fresh fruit and pastries. The secret I discover is to pace myself and listen to the advice of my Cypriot friends, siga, siga, slowly, slowly.

I am walking around Lefkosia’s old city. Surrounded by Venetian walls that from the top look like a snowflake or a sliced Grenade. The Venetians built the fortifications in 1570 to keep the feared Ottomans out. The bastions were named after wealthy Venetian merchants who paid for the them in a clever fund raising model long before Harvard and Wharton learnt to name their buildings after wealthy alums. But they turned out to be a complete failure. Well, the Ottomans arrived just three years later, scaled the walls, took over Lefkosia and stayed for 300 years. Another reminder that walls don’t really keep anyone out.

Driving us around the old city is Ahmet, a Turkish Cypriot with a handlebar mustache. There is a sense of gravitas about him. He bikes across the international border everyday to come to work and drives a quaint school bus that looks like it could be from the 60s. I almost look around to see if beat poets and hipsters Alan Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Wavy Gravy are on the bus. Ahmet tells me that he used to be a truck driver who drove tractor trailers from Finland to Bangladesh in marathon 20 day trips across all the central Asia “sthans”, and Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. “Anda, Kela, Aaap Khana Kaho” he tells me using the few Hindi words he remembers from his trips and guffaws loudly.


Evie, a tour guide is guiding me through the old city. At one point she leads us to the border that separates the two sides of Cyprus. The watchtower set up by the UN forces are now deserted. The forces are long gone since things have become more peaceful. An elderly Cypriot gentleman comes out to greet us. His house backs up against the border. He probably grew up and lived all his life in this house till one day someone drew the green line across his backyard and arrived with rolls of barbed wire to prove it. Beyond the barbed wire fence behind his house is a no mans land where houses, schools, hotels, sit dilapidated, abandoned and out of bounds for everyone to avoid people stepping on land mines.

Evie herself is a refugee from across the border. Her family were wealthy farmers on the northern side when history came calling. They abandoned their orange orchards and everything else they had and were forced to hit the “reset” button on their life. Even though the border is now open she has not gone back. The memories are too haunting for her to confront them.

Evie leads me to the house of Zambella, the former mayor of Nicosia and one of the best known art collectors on the island. The first floor of his house is an art gallery with a treasure trove of works by Cyprus artists. Some of the paintings are of Zambella himself. I find it disconcerting that he looks like George Bush. Perhaps, it is one of the approved looks in the political reference books. I just hope he did not mess up the city he governed.


Evie and Ahmet then take us to the village of Kaimakli, where right on the village square is a 19th century traditional building known as the Monoportis house. Its current occupant is Julia Astreou-Christoforou whose family has lived here for six generations going back to the mid 19th century when the Patriarch Hadjipetris built a dominating central arch in the big room on the marriage of his son Tzirkako to Hadjikatina. This kind of history spanning many generations and easily traced and documented seems to come effortlessly to the Cypriots. Julia now weaves hand-loom fabrics in the same house using traditional Cypriot looms. Her beautiful daughter Daphne, a product of French design schools, now models the Arete shawls her Mom designed for Queen Arete’s costume for the theatrical production of the Odyssey.

Cyprus
"Siga, Siga" - Slowly, Slowly



From the sky Cyprus looks like a lotus leaf floating in the Azure blue Mediterranean basin. With fewer than 800,000 people it is smaller than San Francisco in size and population. When my plane lands in Larnaca airport the ground crew wheels in a staircase for us to disembark. I know instantly that I have arrived in a place where I can truly get away . From Banjul in The Gambia to Ulan Bator in Mongolia, to Thiruvananthapuram in India to Liberia in Costa Rica this test has always worked well. The reassuring sight of stairs being wheeled in means you are getting off in a place very different from most International business cities around the world which have increasingly started looking and feeling like each other – Chicago, Frankfurt, Shanghai, Dubai.
This has been a year of saying “Yes” for me; A year of saying yes to interesting experiences in life. So when a long time friend, Alka called me and told me that she was moving from Hong Kong to Cyprus and invited me to come visit, I told her, “Yes, of course”. From India to Hong Kong to Cyprus her house has been a haven and every time I step through the door I know I have come back home .


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Surrounded by Greece, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Egypt, Cyprus is a testimony to the aphorism that Geography is Destiny. The island is divided into two uneasy, disconcerting parts – a Greek side and a Turkish side – that continue to sear the soul of a nation. Over the centuries invaders, settlers, and immigrants have come through – the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Lusignans, Genoese, Venetians, Ottomans, British, Turks, each leaving their stamp on Cyprus. Reading about Cyprus’ past and all the occupation evokes Churchill’s definition of history in my mind - “One damn thing after another”.



Cyprus has a love affair with love. Cypriots are quick to tell me that Aphrodite, the Greek Goddess of sexual love and beauty arose from the sea off the south coast of Cyprus. She was born out of the white foam produced by the severed genitals of Ouranos when they were thrown into the sea by his son Kronos. After emerging from the sea she entertained her lovers, leaving behind her an amorous scent that continues to intoxicate lovers. Richard the Lionheart married his wife Berengaria at Lemessos in the 12th century. The British continue to come here to get married in large numbers, resulting in a shortage of priests to officiate at the weddings.

I walk through downtown Lefkosia, the capital, through Ledra street to the Ledra street crossing. A pedestrian-only street it is a quaint medley of cafes, music stores, boutiques, and a monument to modern day commerce. At the end of Ledra street I walk across the “Green Line” past a sign that says “Last divided capital in the world” from the Republic of Cyprus side towards a sign that welcomes me to the “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus”. The very existence of this country I am now standing in defies logic; it is recognized by just one other country - Turkey.

In 1963, when the British were occupying Cyprus (why does this sound strangely familiar?), in response to communal disturbances between Greek and Turkish Cypriots the British military took a green pen and drew a line on the military map, creating the “Green Line” dividing Nicosia into a Turkish and Greek side. I suspect that when the British colonise a country and predictably there is discontent among the local population, they reach into a colonial handbook, thumb through the index for the entry that says “How to govern local population effectively”, and there find instructions from a British civil servant that say with clinical precision, “Take map, take green pen, draw a line across map, tell population to shift from one side of the line to another based on tribal, ethnic or religious lines”.

I grew up in India which was similarly divided into two countries by the British before splintering finally into three – India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan – a situation that continues to cause a simmer to this day. And in Palestine, Arabian Gulf, and much of North Africa, the British colonial pen across maps has reorganized and splintered populations across divides that has led to much strife.

In 1974 after military activity involving Greece and Turkey, Cyprus was divided into Greece and Turkish parts and the Green line extended across the entire island. As George Santayana once famously remarked, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. Another partition tragedy for humanity repeated as hundreds of ordinary Greek and Turkish Cypriots who did not have a choice in the matter had to abandon their homes, farms, and livelihood, uproot themselves, and to cross over to the other side of the Green line to start their lives over.

In 2008, abruptly the borders were opened by Raul Denktash the leader of the Turkish Cypriots. For 29 years the Green Line had divided a people from their friends and families. Similar to the fall of the Berlin wall, in emotional scenes, people from both sides crossed over to see for themselves what life was like on the other side, sometimes traveling back to homes and friends they had left behind.

Christopher McDougall | Born To Run

Two Fridays ago Chris McDougall, author of Born To Run spoke at Google. I got an opportunity to listen to his talk and go for a run with Chris.

As the event description said -
"Full of incredible characters, amazing athletic achievements, cutting-edge science, and, most of all, pure inspiration, Born to Run is an epic adventure that began with one simple question: Why does my foot hurt? In search of an answer, Christopher McDougall sets off to find a tribe of the world's greatest distance runners and learn their secrets, and in the process shows us that everything we thought we knew about running is wrong. Isolated by the most savage terrain in North America, the reclusive Tarahumara Indians of Mexico's deadly Copper Canyons are custodians of a lost art. For centuries they have practiced techniques that allow them to run hundreds of miles without rest and chase down anything from a deer to an Olympic marathoner while enjoying every mile of it. Their superhuman
talent is matched by uncanny health and serenity, leaving the Tarahumara immune to the diseases and strife that plague modern existence. With the help of Caballo Blanco, a mysterious loner who lives among the tribe, the author was able not only to uncover the secrets of the Tarahumara but also to find his own inner ultra-athlete, as he trained for the challenge of a lifetime: a fifty-mile race through the heart of Tarahumara country pitting the tribe against an odd band of Americans, including a star ultramarathoner, a beautiful young surfer, and a barefoot wonder. With a sharp wit and wild exuberance, McDougall takes us from the high-tech science labs at Harvard to the sun-baked valleys and freezing peaks across North America, where ever-growing numbers of ultrarunners are pushing their bodies to the limit, and, finally, to the climactic race in the Copper Canyons. Born to Run is that rare book that will not only engage your mind but inspire your body when you realize that the secret to happiness is right at your feet, and that you, indeed all of us, were born to run."

See Chris on The Daily Show - http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-august-18-2009/christopher-mcdougall

Last Sunday as I was running the Silicon Valley half marathon in San Jose, California another runner pulled up along me and he was running barefoot inspired by this story. He told me that ever since he started running barefoot he has been able to run longer and more easily.

Here is Chris's talk at Google on YouTube.

STATE OF THE ART
Geniuses At Play, On the Job
by David Pogue of NYT





David Pogue wrote an excellent article in the New York Times today about the hidden gems in Google labs. To read about iGoogle, Google Reader, Flu Trends, Google Maps, Gmail Labs, Translator, Goog-411, Google SMS, Google Sets, and Secrets of the Search Box, go here.....

Geniuses At Play, On the Job
by David Pogue of NYT

No Limits




This morning I got the following invite from my tri club, the Silicon Valley Triathlon Club. Here is a perfect example of two people telling theselves "No Limits"



Our monthly club meeting is coming up next Monday night (November 10), at 7pm at Sports Basement Sunnyvale. Our featured speakers this month, Christine Thornbern and Ted Huang, are just back from the Beijing Olympics, where Christine raced for the US womens cycling team. Christine is a world class time trialist, (shes also an ex-collegiate runner -- should we see if she can swim?) who, among her many other racing accomplishments, also placed 4th at the 2004 Athen Olympics --> and to top it off she is a medical doctor specializing in rheumatology!! Do you feel inadequate yet -- read on! Her husband Ted has been a respected force on the Bay Area cycling racing scene for the past 15 years - coming in 12th overall in the San Francisco Grand Prix in 2003 - and has been to two previous Olympics in the sport of windsurfing (because cycling is his "other" sport!). Come and see their pictures from Beijing and hear their stories about racing at the worlds highest level.


(photo credits: www.emerys.com, www.llanellitriathlon.org.uk, www.socius.or.kr)

In the End....

Browsing through a Lululemon store yesterday I came across this beautiful thought.

In the end what matters is
Did you live well?
Did you love well?
Did you let go?

Maarteen Troost | "Lost on Planet China: The Strange and True Story of One Man's Attempt to Understand the World's Most Mystifying Nation, or How He Became Comfortable Eating Live Squid"

Paul Theroux and Pico Iyer are among my most favorite travel writers on the planet. Having lived, worked or traveled in 41 countries, another perspective of places I have been to are very welcome. Here is another travel writer that I stumbled acorss recently (he is speaking at Google Mountain View later this week) that sounds very, very promising.
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Lost on Planet China finds Troost dodging deadly drivers in Shanghai; eating Yak in Tibet; deciphering restaurant menus (offering local favorites such as Cattle Penis with Garlic); visiting with Chairman Mao (still dead, very orange); and hiking (with 80,000 other people) up Tai Shan, China's most revered mountain. But in addition to his trademark gonzo adventures, the book also delivers a telling look at a vast and complex country on the brink of transformation that will soon shape the way we all work, live, and think. As Troost shows, while we may be familiar with Yao Ming or dim sum or the cheap, plastic products that line the shelves of every store, the real China remains a world—indeed, a planet--unto itself.

Maarten Troost brings China to life as you've never seen it before, and his insightful, rip-roaringly funny narrative proves that once again he is one of the most entertaining and insightful armchair travel companions around.

J. MAARTEN TROOST is the author of Getting Stoned with Savages and The Sex Lives of Cannibals. His essays have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, the Washington Post, and the Prague Post. He spent two years in Kiribati in the Equatorial Pacific and upon his return was hired as a consultant by the World Bank. After several years in Fiji and Vanuatu, he recently relocated to the U.S. and now lives with his wife and two sons in California.

PS: Maarten's talk at Google can be found on YouTube on the Authors@Google channel. The talk is at this link.

Kiva - Changing the world one microloan at a time time.

Inspired by an article in the The San Francisco Chronicle about a former Googler and later by Bill Clinton's latest book "Giving", I came across an organization called Kiva (www.kiva.org). Based in San Francisco (of course) they use the power of the web to connect small entrepreneurs who need microloans with people around the world who want to make loans as small as $25. In their own words:

Kiva lets you connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world. By choosing a business on Kiva.org, you can "sponsor a business" and help the world's working poor make great strides towards economic independence. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates from the business you've sponsored. As loans are repaid, you get your loan money back.

I gave it a whirl. It was a breeze and in a few minutes I felt like an International Banker having extended two tiny, tiny loans to two entrepreneurs in Cambodia and Kenya.

Meet my entrepreneurs.

Blogger now allows users to type Hindi text in English and blogger transliterates it for you. So even though I can barely write in Hindi any more due to long years of disuse I can still speak it। So all I need to do is to hit a toggle button, write Hindi text in a rough English equivalent and Blogger transliterates for me. Very cool and nifty feature.

An ancient chant like

Asatoma Sat Gamaya
Tamasoma Jyotir Gamaya
Mrityoma Amritam Gamaya

when typed into blogger becomes

असतोमा सत गमय
तमासोमा ह्योतिर गमय
मृत्योमा अमृतं गमय

I await the explosion of Hindi blogs from what MTV calls the Hinglish generation.

Dont Worry. Be Happy

Bobby McFerrin rode to fame in 1988 with his album Simple Pleasures, where he scored a chart-topping pop smash with "Don't Worry, Be Happy". But last week The Economist , yes that purveyor of the dismal science, joined the ranks of sappy happiness Gurus when it tried to analyze why people are not getting any happier even as the world economy is on its way to notching up its best decade ever. Market capitalism is doing its job well in terms of raising living standards but not necessarily making people happier which may be best left to saints and philosophers.

There are some fundamental problems according to The Economist. Capitalism is highly efficient in bringing to the masses what only a few elite enjoyed - cars, fashion goods, gourmet food, exotic vacations. But these luxuries soon become necessities. Once you are on the tiger you cannot dismount.

Second, there are a set of good and services that people believe will make them happy that are limited by necessity. These "positional goods" such as a a tony address or a fancy car or a top education lose their value if everyone has it. So a Harvard degree is no longer prized if everyone who applies is accepted into the program irrespective of the intrinsic value of a superior edification of the mind.

The race to be happy forces people to climb to the highest rung of the social ladder which forces others to climb harder and faster to keep up. What is the point?

As The Economist editorial concluded, "Capitalism can make you well off. And it also leaves you free to be as unhappy as you choose. To ask any more of it would be asking too much". I must admit that, John Micklethwait, the 16th editor of the August publication does have a sense of humor.