Fuel for the Starship: Bollinger Bands + Greek Yoghurt

1 Box: Chobani, Non-Fat Greek yoghurt.
1 Box: Nature Valley, whole oat, granola bars.
1 Box: Tazo Zen Green tea. With lemongrass. Lemon Grass is key.
1 bottle: Nescafe classic instant Black coffee.

Spotify/Playlist of the most motivating 80s-90s songs, including Top Gun, Dire Straits, Tarzan Boy, some early 90s dance, Pink Floyd.
A snapshot of Lennon/Jobs/Douglas or Tom Cruise from Wall St. or Top Gun.
A live feed of the NYSE, running on your MAC/Laptop..Blip blip blip.
----
Dip half a cracked granola bar into half a cup of the Greek yoghurt.
Blend.
Brew a cup of Tazo tea and add Stevia to sweeten, as needed.
(If needed, break a piece of bread later and dip into plain yoghurt).
Hit the Play button.
Think of Brin and Page..at least once every 4 hours.
Alternate brewed black coffee with green tea.
Think Jobs/Brin-Page/Lennon/NYSE index.. and the Double Helix.. coiling-uncoiling, in time.
I get high on Bollinger Bands too. They go particularly well with Greek yoghurt.
10..9..8..Go.

BTW, remember the internal and external mind games are going to get really intense.. Watch out for them.

Zeitgeist

This pictures encapsulates it all.

 

 

 

010101..High on the Cloud

Binary Blip.

Binary is the blip of the Morse code and the computer signal.
The NYSE's index fluctuates up and down, based on binary blips.
As does the START. and STOP. codon of the human genome.
Fourier signals are binary, with the higher the Fourier score, the more "Periodic' the signal.
Signals maybe be binary, cosine or sinusoidal..but the point is to read them.

Trig (nometry), tells us that any periodicity can be quantized in discrete units, including the fluctuation of the stock market and the expression of cancer genes.

The quantification of dispersed/scattered signals represents one of the most significant achievements of the human mind. It is best represented spectrum of Light, with the seven frequencies/wavelengths representing discrete-ness in a continuum, otherwise invisible to the naked eye.
But which makes our world. Much like the all the other signals..beneath it all.

Now to go read the stars and the blips on the screen of the NYSE. (Perhaps this is why I love the DNA and NYSE so much. The manifestation of discreteness, in an otherwise chaotic world).
Entropy is inversely proportional to world order.

The NYSE smells signals.. as does DNA.  The (Exchange) Floor is the Cell. The incubus of ideas, where vortexes are smelt, fused, siphoned off and exited into lesser chaotic states,
Maintaining Steady States. The summum bonnum of the cell and the Stock Index.
Anything which revves up it's periodicity..whacks it's signals out of sync, is a radar to discontinuum. To chaos.
To the "Chechnya state"..to Russian oligarch/mafia-style capitalism.
A Chaos State.
(How ironic isn't it? The Russians were among the first to propose the ideas of the Chaos theory and the Steady state. I feel humbled even taking their names).

A signal transduction of chaos, which warns the system to shut down, optimize or control parameters.
Cells know when to shut-off, turn-on, open and shut gates..turn genes on and off.. and if something goes out of module, chaos ensues.
The cancer drugs making their debut on the market today.. reflect on this well-modulated ability of human cells to turn chaos into exquisite patterns, built on light.
Called LIFE.
Should a cell slip up, trip, forget to turn on/off a gene.. on time, Chaos ensues.. and tumor markers go ballistic. The markets get out of sync and the brokers start jump out of windows.
Now we don't want that, do we Neo?
It's time to shut down the Matrix.

Venture High aka the Blue Jeans/Genes Club

Inspired by my companero and buddy, BA. Thank you bringing the drive and caffeinated motivation to my life. and your work with Fair Trade coffee, which continues to fuel..
---

As interesting paradigm stood out, as I was going through the Forbes list of the world's youngest billionaires under 40.
It perhaps explained my own complex understanding and relationship with wealth and value creation and why much of the world has that complex relationship with it as well.
There seemed to be three types of billionaires in the list.
First there was the innovative, self-made, brilliant nerd-geek billionaire. This was the 'T-shirt in the garage genius', who changes the world. with an explosion of technology and real innovation - transforming the world in real tangible ways. Think Steve Jobs-meets-Sergei/Larry Page-meets Genentech and the monoclonal antibody. Interestingly, this category included only the US and notably Japanese billionaires..which is isn't very surprising. The US club did include two 'star' hedge fund managers, signifying the non-ubiquitous dominance of Tech.

Then there was the "Botox billionaires club". Think French Rivera meets Saudi oil wealth. It is purely inherited wealth.. with the jet-setting family-owned jets and the palace intrigues. With an almost Mafiosi/Godfather like vibe. It reminds me of the British monarchy and could be one of the reasons why inherited wealth is such an anathema to me. In terms of the base, it's primary value lies in stable, inter-generational products and lucrative investments spread out over continents, including the oil money.

The third category were the self-made oligarchs in newly capitalist economies, primarily the Russians and the Chinese. This was self-made wealth, but with an industrial revolution like, sweatshop-owned vibe about it. Wealth that could have been gained with forced labor and the like. These are entrepreneurs in newly opening capitalist economies and was dominated by commodities. Wealth primarily made off low-innovation, but essential commodity goods, ranging from sunflower oil to aluminum mining and steel. Innovation WAS dominated by Russians.. but by those that had immigrated to the US. The Sergei Brin meets the Genes club.

Some of the most inspiring names that stood out within the list included the Twitter founder, Jack Dorsey and Ryan Kavanaugh, the founder of the production house 'Relativity', which produced the pop-blockbuster 'Safe Haven' this year, at a cost of $25 mn and grossed over $50 mn. worldwide.

I love love love the smell of venture capital. Take me back to my old days on the Street in London, where I first started my career.. despite being wrongly away from Science. The smell of self-made achievement, still lingers, lurks in my veins. Venture is the lifeblood of innovation.. the lifeblood which is making me type these letters and listen to the classical song at the same time. And read about GESTALT. And Capital Intensity.
But what matters is Execution.. as Ted Schlein says. The double helix of achievement.

Schlein -who is General Partner at venture giant Kleiner Perkins - put it eloquently on Forbes,com, "Innovation and venture are long-term ventures. They are non-plussed by every single development that happens. Every venture is fighting for the same dollars.. held to the same standards." This is probably why I was drawn to Kleiner Perkin as an inspiring VC hub to begin with. Kleiner was the first VC firm to believe in - of all things - pig-synthesized insulin! By two MIT-UCSF Ph.Ds and the company they wanted to start in 1976, Genentech. The pig-synthesized insulin is now one of the most utilized medical products on the planet - and the creation  of Genentech spawned the beginning of 2nd industrial revolution. The Biotech age.

Kleiner has an amazing product called the Digital Growth Fund, which is comprised of Tech. Pure Tech. Namely: Life Science, Green and Digital, the mantras of the new millennium. Pretty much the three drivers that will move the world in the next century.

More to come in Part Deux. On the new edge in Biotech and Bionformatics, the double helix of the Tech DNA.
 

Arigatoh

Thank you! To the three men with round glasses.

MK Gandhi, John Lennon and Steve Jobs.

                                                                              for continuing to inspire.

Recipe for Success, aka Dilli-waali Girl

sIGNAL tod-taad ke, aaya Dilli waali..
- 'Dilli-waali girlfriend', YJHD
----

There is Dire Straits.
There is black coffee.
There is DNA.
There is Morrison and Boyds (O-Chem)
There is Angstroms, Volts and Nano meters.
There is that stairway to heaven, that American company..rising into the sky.
Trailing nucleic acids..
010101
digital fingerprints.
of god,
as Mark Knopfler plays his third riff with
the 3th degree Fourier transform frequency.

Or is it Mark Zuckenberg, the boardroom billionaire?
Or perhaps my pals Sergei (Brin) and Larry (Page) (who founded Google, in a Stanford garage)
They always remind me of an erstwhile rockband pairs, like Lennon-McCartney or one of those classic bands of the 70s.
After all, this is the generation that broke the Berlin wall, invented the Internet, broke the Human Genetic Code, colonized Mars, created Tweets and more.
Yes, that's our generation.
The GESTALT dudes.
We used to love that word.
Me and my buddies.. most of them guys.
Geeks, geniuses, lovers, pagal ashiqs.. but we were the Sikandars. A la the movie.

GESTALT is also one of the most cutting bioinformatics software on the planet. It was created by this geeky genius, Gustavo Glusman from the Weizzman Institute in Israel (where else :). Interestingly he is now based in Seattle - another abode of the geeky systems genetics generation (GSGG:), that the world so loves to watch. GSGG.. doesn't that sound like some sort of Morse code. Well it is. There are companies, paying billions right now, to solve it. The language of the Double Helix.
Which continues, to mystify, lure, delude, decide, heal, create us.
And we are paying billions for it.
You can visualize billions of genes and protein sequences, by inputting the base code, from your laboratory data.
So, the BioInformatics revolution.
How could I forget that. We are also the Bioinformatics generation.
---

And then my BF honks his 100 cc below, his O-Chem is done
and he's just solved his 4th differential equation for the day.
"Want to go for a drive and then some Nirulas 'Tooti Frooti' ice cream?
You need a break, yaar."
C'est la vie.
Then we all get back to our Ivy league grind.
reading Russian poetry.
All the guys aka buddies I knew back then, were math, physics whizzes, hooked to Pink Floyd, Aamir Khan movies, unrequited love
and are now entrepereuers in Silicon valley or breaking barriers one way or another.
I've got to be get back being one of them..my gang. 

Goal

Akad ki bhi auqaat hoti hai.
Aur yeh jageh hamari hai.
(Attitude comes with it's own class. And that place is mine..)
- Varun Dhawan, Student of the Year.
----
At the guts of it, it's all about the goal.

I am a goal-getter.
A driven, furious, jet-driving Maverick, who grew up driven by airplanes (at one of the private schools run by the Indian Air Force, of the 10% selected students from "Non-Air Force" families).

And on top of it, I have the heart of that Punjabi man..not the ethnicity, but the guts, the drive, which turned refugees into conquerors of the world's toughest cities.
As my friends tease me "You have the looks of a Deepika-type girl but the heart of a Punjabi man".

Even my beloved sister, gets bemusedly scandalized sometime. "Gosh you are such a Punju yaar.." Them being the elite, sophisticated Lucknowi/Awadhi girls..Not that I cannot speak Urdu or recite shayri/poetry.
But beneath that Urdu speaking veneer - (and singing ghazals since I was a kid), I have the heart of that Punjabi man.
The go-getter, driven Maverick, "Varun Dhawan" types.

I need to WIN to breathe.
I need to fly, to be.
I need to win, to live.
To be the BEST. of the BEST.
The ELITE.

I always have..
and nothing and nobody stops me now.
The girl, who was miffed coz she couldn't store a "hatrick" in the National Science Boards in India - with a 92% in ALL 3 science subjects (Physics, Chem and Biology). And "only" got it in Bio and Chem.

I am not hiding it anymore, trying to be the ingratiating wannabe "hausfrau".
If a guy was to brag about his ISA (Insecure High achiever) personality and being miffed about not scoring the 92% in ALL Science subjects, he would be LAUDED as an achiever.

But winning, isn't enough.
BEING the best is.. and getting better is..better than the BEST.
And I will do it.
That F14/MIG is calling.
That I saw every morning for 12 years, while going into "work" i.e school.
Competing with the best of the best.
The Elite.
And now the time is back.
The pilot is returning.
The engine is revving..
the runway is waiting..
Maverick is striding to the wing-deck.
Helmet in hand.
"I feel the Need.
The Need for Speed".
Time to go Mav..

As someone wisely said:
You can take the Maverick out of the plane.
But you cannot take the plane out of the Maverick.. 

Raas Leela

So, He is telling me.
Where have you been, my Leela?

I have waited for you for so long, but you were so busy wandering around the planet and places..
Never turning to look back and see who was always with you.

You ran away from the Madhuban/wooden grove, but thought I wouldn't find you.
You turned and moved away from me..but I still waited.
You heard my flute playing, but chose to ignore it..
I called you out from the wooded groves, in the raincloud, that you love so much.
In the peacock, outside your window..
in the dance of the sawan/monsoon..but you turned away.

You wandered, not knowing, you were always mine.
Always.

You saw me in the DNA molecule and heard me calling in the explosion of light.. That the Atomic Fusion generated.

I was always there..
Your blue raincloud..
and I will never leave you.
Because you were always mine.

Now you are coming home..
covered with gulal.
to your blue raincloud..

Wandering through the bylanes of the little town
to the riverbank..
where I stand waiting,
with my flute.

 

Rang Deeni or Homecoming

Teri mal-mal ki kurti, gulabi ho gayi..

(Your silken shirt got colored pink) 

You never know when it happens, when your soul feels like a sense of home.
And it’s there.

It cud be a person, idea, place. But it’s home.A sense of belonging, like someone or something’s taken your heart, Like the heat on Connaught Place (Delhi’s elegant Central square) .Or the Nirulas ice cream your Dad buys for you.

Or the love of your life, Like those guys on mobikes, walking around like Aamir Khan in ‘Jo jeeta wohi sikandar’,
Out to win..their goal and your heart. 

Finally she’s home.

The wandering girl, has come home. To Nirulas and the gol-gappas (North Indian street snacks). And the guys on bikes, looking like Aamir.

With the gajras in her hands. And the Holi color on her face.

My favorite festival of all. The color, the rang, the spring with the high people.. and the water on your skin, with color stains on your hands and your face and your eyes..and your soul.

Home sweet home

Finally, there is the smell of formaldehyde
and the sight of microscopes.
Divine designs beaneath their rim
microbes flickering around,
stained with blue dyes.

The sight of Self, underneath the cell.
It is a relief to be back home.

Home sweet home,
where the Medicine lives and heals.

The progression stages of cancers and difficult diseases.
the intricate delicacy of genes , peering on the edge.
One or or the other, they can save lives or stain them.

The subtleties of medicine are breathtaking. higher than any mountain, the sight of Sinai or the face of life.

Walking in those hallways, tinged with the auras of wise men and the fumes of labs,
churning away the sickness into life.
Brilliant minds walk around drinking coffee,
and we talk about cells and not soccer.

The cells. Oh the cells.
The sweet smell of cells, stained with dyes blue like the sky.

As Meredith Grey ('s Anatomy) says:
"There comes a time,
when it's more than just a game".
Welcome home.

----
Part deux

I gobbled that Oncology book, like a thirsty man drinks water.
Missed two buses and couldnt get myself to leave..
like a lover being forced apart.
I can't wait to swim in it's reams..

Multiple myelomas and the stems cells that create them.
We can tailor them, change them, suit them, train them to save lives.
Make vaccines out of them or give them to children to live.

We can plunge needles into them and suck out the the marrow of life.
And to find that "when we came to die, we had lived".
(Walt Whitman, Dead Poet's Society)
 

Bliss in the Bauhaus

It's amazin'
So amazin'
I'm the only thing I believe in..
- Kanye West

The bliss has found me
the bauhaus cafes
bliss in the best lattes
and simple words
the air I can breathe
in capitol hill
feels like I have come out of the madhouse
into the fresh air
I cannot breathe in those bourgoise ghettos
from the world of the hausfrau.

The place has a very anarchist
Tahrir Square kind of vibe
Coffee meets Kunst (art)
meets LGBT angst
films festivals scrawled
on the wall
Some of the most intellectually brilliant and liberated people on the planet
phew!

The smell of UW closeby.
art books are everywhere..
I feel like I am in a Parisian version of Tahrir Square..
the smell of revolution and cigars is in the air.
And I can breathe..
Diana Penty has become Deepika..
(from 'Cocktail')
 

The return of Jugni (The Firefly)

I recently saw the movie 'Cocktail' again.
And was struck was the fabulous performances of all the three main leads. An unconventional Indian movie for chamge.

While Saif Ali Khan's performance blew one away, the one that struck me most was Deepika Padukone's performance as the golden-hearted, bohemian Veronica. Albeit a bit too wild in places (a la Bollywood), she plays an angsty, gutsy female character who has no qualms on talking about the hypocrisy of Indian society, male double standards, feminism and being in love at the same time.

Her performance in the 'Jugni' song is incredible. I was told I am bit like her :-) though being in a Hindi movie, everything is stereotyped about an independent herione -  she parties too much, doesn't like cooking et al..- the usual stereotypes (why doesn't an 'independent' girl like to cook, is baffling)
 
The bottom line is that Indian cinema  finally showing 'normal' girls, with human feelings, emotions and self-respect who don't chase after men, dying to be 'pati vratas'. She probably loves more passionately than any character, but she is real, honest and strong. She becomes a Jugni in the process of love, but perhaps she doesn't need a man like Saif Ali Khan anyways..
A really nice,  but slightly patriachal guy who goes for the more homely, 'desi' Diana Penty. Perhaps the lesson of the movie lies in that.. that women like her need someone who will respect the Jugni (Firefly) in them, not not try to repress her light. She is shown with open options at the end of the movie..a Jugni ready to take flight..

The Smell of a scoop

So, I do realize that I have the rare 1941 edition of William Shirer's 'Berlin Diary'.
As published by Alfred A. Knopf, of New York.
Talk about a nose for journalism.
I found it stacked behind large imposing racks, in Powell's in Portland.
Something in me, smelt something in it.
This was the book that Blanche Knopf, co-founder and wife of the legendary publishing house, had asked Shirer to write..while the Second World War was brewing in Berlin.

This book could have been touched by Hemingway, Shirer, erswhile New York journalists and editors at the New York Times..Jewish refugees or crusty British diplomats..

Wow!

Hope

Saw Spielberg's masterpiece today.

The sound of 'Hope' kept ringing through my ears.. and I saw Stars falling through my eyes.

Silent
burning stars
of hope.

'As long as the eyes flow,
the hope will live on..'

Even in the land of exile,
the longing for the home
will last..
the hope will live on.

Ever since I heard it,
felt like I have come home..

Gatsby in New York

You walk down Fifth Avenue
"walking cane here by your side".

You're the sound of the jazz bar in Sting's song..
'Englishman in New York'.

You cannot belong to boundaries..
Sound
stubble
eyes like black coffee
sophistication
like that Barney's hankerchief
you carry in your left pocket

Stopping
by the same window,
every night
looking into see if she is there.
You drink the black coffee in Stumptown
and like it ground a certain way
Fine but not too refined
like yourself
like that jazz note
flickering
hovering
over the ground
in Brooklyn
where the dark eyed Jews reside
by your
Leah.

Reclaiming the light

She runs towards him..
like a barefoot 'Katrina' in Jab Tak hai Jaan..
running towards the ray of light.

"Jeevan dagar mein,
prem nagar mein
aaya nazar mein
jab se koi hai.."

Ever since you have shown up on this path,
this town of love..
my heart wonders..is this the One?

 

Re-claim the sunlight

I will find you.
I will find you again.

No wordly walls, Bastilles, revolutions
can keep us apart.

You were mine..
all through the centuries
and we have drunk coffee, bread and mind-soul together.

Everything we are
is each other.

Every flesh and sinew
in our being
belongs to each other.

Pledged from the beginning of time
history, destinies, empires, dictators
bullets
couldn't separate us.

What's a little bourgoise ghetto?
Break free of the Bastille
and reclaim your light.

The sun that is in your soul
is me.

 

Re-union, Part Deux

I feel it already..like the 'Exodus' has begun.
Ever since I came back from Portland..
It was no coincidence I took the book with me there.

I feel like the system has blown and the lid has come off.
It is happening as we speak..
The lid of fake covers, IDs, layers, bourgoise ghettos, death, smell of decay, 'morals' and 'rituals'..
We have taken them apart.
You and I.
Since that day in Berlin, when we last met, we had black coffee together. and promised.
We would find each other again.
My anarchist revolutionary and your Karpinski Leah.

We were torn apart.. but never separate.
We kept the promise.
It is time to redeem that pledge.

Live fearlessly.

(And isn't it interesting, that I stopped at the 'Zeitgeist' cafe of all places, en route to Portland? The smell of dark coffee, books and revolutionaries in the air..a la Seattle)

Bliss

Woke up to a morning of such mystic bliss..
the esctasy blew my mind..
Sunrise and the soft sun of dawn.
Walking on the rose feet of the grass in Portland's Farmer's Market.
It was heavenly summer
and the smell of roasting kielbasa sausages
and your feet in the grass.
even though you were physically elsewhere
you know where you were.

Then the sun filled the air with this dappled light
and the people with the liberal eyes filled my soul.

And I so wanted to be home..
A home is a state of mind.
not a claustrophobic bourgouise walled garden..
I will not be in a walled garden.

I will be with you.
Always.
in the dappled sunshine,
reading books
by the kielbasa sausages
in the farmers market.
As you walk with your feet
in the dappled sunshine.
 

Berlin Diary, Part Deux

I am holding a 61 year-old copy of William Shirer's classic, 'Berlin Diary' in my hands.
Found it in the history section of the famous Powells in Portland.
Holding it feels weird.

Feel like I am witnessing history, a la Marcus Aurelius, witnessed the 'Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire'. Marcus was there, as Caeser rode into Rome.

Shirer witnesses the stand of the last revolution, standing on its feet in Germany, France, Spain, as the communists, fascists, democrats fight it out on the streets in Paris, Vienna and Berlin. He is there, standing in the Place de la Concorde, as the gendarmes spray bullets on the Communists and social democrats. It is fascinating, as he describes those very moments we read about in history, sitting in a cafe in Berlin, sending dispatches to the Chicago Tribune that he worked for.

He describes the 'Anschluss', the takeover of Austria, by Berlin
and the erstwhile 'Americans in Paris', the Gatsbys/Fitzgeralds, Hemingways..
hanging out with them and having 'A Moveable Feast' with the Spanish intellectuals, who carried the flame of freedom through the darkening '30s.

How the war correspondent turned into a witness of history
unfolds though the the pages of this 61 year-old book,  that I hold in my hands.
It is bizarre to read about Dolfuss, the tottering Austrian dictator and how he hangs the last vestiges of democracy in Austria, and the social chaos that ensues, leads to the rise and fall of Europe..
Little did he know, that the little dispatches he wrote,  sipping dark coffee
in a Paris cafe,
would become a witness to history..
that an Indian girl would read in the middle of the night, in a hotel in Portland
dark coffee in her hands..