Smorgasbord Fantasia

My first travelogue book that I finished completely. I had earlier started the Walk in the Woods, recounting Mr.Bryson's trails on the Apalachian Trails (:D)but never finished it. Anyways - this was a very lively book on a country that I've always been fascinated by. Not just because the Aussies are one helluva Cricket Team or one of my all-time fav movies "Dil Chahta hain" was shot half in Australia. More like, I kept watching Steve Irwine get into ridiculously dangerous situations chasing scale-backed reptiles into the Australian Outback on Animal Planet and Discovery. More coz, one of my friends, Rohit had spent like 2-3 years in this beautiful country and described it to be a glorious piece of heaven right here on Earth. Australia as described by Bill Bryson, is a sunny warm and gorgeously beautiful country - with lots to be explored and discovered, full of amazing people, with a little-known backstory of intrepid explorers and adventurers wh...

Apologies! I know the blogs been empty for a while after the last windstorm called The Bonehunters passed this way. So here's whats been happening in my busy life: 1) Finished "Long Tail" by Chris Anderson - a revised edition : a look at the new-age economy super stars of retail - like Google, eBay, Amazon, iTunes etc that have re-written the rules of engagement by unlocking the much-forgotten "Long tail" of customer demand. Anderson argues that with the advantages of infinite storage space ( esp if your products are purely "digital" - think music? ) retailers can afford to cater to the "niches" - that form micro-categories in that long tail of demand instead of being selective and pruning out a vast majority of products from that "Hit" list. It's a fantastic read - Anderson tries to illustrate his points by pain-staking data points from his wonderfully deep research and presents the same without being too pedantic and...