On the Fringes of Scotland

 

Alright; now about Scotland, the next item I crossed off my bucket list a couple of weeks ago. I had a lovely time visiting Edinburgh and the highlands, even though it was a fairly short trip at less than three full days. I'll break up the visit into three parts: the food, the highlands, and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Edinburgh Castle

The Food 

Let's start at a very good place to start: breakfast. The pic above shows a typical Scottish breakfast, comprising the usual eggs and bacon, sausages, tomato, potatoes, a nice and crispy slice of mushroom, and toast, all of which I was well acquainted with. The new entrants were haggis (the brown circular cutlet-like piece), and black pudding, which despite its name turned out to be a black circular cutlet-like piece. Now here is where you vegetarians (all two of you, yes) stop reading and skip to the highlands. Black pudding is made from pork or beef blood, fat, and oatmeal, and is as sinful as you imagine. It's also quite tasty, despite being a bit dry.

Haggis is a mixture of sheep heart, liver, and lungs coupled with oatmeal, onions, and spices. You can eat it like a cutlet in the above picture, or with 'neeps and tatties' as in the pic on the right. Now these are actually cunningly disguised turnips and potatoes, which you discover later, much to your chagrin. The Scots call haggis a pudding too, but don't believe them. This isn't the pudding your mom fed you in India when you were all cold and feverish. What's more, you should be in the highlands by now. 

 Scotland offers other kinds of food as well, like this plate of fish and chips for the wife's dinner, and this nice bit of steak for the ever-hungry teenage boy. Said wife was also very happy with the devilishly well-made eggs she had for breakfast, and wound up skipping both lunch and dinner that day.

Fish, chips, and strangely enough, peas

 

 

 

 

Deviled eggs with the inevitable haggis below

 I would be remiss if I did not include the wonderful pulled pork roll we consumed at this appropriately titled restaurant, Oink. You decide your size, you pick your bread, choose your stuffing - which includes the omnipresent haggis, of course - and pick your sauce. You then plonk down if a seat's available, and dissolve into a state of bliss until you lick the sauces from your fingers and your stomach congratulates you on a job well done.

 

You know what would be remiss too, don't you? Oh, you do. Much to my surprise, you can't ask for Scotch in Scottish restaurants. Nor can you insist on single malt with a splash of ice, like you do in every Indian Bar and Restaurant ever. You have to go with whiskey, making sure you pronounce the 'e'. If you are a connoisseur like me, you can ask for a flight of whiskeys, sip all of them, and promptly forget the names of each one of them. They were all very good though, ranging from the less smokey to the very peatey. I slept quite peacefulley that night after the whiskeys.

The Highlands

Scotland is divided into two, as per our tour guide and bus driver, Neil. The highlands, which ye'll take, and the lowlands which I'll take to make sure I be in Scotland afore ye. Stretching from slightly north of Edinburgh to pretty much every other part of the country, the highlands are mountainous, sparsely populated, and comprise forests, castles, coastlines, and thirty three thousand lakes, called Lochs just to confuse the average tourist. Now the average tourist would make a beeline for Loch Ness, since they would have heard of Nessy, the monster that lives there. Not us though, the clever tourists that we are. Being brought up on a steady diet of Tintin comics, we headed to Loch Lomond, the closer (and more affordable) tour offered by Rabbie's. The lake and the surrounding hills are drop dead gorgeous, and is absolutely a must-visit if you are in the area. 

Inveraray, north-west of Loch Lomond

 We also got to visit multiple castles, some of which you may have seen on shows like Outlander or Game of Thrones, or in movies like Monty Python and the Holy Grail. In fact, Doune Castle has a souvenir shop that sells not just Python t-shirts and hats, but coconuts as well. 

Doune Castle, of Outlander & Winterfell fame (just S1E1 though)

Kilchurn Castle, stronghold of the Campbell Clan

 Cows in the highland have a shaggy mane, powerful horns, and are called Coos, to make them look cuter to tourists. They are apparently the oldest breed of cattle in the world, and have survived for centuries as Malayalees hadn't made the long voyage over yet. The three we met were called Hamish, Honey, and Baxter (the Efficient one). 

 

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

August 1947 witnessed two historic events. One was the completion of a 4300-mile long voyage on a wooden raft by Thor Heyerdahl, and the other was the start of the Fringe Festival at Edinburgh. The story goes that the Edinburgh International Festival was created to celebrate and enrich European cultural life in the wake of the Second World War. Eight theater groups who were not invited to this festival went ahead and did their own thing on the fringes of this event, thus establishing the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which now attracts millions of people from all over the world.  The festival organizers are committed to include anyone with a story to tell and a venue willing to host them. This makes August a crazy time to visit the city though, with streets packed with tourists, locals, and artists.

Street Performer at the Fringe Festival

The Royal Mile, connecting Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood House

We attended an hour of stand-up comedy where five performers took turns to come up on stage for ten minutes each, which was a lot of fun. We then went to KC Shornima's show at a bunker nearby, which we thoroughly enjoyed. I'd highly recommend checking her out - she's really good! The last was a rock show by this tribute band from Australia, called 27 Club. They play cover versions of songs from Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, and Amy Winehouse, all of whom died at 27. 

And Finally...

 I loved Scotland. The people were friendly and welcoming, the food was great, and the weather was just perfect during our visit. It's a very inclusive country, which actively invests in human rights. They were the first country in the world to protect, in law, the right to access free period products for everyone who needs them. I was pleasantly surprised to find tampons and pads in restrooms, marked as free. Their LGBTQI+ community seems vibrant and active, with a clear voice during the Fringe festival. They take pride in their heritage and culture without making a huge deal out of it. I'd visit again, in a heartbeat.

No Land

 I run.

 

Run from messages

Messages that are forwarded

Without thought

As received

Received by warm minds

Eager minds

Eager to agree

Agree to hate

Hate the other

The other who is 

Not as pure

Not as pristine. 

I run.

 

Run from arguments

From conflict

From debate

From questions, and

From answers.

There's no land I haven't run to

No land without hate

Without fear

Without being othered.

 

Yet, 

I run. 

 

 

 

San Diego Comic Con 2025

 I checked off two items from my bucket list in the past thirty days: attending San Diego Comic-Con and visiting Scotland. Interestingly, the most common question I got asked about each of these wasn't the reason for my visit, nor was it something I did out there. Most folks who have a peripheral knowledge about Comic-Con ("civilians", as my friend the illustrious Satya calls them) asked who I was going as. Most folks who know one particular thing about Scotland asked which distillery I was visiting. While I wasn't there to cosplay or tour a distillery, both trips were amazing, and I'd love to go back.

 My visit to Comic-Con was all thanks to my buddy Satya, who is well-known to pretty much all the dealers out there, as well as to quite a few of the major artists. There was a long line of people, rivaling the one for George Lucas, waiting to get face time with the illustrious one and I imagine offer him multi-million dollar deals for his prized comic art collection. I had to beat them off with a rolled up poster so that the man could negotiate a copy of the first page art for the comic book you've never heard of but would have watched the movie version. To be fair though, Satya says his collection is small fry compared to those of the passionate folks he hangs out with.

Satya negotiating one of his multi-million dollar deals

 

 So anyway, since I had a dealer pass courtesy Satya's friends, I was able to get in early Wednesday afternoon before the civilian throng arrived. This turned out to be a huge deal, as I could saunter along the entire Con (as we in the industry call it) and look at all the unsullied booths without having to fight through hordes of plant zombies. That said, we were asked to not loiter in front of bigger displays like the Star Wars area or the DC booth, and were specifically told not to buy anything as it would put the general public at a disadvantage. However, that changed from 6pm when the hall was open for preview, and the masses started trundling in.

Alright, about cosplays. Sure enough, they were on full display throughout the Con. People outside the venue without tickets like this guy in a Deadpool costume driving around the block every ten minutes, to Ninja Turtles lining up to enter the venue, to these ladies who were apparently a version of Red Sonja far removed from the Brigitte Nielsen avatar I knew from my childhood. And oh, those plant zombies showed up too.

  You also had the usual bunch of religious folks protesting outside the venue, as comics are obviously bad for you and a sure shot way to get you into hell. This cosplay didn't make me smile as much as the others, strangely enough.

What was the best part of the Con? I'd like to think there were two - first, all the panels I attended were awesome, with some great discussions. I loved listening to these artists talk about their inspirations, their creative processes, what worked and didn't work for them. Their interactions with each other, responses to the audience questions, and just being a regular person geeking out at a convention, happy to be among like-minded souls and interacting with fans made them seem approachable and... human.

Panel with Eddie Campbell, Craig Thompson, Lee Marrs, Thien Pham, etc

Panel with David Dastmalchian, Eric Powell, et al

  I looked up books written by authors I hadn't heard of before, and have been reading them after getting back. I loved Thien Pham's Family Style, and was floored by Harold Schechter & Eric Powell's Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done? The movie versions of the Ed Gein story (Psycho, Texas Chainsaw..., etc) pale in comparison to his real life.

 The second highlight was one of the main reasons I attended SDCC: getting to meet some of my favorite artists. I loved taking pictures with them, interacting with them, and getting their books autographed. Some of these were easy enough, but others required spending money AND standing in lines to get a chance at standing in lines to get their signature. 

Lunch with the incredibly talented Craig Thompson of Blankets fame

With Brian K Vaughan, he of Saga, Y: The Last Man, Paper Girls, Runaways & more

Daniel Clowes, creator of Ghost World, Monica, etc 

With the awesome Emil Ferris, of My Favorite Thing Is Monsters

 I didn't tell my kids about this earlier as I wanted to surprise them with the actual signed comics. So getting Brian K Vaughan, Bryan Lee O'Malley, and Neil Druckmann's signatures for Rachu, and the legendary Frank Miller for Karan was absolutely the highlight of my Comic Con.

Neil Druckman

After getting Frank Miller's signature

Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life! 

Brian K Vaughan apparently knows me very well

With Tom King, writer of the Vision books and Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow

Jeph Loeb signing (and doodling) Hush for me

The doodle bit is interesting, as it's an additional little gesture from the artist towards the fan. As I understand it, the vanilla signature on a book is the baseline. Artists often prefer that you ask to make it out to someone, as then the chances of you trying to sell the book with the signature on eBay are low. The next best thing is to get an additional little doodle on the page, which adds pizzazz. You can see some of these in the pics above.

The artist who drew my favorite Alan Moore comic, From Hell, Eddie Campbell

 I got back home with a suitcase full of books, a long list of comics to read, and a heart full of thanks to Satya and his friends, who were kind enough to accommodate a wide-eyed civilian in their midst for a few days at this mecca of geekdom.

The Group Skip

[I'd posted this on Medium a few years ago. Copying it here because reasons] 

This post is mainly for managers of managers, and specific to upward feedback, but the principles should hopefully be interesting to everyone. I have been practicing this system for several years now, with an overwhelmingly positive response from both my direct reports, and the people they manage. As always though, your mileage may vary.

One of the best signs of a healthy team is its ability to collect feedback. This usually happens through retrospectives if the team is following agile principles, or through surveys and other approaches if not. Timely feedback helps the team learn, make appropriate course corrections, and continuously innovate.

What’s true for a team is true for its leaders and managers too. Timely feedback helps a manager know what’s working in their approach to management, and what can get better. Some managers proactively seek out feedback on themselves, others prefer their manager collect feedback from their reports and share it with them, and some go with a combination of both. As a manager of managers, I aim for having regular one on one (1/1) skip level meetings with the direct reports of my directs. This is not just to seek feedback on the managers, but for me to learn from individuals on what’s working in the team, what’s not, and how I can help. It’s also an opportunity for me to coach, and be coached.

Photo by Shane Rounce from Unsplash

 

That said, I also schedule what I think of as ‘group skip levels’, where I meet with all the direct reports of my directs, collectively as a group. These meetings are almost exclusively to get feedback on the manager, and I do my best to keep them focused. These are not to override the direct, 1/1 feedback, but complement it.

The basic idea is that often times one gets more feedback in a group setting than what one would get through a 1/1 meeting. There could be a few aspects that you, as a team member, may shy away from calling out in a 1/1, or in written upward feedback, as you may consider it too trivial, or something which impacts just yourself. However, if you hear someone else talk about it first, you’d feel confident about bringing it up too, knowing that it’s not just you who felt that way.

I ask questions in three broad categories in these meetings, and for the most part, stay silent and take notes. The first category is around strengths the manager exhibits, the second on opportunities, and the last on the team. Since the first two categories are fairly well known and obvious, I’ll expand on the last.

I ask three sub-questions in this category:

Do you feel like a team?
Answers to this have varied from “obviously we do, why do you ask?”, to “yes, but..”, and “a team with a boss”, to “of course not, we aren’t a team.” This question gives me insight into team building capabilities, which I believe is really important for a manager.

What are the achievements the team feels happiest about during this time horizon?
This helps give me a sense of how the team thinks about itself — are the achievements a collection of parts, or is there a cohesive, greater whole which the team feels good about? Does that align with the overall mission and purpose of the team?

What are the missed opportunities for the team this time horizon?
This provides insight into areas the team feels they are capable of handling as a group, but did not get around to addressing, which may be due to different priorities, or not enough alignment across the team and the manager. To me, a healthy team isn’t one which agrees all the time, but rather aligns and commits to decisions after debating them internally. I also probe to get a sense of how the manager encourages debate within their team, and how they create space for discussion.

I write down notes as people speak in these meetings, and after a few minor edits for language and typos, send it to each of my directs within a day of the meeting. We talk about it in our next 1/1, and use it to drive specific actions and course corrections as applicable. I sometimes arrange a follow up with the teams after a few weeks, and see if things have changed, especially in areas where the concerns were a bit more acute. While it’s good to seek out feedback, it becomes effective only if you have acted on it, or explained why you chose not to, thereby creating a virtuous cycle of continuous improvement.

All About Me (part two)

I am so honest, so thoroughly square;
Eternally noble, historically fair.
Who, when you win, will always give your back a pat.
Why can't everyone be like that?

Why does every one do what the others do?
Can't a person learn to use their head?
Why do they do everything their parents do?
Why don't they grow up, well, like me instead?

Why can't my friends take after me?
I am so pleasant, so easy to please.
Whenever you're with me, you're always at ease.

One day in a million I may shout a bit.
Now and then, I might show slight defects.
My truthfulness you might perhaps doubt a bit,
But by and large I am a marvelous man!

Why can't everyone take after me?
'Cause I am so friendly, good-natured and kind.
A better companion you never will find.

I am so decent, such a regular chap;
Ready to help you through any mishap;
Ready to buck you up whenever you're glum.
Why can't my friend be a chum?

Why is thinking something others never do?
And why is logic never even tried?
Complaining about everything is all they ever do.
Why don't they fix the mess that they made?

Why can't everyone behave more like me?

Why can't everyone be like me?

 

(thanks to Henry Higgins for the inspiration)

 

A Love Reaction

 What compels me to write? When do I put fingers to the keyboard and start typing with gusto, words flowing out like water bubbling through that broken pipe which you've been meaning to fix but never got around to and now it's too late and your kitchen is flooded and oh, hell. 

When I was young, it was mostly love. The feeling you feel when you are going to feel a feeling you've never felt before. I wrote pages after pages, not necessarily about love but because of it. Because of the high I used to feel after meeting her between scoops of ice cream, meeting her between rows of books, meeting her at bus-stops, walking through narrow streets sprinkled all over that tiny hometown of mine. 

If not love, it was reading. Which is a kind of love too, of course. Love with words, with dialog, with the process of creating worlds which take you away for a few hours. Worlds of horror, of mystery, of intrigue, of castles filled with incredibly funny Earls, secretaries, and butlers. My writing at the time echoed Stephen King, Robert Ludlum, Agatha Christie, Arthur C Clarke, and every Indian english reader's constant source of amusement, PG Wodehouse. It was terrible writing, now that I look back at it, but it flowed. 

It changed later though, after several years. Especially after my daughter was born, which was peak blogging era (LiveJournal, sigh). I wrote about emotions, about her growing up, about what we learned, my wife and I. Strangely enough, my son's birth a few years later was peak social media. It was Facebook, it was Instagram, it was Twitter, and Whatsapp. Which meant I have fewer videos and pics of my daughter compared to my son, but more words for Rachu than Karan. Not quite sure how I feel about that now.

So, what compels me to write? At this age, at this moment, I think it's the opposite of love. Not quite hate, but anger. Bitterness. Sadness. Frustration. With the world, with politics, with the irrationality that surfaces every day. With the unfairness of it all. And the realization that it's here to stay and there's little I can do about it. 

Other than write.

Of books, shows, and movies

I've been on a tear with books the past few weeks. Picked up some twenty-odd from the library; finished about half a dozen, DNF'd another four to five, and have the rest lined up on my to-read shelf. Jo Hamya's The Hypocrite and Ian Banks' The Crow Road were a couple of the stand-outs from this set. 

Doing something similar with shows as well, though they obviously take longer to complete. Carmy and the gang haven't moved much, but I have now fully caught up with them. Disclaimer was a disappointment, Blanchett notwithstanding. Restarted my Madmen odyssey too, as I have the AMC+ sub for a few more months.

The movie watching continues at the same rhythm, of course. Fridays, Saturdays, and other assorted holiday eves are spent going through my Letterboxd watchlist. Indian movies have been way better than most of the stuff Hollywood churned out last year, which is nice to see. Having said that, wound up 2024 watching Dune 2 for the third time, which was almost as enjoyable as the first. Movie of the year, for sure.