SAST Wingees

Kate Worsley’s Personal Space – MBTI for Interior Design

Priya Raju is heavily into interior design these days and she picked up this book Personal Space by Kate Worsley. Worsley has come up with an interesting approach for helping you figure out how the interiors of your home should be designed. One could say the approach is analogous to the Myers Briggs Type Instrument (MBTI). She classifies people into 6 types. She then helps you determine your type by giving you choices to make throughout the book. Instead of making the entire book a multiple choice Q&A, she deftly weaves in the choices alongside an explanation of the various apects of interior designing. For instance, Worsley would describe say a Kitchen and the various things that go into the design while giving you choices to make. Each choice you make fills out a parameter in.  The typing chart. The 6 Worsley types and their descriptions verbatim from the book: 1. Easy – A down-to-earth and practical sensibility. Treasures the simple pleasures and upholds enduring values. Appreciates comfort, but finds sustainable, functional solutions, much like Urban. 2. Urban – A confident, modern spirit. Worldly-wise, sophisticated and technologically assured. Highly aspirational, yet shares with Pure a respect for simplicity and functionalism. 3. Sensuous – Values subtlety and comfort just as much as indulgence. Knows how to prolong sensual satisfaction by balancing it with order and harmony. Can be nostalgic, as can Easy. 4. Pure – A more rigorous, meditative temperament that relishes the intellectual challenge of pure form and colour. Will put up with inconvenience to achieve results much like Maverick. 5. Wild – Displays a pronounced taste for the extreme, the exotic, even decadent. In love with glamour and demands stimulation. Ruled by sensory pleasure, but far more theatrical than Sensuous. 6. Maverick – Always ready to improvise, and ready to explore every whim. Unpretentious and witty, with an eclectic approach. Impact and contrast matter almost as much as they do to Wild. Priya asked me a bunch of questions from the book and told me that my type is Easy. Great, another aspect of my personality figured out. Worsley also has a great section on colours.  This one caught my attention:
“We understand something of colour perception, how the brain responds to different wavelengths; that the eye requires most adjustment to look at red and none at all for green, making these colours respectively most wearing and most restful.” Based on that I started wondering, is that the reason plants have so much green in them ? – maybe we’ll destroy them more if they are predominantly in other colours ? Food for thought, eh! If you are into interior design, don’t miss this book.

FTOTW ending Dec 2 (#9) – Bird Endurance, Whale Grammar & more

Sorry if FTOTW had you flummoxed. It stands for Fine Tastings of the Week and was suggested by a friend Kesava Mallela.

1. Did you  know which bird migrates the longest distance? It is the Arctic Tern which migrates approx. 12,000 miles from the Arctic to Antartic and back every year. In what is undoubtedly an amazing feat of endurance, the Arctic Tern does not land during that entire journey unless absolutely essential. Wow! [Note: I couldn’t find any authoritative source on the net to corroborate this particular fact].

2. What separates the great from the nearly-great? Marshall Goldsmith answers in an insightful post drawn from observing the brilliant lawyer David Bowies. <Via Jeremy Zawodny>

3. Antikythera mechanism from Greece is considered to be one of the world’s oldest known geared machines. The exact purpose and functioning of this machine has been a puzzle so far. Few days back, scientists have published their research findings in  the Nature magazine, which shows that it was an extremely accurate astronomical device. [Note: regardless of what some people say about the Wikipedia, it is amazing to note that this news item only a few days old is already featured in the Antikythera mechanism’s page].

4. Animal watching 1 – A recently published study shows that female chimps in the wild form coalitions to fight back against aggressive males. Goes to show unionizing is a primitive instinct!

5. Animal watching 2 – I had come across a report a while ago that mentioned that Humpback whales used complex grammatical rules in their songs. I found that intriguing, of course. Couple of days back scientists reported that Humpback whales have some types of brain cells seen only in humans and the great apes like the Spindle Neuron and the cerebral cortex. That could explain how Humpback whales “get” grammar.

6. Roger Federer, Marat Safin and some other Tennis stars are blogging on the ATP site.
<Via Ebenezer Grace>

Fine tastings of the week ending Nov 25 (#8)

1. Interesting video-presentation of how Youtube went from not to uber-hot. The bit on secondary-innovations that they leveraged is very insightul.

2. the popularity  of Dancing, Dancercising (dance+exercise) has gotten young and the old around the world to expend a lot of energy on the dance floor. What if we could tap that energy? A dutch dance club in Rotterdam is attempting to do just that with what they call energy generating dance floors.

3. Without being a mere spectator of your favorite sports, through fantasy sports leagues, you can build your own dream team and pit them against dream teams of others. What if you can do that in politics – build a dream team of senators and play politics. You can do just that in the Fantasy Congress. Check it out. <Via Crooked Timber>

4. Continuing on my journey of animal watching – experts say that deceit is something that animals can’t do. To put a question mark on  that, researchers have recently discovered a burrowing owl that uses animal poop to lure insects to its nest. Now if the owl is doing it instinctively, then it is not deceit. But what if it is not instinctive?  In another interesting development, researchers have discovered that Elephants show self-awareness quite similar to the humans.

5. All music lovers know the power of music. Now researchers have found that music can shift your breathing pattern, speed up your heart rate, and even send shivers down the spine that shows up in brain scans.

6. We have heard of the placebo effect – where the subject experiences alleviation of symptoms even when an inert drug is given as a placebo. What if the opposite happens, the subject experiences the harm ful side-effects of the real drug even when only an inert drug has been administered. This is known as the Nocebo effect. Goes to show how powerful your mind can be, not only can it make you believe that there is no pain, but can also make you believe that you are experiencing pain. <Via New Scientist>.

Ah! I am now fully caught up with my backlog on the fine tastings series.

Back to India: Dollars, Rupees and the Big Mac Index

Updated Dec 6, 2006: This post has been Desipundited. Thanks Kaps.
Updated again Dec 8, 2006: Achyut links to this post with some more thumb rules on what salaries returning desis in engineering industries (EDA, chip design etc) can expect. How much money do you need  in India to have a good lifestyle is a question that pops into the minds of people planning their return to India.  I did contemplate the same question and I am not sure I have a definitive answer. But I have some decent ideas that I thought I will share.  Ramesh Ramanathan famously answered this question saying you need Rs. 5,500,000 (55 Lakhs) per annum ($110,000 approx) . I had written a post on PSFK showing how this type of income would put you amongst the supra-rich in the country using the Big Mac Index:

We had covered Ledbury Research’s estimate of the Indian Luxury market earlier. Ledbury Research had estimated that 53,000 households in this segment and predicted that it would reach 140,000 by 2010. Interestingly, yesterday’s Times of India (TOI) reports
that there are over 1.6 million households in this segment and is
expected to jump to 3 million by 2010. If you dig further, Ledbury
Research has used a $230,000 annual household income for the luxury
segment (approx. 1 Million Rupees in today’s exchange rate) and TOI has used 45 Lakh Rupees annual household income for the luxury segment (approx $100,000 in today’s exchange rate). From my own observations and applying Economist’s purchasing-power-parity principle based Big Mac Index,I can say that the TOI’s definition seems more appropriate – 1 Big Mac in India is approx US $1.30 compared to US’s $3.06 giving a PPP ratio of 2.25, in other words US $ 100, 000 seems like you have US $225,000 in India which is magically similar to the $230,000 number used by Ledbury Research. Therefore, you may want to go by TOI’s interpretation and that makes the luxury market in India seem even more appealing. BTW, Economist, could you please add India to your Big Mac Index?

The reason I feel the Big Mac Index assumes significance is because most things you want to buy at a quality comparable to that in the USA, would be products that are considered premium products in India. For instance, if you want to go to a movie at a cinema theater of USA style quality, you would pay around $3-$4/ticket. If you apply the Big Mac Index PPP of 2.25 you get $6.75-$9/ticket which is what you would pay for a cinema ticket in the USA. Over time, i have observed that this 2.25 rule applies to most things you buy thanks to the level of quality you are looking for. Now, let us look at how some of the major expense items stack up at near-USA-style quality: (assuming you own a home and a car, you can rent a decent home for $600-700/month in Chennai): 1. Full Time Driver – $100-125 per month
2. Part-time Cook – $100-125 per month
3. Part-time Maid – $50-100 per month
4. Petrol or Gasoline expenses – $300-400 
5. Child’s Tuition Fee at a top-notch private school – $200-$250/month/child
6. Groceries for a family of 4  – $140-200/month (includes water, milk, newspaper, veggies and regular groceries)
7. Electricity  – $100-150/month if you keep your AC on a lot
8. Internet Broadband – $20-40/month depending on speed of the line
9. Cable TV Bill + Landline Phone Bill – $25-50/month
10. Cell Phone Bill – $20-30/month
11. Ironing & Laundry – $10-15/month for 2 going-to-office folks in the house Total  at lower end of range (with 2 children) = $1355/month or $16,260 per annum or Rs. 7.3 Lakhs per annum.
Total at higher end of range (with 2 children) = $1735 or $20,820 per annum or Rs. 9.37 Lakhs per annum. Some obvious omissions from this list – clothes, personal grooming, gifts, eating-out,
entertainment, vacations etc. It is hard to pin these down due to varying tastes and spending
patterns. In the software industry, assuming you don’t have some highly-sought-after-esoteric skillset, you can expect to earn Rs. 1 Lakh per year of experience. So someone with 10 years of experience can expect to earn a gross income of Rs. 10 Lakhs per annum. Post taxes (33% as on date), you can get Rs. 6.7 Lakhs per annum. You can see how with this level of salary of approx $21,000 you can lead a US style living. Therefore, IMHO, if you have enough savings (after home/car/furniture/TV..) to generate $25-30,000 per year of income you can comfortably retire in Chennai. In other expensive cities like Bangalore or Mumbai, the figure would be a bit higher.
 

A Case study in going back to India – Ramesh & Swati Ramanathan

Updated Nov 26, 2006:  This post originally published Nov 15, 2005 is in the top 5 links for “going back to India” on Google. So i thought i will update this post to link to other posts i have written on the topic. See below.

Updated again Dec 6, 2006: One more post in this series Desipundited. See below.

Ramesh & Swati left their high flying careers in the US to go back to India and start Janaagraha. This article titled “How to retire at 34” gives a superb snapshot of the life-changing counter-intuitive decisions the couple have made throughout their lives. By the way, Ramesh’s calculations of how much money you need to survive in India (Rs. 50 lakhs or about $110,000 per year) seems way too high. Any thoughts on this?  

Janaagraha by itself is another excellent idea that is likely to have a dramatic impact on India. This is one couple worth keeping track of (Via Sridhar Iyer).

New links added:
1. My observations about my first 2 weeks in India.
2. Will you find your favorite products in India – an analysis. This post was desipundited.
3. Innovation zealots may like this post i did on RMKV’s innovative silk sarees.
4. Reviews of 2 restaurants that are my current favorites in Chennai – Benjarong Thai and Cedar’s Lebanese Cuisine.
5. My first taste of India’s bureaucracy.
6. How much money do you need to retire in India? This post is now Desipundited.