Vikram Goyal's Weblog

In Dec 1997, I arrived in America to work for a consulting firm. A month later, I had my first credit card. My pride and joy, it represented to me unlimited freedom to do anything that I wanted and not be constrained by those pesky debit cards (charge cards) that were linked to your savings account. Live within your means! What a horrible thought!

With this credit card in hand, I looked for newer avenues to spend it where others couldn't. I found Amazon.com.

The company had been in operation since July 1995. I think I must have been among the first 100, 000 th customer to trust the company and to buy books from them. I used Amazon.com because of three reasons:

1. I wanted to use my credit card over the Internet. I was a programmer and I had inherent trust in this new economy.
2. The local stores did not have the books that I wanted. They could back order the books. Amazon had the books available for delivery within 2 working days.
3. They took care of packaging/shipping and sending the books to my father in India, which made it very easy for me. I had to select the books over the Internet, provide the shipping address and my credit card details and they took care of the rest. How easy was that?

So, keeping these things in mind, I read the book titled "Amazonia" by James Markus with great interest. James was employee no 55 at Amazon and was hired as an editor in 1996. The book traces his experiences in the company over a five year period with the help of a range of emotions.

The book is candid, funny and extremely readable. I want to emphasize the extremely readable part. You would expect a book such as this to be full of boring anecdotal accounts. But no, James does a great job of taking you with him on a journey where you share his angst at the MBAs taking over the company, you share the subtle joy of being a millionaire and you smile ruefully when the AmaBot replaces him to take over the home page duties.

It is a story well told. James is honest in his opinions and observations. He shows his annoyances at the various automation projects that replaced humans with faceless computers. He is clearly more miffed at the MBAs who talked only about "the bottom line" and "monetizing those eyeballs". He is dismissive of all the meetings that he attends which go nowhere.

The overall feeling is of a well deserved employee being made redundant and neglected in favor of expansion and commercialization in an organization that grew too big too fast. However, these are the facts of life and James presents them well (with only a subtle hint at his personal problems).

By Dec 1998, after I had purchased a stack of books from Amazon, they sent me a coffee cup with the Amazon.com logo on it. I cherished the fact that they took care to send me something for free and valued me as a customer. Next year, I bought more books and I did not get anything. The year after, I bought still more books, but still nothing under the Xmas tree from Amazon.com Santa. The company had grown too big, too fast. I know how James felt.

Posted by vikram at 09:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

The Tony Abbott saga is absolutely fascinating. This is real life drama with an anti-climatic ending that no one could have predicted. For those who don’t live in Australia, here are the facts of this fascinating “days of our lives�:

1. Tony Abbott is the health minister in the current John Howard ministry.

2. 27 years ago, Tony Abbott and his then girlfriend at University of Sydney, had a baby boy together.

3. Soon after his birth, the boy was given up for adoption. Both parents felt that they were too young to care for the baby. Mr Abbott was only 19 years old then.

4. Last October (Oct 2004), the boy given up for adoption decided to trace his birth parents. So far, so good.

And now, the twists in the story start.

5. Amazing fact No 1: He finds out that his birth father is now the health minister of Australia (and a possible future prime minister)! Amazing fact in itself indeed. A quick reunion is arranged between all parties involved. The story is made public in the New Year (2005).

6. Amazing fact No 2: Both father and son had crossed paths many times before! This is because the son works as a sound recordist for the ABC (the Australian Broadcast Corporation, a government entity!) in Canberra (Australian capital). TV channels go berserk showing footage of Mr. Abbott giving interviews where his own son is holding the sound equipment, standing next to each other! How bizarre is that?

7. Amazing fact No 3: The son is not Mr. Abbott!!! After the story is made public, another man comes forward claiming he is the father of the son! DNA tests prove it!

8. Amazing fact No 4: Mr. Abbott, for the last 27 years, thought that he had given up his only son for adoption (he has three daughters now in a separate marriage) when the son wasn’t his! Apparently, his girlfriend during that time had a one off stand with another student and the child was theirs.

It is hard not to feel sorry for Mr. Abbott. Imagine the mix bag of emotions that he has had in the last few months. First he is reunited with the son that he gave up all those years ago, and was then told after a few months that the son wasn’t his to start with. This is bad enough in normal people’s lives, but when it happens in full public glare, I can only imagine the pain.

To his credit, he has handled himself remarkably well. He is polished and graceful and whatever grieving he must be doing must be behind closed doors.

What a story! I cannot wait for the movie to come out.

Posted by vikram at 04:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (2)

I have a new found respect for every man or woman, who comes home from a days work (or at the end of household work for those who stay at home), changes clothes to get into gym gear, drives to the gym and spends at least an hour or so working out.

It takes hard work and lots and lots of determination.

When I started, I thought I would be able to keep my motivation up no problem. But as the evening drew closer, I started dreading the workout. It is not just the physical pain (which is a major problem, I must say), it is everything associated with it as well. Why should I get up of the couch and give away a perfectly good evening and sweat myself out!

In any case, we have finished our sojourn to the gym but do plan to take it up after we are back from holidays. All in all, I went from 76 Kgs to 71 Kgs. This, coupled with body fat loss, comes to around 9 Kgs, which is a very good figure overall, especially, since it was done in aprox. six weeks time. My waist went from 90 cms to 82.5 (ok 83!)

To every one of you, who make the effort, hats of to you. I can honestly say, I know what you feel like.

Posted by vikram at 09:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Manning has started selling my book, Jakarta Commons Online Bookshelf (formerly called Jakarta Commons in Action). The book covers several Jakarta Commons projects and explains them from the ground up, which basically means that I cover the technology behind each component before I discuss the components themselves. A very important technique because it tells you not just how to use the component, but why and where to use it as well.

The plan is to eventually update the contents of the book as newer versions of the Commons components are released. But this is not yet official and will depend on the sales.

Here is the link to it. What are you waiting for? Go buy it!

Posted by vikram at 12:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)