Pertinent Observations

This is based on a discussion I had at work a few days ago. We were talking about people being able to do things out of their own initiative, come up with their own new ideas, inventing their own problems to work on (which would be useful for the firm on the whole) and stuff.

Now if you consider people’s abilities as a multi-dimensional vector (the number of dimensions will be large, since one’s abilities, capabilities, etc. can be along several dimensions), what we realized is that if someone just takes orders from other people and not work on their own ideas and intuition, then their contribution to their role is just the component of their vector along the vector of the person whose orders they are following.

And considering that the probability of their vector and the vector of the person who they’re taking orders from lying in exactly the same direction is close to zero, what this means is that by simply following someone else’s orders they are contributing an amount that is less than what they are capable of contributing (since the component of their ability orthogonal to the vector of the person whose orders they are taking isn’t on display at all).

Hence, it is important to have people in the team who are capable of independent thinking and intuition since that is the only way in which their full possible contribution can be harnessed. On a related note, in order to bring the best out of its employees, and to allow them to contribute to their full capacity, firms should allow the employee to take initiative and come up with their own ideas rather than simply taking orders, since in the latter case only the component of the abilities along the orders is contributed.

One of the bands whose discography I have and whose music I listen to when I want to listen to “unknown music” is the Grateful Dead. And while I was listening to them last night, it sounded like it was heavily inspired by Indian classical music (especially Carnatic stuff).

The song I was listening to was “not fade away” from the album GratefulDead (1971).  Ok now a little bit of wiki research tells me that this song was originally written by Buddy Holly and the Dead version in this album was a cover. I haven’t listened to the original but I’m really intrigued that the dead version has such a profound Indian influence on it!

Thinking about it, the only Indian connection of the Dead I can think of is that drummer Mickey Hart used to regularly jam with Ustad Allah Rakha. But then considering he was a percussionist, it’s unlikely that the Indian influence came from him!

Anyways it seems like if I listen to this kind of music a bit more, The Grateful Dead may not be “unknown music” for too much longer.

The Barista at Barton Center on MG Road has suddenly become so much more bearable, as they have turned down the volume of their music to a level such that you can actually have conversation without shouting. On a related note, it seems much easier to find tables there compared to earlier (yesterday we walked in around 6 and found several tables empty; earlier there would be a long wait at that time).

On yet another related note, they seem to have done something about the pricing. It’s friggin’ expensive now (70 bucks for a small cappuccino?) but I think they’ve gotten it right. There is obvious value in the restaurant as shown by the long waiting lines that used to be there earlier, and the restaurant is now simply monetizing that value rather than using artificial means (loud music) to chase people away.

As a former revenue management professional (damn; that sounds so corporate whoreish) I’m happy they are doing what a coffee shop like them is supposed to do – providing excellent environment for long conversations and chilled out afternoons, and actually charging for what it’s worth.

The earlier method was so cheap and country – they were clearly underpriced because of which there was overcrowding and they weren’t able to meet demand and had to use other measures such as playing loud godawful music to keep the crowd rotating.

Two thumbs up to Barista’s new pricing and music policy!

At dinner last night she drank straight from the bottle. I sipped slowly from a glass, using a straw.

And she says she is extremely particular about gender roles, stereotypes and the like.

Yeah you might think I’m crazy to be cribbing like this about Bangalore, supposed to be India’s pub city and all that jazz. But I stick to my statements. Yeah we might have lots of good pubs and lounges but we don’t have lots of good bars.

I was on my way to dinner at Fava at UB City this evening when I noticed the City Bar, and it struck me as to how few such bars there are in the city. Like places where you just go to the bar, get yourself a drink and literally hang around (around random small darshini-style tables) talking to people. I was reminded of my trips abroad, of places like London or New York which are so full of places like this one – where one just goes, buys a drink and hangs around.

My hypothesis of the shortage of such bars got some weight on our way out of Fava when we noticed how full the city bar was. It was like BTS bus 201 in peak hour – there wasn’t even any standing room!

Which makes me wonder why the culture of mid-to-high end standing bars hasn’t taken off in the city, especially considering our glorious tradition of darshinis and of standing bars at the lower segments (I hope you’ve noticed this – every “wine shop” literally doubles up as a standing bar, where people get stuff from the shop in a dirty glass, stand around and quickly gulp down. I must confess I’ve never drank at this kind of a bar).

Is it because the notion of a quick drink isn’t very well defined at the higher segments of our society? Is it because a “quick drink” is associated with the lower end of the spectrum and so the richer people don’t want to indulge in it? Could it be because of the exorbitant price of liquor licenses that makes it uneconomical to serve liquor cheaply enough to get enough crowds to sustain a standing bar? (most shady standing bars don’t have a bar licence; they run on wine shop licenses)

I must admit I’m a bit of a novice at this one (in terms of total quantity of alcohol consumed during my lifetime) but this really intrigues me. Why hasn’t the concept of higher end standing bars taken off in Bangalore? Has it taken off anywhere else in India at least? Again shady bars don’t count.

There’s a unique problem in my apartment building – the building has been built with provision for only seven parking slots in the basement but each of the nine houses here has been allotted a slot, which means there are two obstructing slots. Unfortunately, my slot is at a location where I get blocked by the car belonging to the guy upstairs and so I’m a directly affected party due to this problem.

Currently I’ve managed to get around this problem by parking my car in some corner of the basement but neighbours are cribbing saying it spoils the “look” of the building (as if the look of the basement matters! ).

Coming back to the problem, I was wondering if there exists a solution. Clearly, the shape and orientation of the basement means that not more than seven cars can be parked there in a non-obstructing manner. Now, since every houseowner here was allotted a slot when the building got built, they are entitled to a slot so it is not feasible to request/tell someone to rent their house to someone who doesn’t own a car (2 bedroom houses with parking slots cost some 2 kilorupees a month more than those without parking slots).

Thinking about it, the only solution I realized is by trading a parking slot among affected parties. For example, the slot of my house (B1) is obstructed by the slot belonging to the C2 house. Now, what if my owner tries to buy out C2′s parking space? He can either buy it out outright or he can pay the owner of C2 a monthly fee in exchange for C2 not letting out his house to someone with a car.

And he gets compensated for this by charging a higher rent from me (note that if my landlord buys out the c2 slot, I effectively get two slots, since both belong to me, there is no obstruction). The key to this, however, is the relative pricing of various parking slot combinations.

The key equation is this: if Pn is the monthly rent of a house in this building with 2 bedrooms and n parking slots, then there is a profitable trade between the owner of my house and the owner of C2 if and only if:

P0 + P2 >= 2 P1

If the above equation doesn’t hold, the amount by which my owner gets compensated (by me) for the second parking slot will not suffice to pay the owner of C2 to not let out his house to someone with a car, so the trade I described above cannot take place.

But then, according to Coase theorem, irrespective of initial allocations (here C2 has a parking slot that blocks B1′s slot) there exists a trade in which each party gets the desired outcome. Is there a contradiction with the equation I’ve written above?

Now, thinking about it, the value of both my house and C2 is not actually P1 but a number P1′ which is less than P1. P1′ takes into account the pain of having an obstructed parking slot (I get pained because I can’t take out my car when I want; C2 gets pained because I disturb him every time I want to take out my car), and so effectively both my house and C2 would be overvalued if we were paying a rent of P1.

And if we take P1′ into consideration rather than P1, I’m sure the following equation holds:

P0 + P2 >= P1′

The only other problem here is that when taking a flat on rent, you are unlikely to check for details such as if your parking space is blocked, so it is likely that the deal will take place at P1 rather than at P1′. However, once you move in, you figure out the pain and the owner of the apartment will feel the pinch when his tenants clear out at a rate faster than he would’ve expected which ends up reducing his long-term average rental income. And the deal I described above will take place if and only if he figures out why the fair value of this apartment is P1′ and not P1.

Ok I give this one to North Bangalore. The best masala dosa in town is found at CTR in Malleswaram (ok I’m going by one data point, haven’t been there more often). The thing that goes by the name of masala dosa in Vidyarthi Bhavan is a completely different animal. It is thick, it is literally deep fried, and tasty, yes. But it’s not a masala dosa.

The problem with restaurants having “flagship dishes” (like the masala dosa at either CTR or Vidyarthi Bhavan) is that you are usually loathe to try out their other dishes which could be quite tasty as well. For example, the idli-vada at Vidyarthi Bhavan is quite good, and I’m told that the rava vada is awesome (unfortunately I went there on a weekday morning when they don’t make rava vada). And I don’t know if it’s good business practice for restaurants to have a “flagship dish”.

Coming back to “real” masala dosa and Gandhi Bazaar, you should definitely go to this quaint old little place called Mahalakshmi Tiffin Room on DVG Road, between Gandhi Bazaar circle and North Road. It’s a fairly old-fashioned place, doesn’t serve sambar with masala dosa (only chutney), happily serves one-by-two masala dosa and is generally not very crowded.

It is one of those places with a wooden door, with a wooden shelf in the corner which has pepsi, mirinda, etc. The service is quick and efficient and the food is tasty.

Of late I’m not too impressed by the masala dosa at Adigas, which not so long ago I used to absolutely crave (for example, when I returned to Bangalore after a 10-week trip to London 5 years ago, I went to an Adigas for masala dosa straight from the airport. Now it doesn’t seem to be all that worth it). Or maybe I’m biased in my opinion because the Adigas I most frequent is the one at Embassy Golf Links, where my office is located.

Oh and I need to mention here that I absolutely loathe the Madras masala dosa, the thing that is white and not very crisp, with soggy palya and served with some three varieties of chutney, and flat sambar.

Apart from being the second birthday of this blog, today also happens to be the sixth anniversary of a sinister incident. The downside of the incident was that my spectacles were smashed, and pieces of it were found all over my eye. Even now, it hurts when I get tears ,in my left eye and I was really sceptical because of this when I was getting my contact lenses.

Amit Gandhi and I were playing badminton against Ezzy and Gotur (who had been the Bangalore University Badminton champions). Ezzy floated the shuttle high. Gandhi and I both went for it, me a couple of paces behind him. As he drew his racket back, it struck me flush in the face and my spectacles got shattered into my eye.

The upside of the incident is that it gave rise to Twisted Shout, the IIMB newsletter (yeah I think we are entitled to call it that; it was indeed a newsletter). Sadly, most of the material that went up on it was unpublished outside of the IIMB notice boards. The first ever edition, however, which was based on the incident I’ve described above is luckily online. Go read it. Having just produced that horrible novel called “I’ve read that somewhere” Kodhi was desperate to make amends and produced this masterpiece.

Politicians of Sec C cut across the party lines and outdid themselves in condemning the incident. From Dalal Street, Kapil wept, “They have taken out my right hand man. The people from Sec A (or was it B) should maintain some amount of decorum while trying to become DML1.” People nodded in agreement. The author decided to investigate the veracity of the first statement and found that it was indeed true. SK was the right hand man of Kapil .At least he sat to his right. The other leading luminary Push-Kar was more vocal in his protests. He decided to use Michael Moore’s quote and said, ” Aren’t you, at least feeling ashamed? Does your face ever turn red?” hard hitting words these.

Thursday, 22nd July 2004. The morning had also been eventful thanks to microeconomics class. Feeling too lazy to explain a certain concept, the prof asked someone in the class who knew the concept (I’ve forgotten what the concept is) to explain. Don, who had a bachelors in economics stepped up and made an attempt to explain it. He muttered a sentence as if he were chanting a mantra. It passed over most of our heads. Someone asked for a clarification. Don just repeated the sentence. Yet another question. Don repeats the sentence with different emphasis this time. Maybe a mantra in a different raaga. It had no effect. No one knew its meaning (apart from a handful of other Economics bachelors who had learnt the same mantra).

I grew impatient. When the prof didn’t notice my raised hand, I shouted “saar I can explain this in English”. Having no choice, he beckoned me to the blackboard. I remember the shirt I was wearing that day (it was grey), since I clearly remember placing the amplifier of the collar mike in my right breast pocket, and I have only two shirts which have two breast pockets.

I don’t remember much of what I explained also. All I remember is drawing some curves and some tangents and marking points as A, A’ and A” (I remember saying “prime” rather than “dash” for that extra pseudness). All I remember is making some sort of hand-wavng argument (yeah I did wave my hands). All I remember is loud thumping of desks as the mostly engineer class had understood my proof. All I remember is one of the other economics bachelors (not Don) cribbing later that what I said was crap and only the mantra made sense.

Kodhi says that the bad Karma I accrued by way of acting arrogant that morning led to instant punishment that afternoon, when I injured my eye.

So today this blog (on this website, not the earlier avatar on LJ) celebrates its second birthday. I request you to join me in wishing this blog a happy and prosperous second birthday.

It has been an interesting journey since I moved my blog to this website exactly two years ago. Initially, readership just took off, but for a combination of reasons I had to slow down the pace of my blogging sometime late last year so you don’t see this blog as prosperous as it used to be last year. Oh, talking about monetary prosperity, this blog has to date earned a sum total of two dollars in Google Adwords earnings.

I have a resolution to celebrate the second birthday of this website. Starting today, I’m going to make an effort to set aside at least ten minutes every day and write one post on this blog. I must warn you that the quality of writing might go down, that there might be occasions where I might be forcing myself to write which might compromise on quality and stuff, but at least there will be stuff to read. It saddens me looking at the amount of NED that I’ve been putting (on a website of the appropriate name) over the last few months resulting in a fairly barren blog, and strong resolutions like these, I think, are necessary to take this blog back to its glory days.

I still stick to my promises – no more posts here either on arranged scissors or on studs and fighters. Another disappointing thing I need to mention is that I haven’t really been able to do much work in terms of those two books. I hope to start some positive work in that direction towards the end of this year, I hope.

I must take this opportunity to thank you people, my readers, for helping me make this blog successful. I hope you continue to enjoy reading the stuff here and that my readership will grow.

Some six of us have planned for a vacation for next month. And so far, the “labour” of planning the vacation has been divided unevenly. So far, it has been three of us who have been doing a lot of the work – talking with tour operators, drawing up schedules, planning transport and accommodation, booking tickets, etc.

Now with a large part of the work having been done, the three of us who have been doing the work have decided to put NED and have left it to the other three “freeriders” to complete the rest of the work. As you might expect, the other three continue putting NED and in the last few days not much work has been done.

The question is this – what is the optimal strategy for the three of us who have been so far doing work? We think we’ve done more than enough of our share and so the others should take over now. On the other hand, the more we leave it to the other three, the more procrastination that will happen which might come back to hit all of us in terms of higher rates, etc.

It is dilemmas like this that allow freeriders to freeride – they know that by freeriding, they are not the only ones who are losing out, and that there are people who are more driven than them who will also end up losing out if these guys freeride. And the freeriders know that the driven guys won’t let things drift and will positively do something about it, and that encourages them to freeride further. And so forth.

Is there a solution to this problem? When there is a common objective, how should incentives be structured in order to make the freeriders work, while also not making it obvious that these are artificially tailored incentives?