I remember...

Many things have changed.
You are you, and I am me,
In places so different, literally
Miles away, a different world in concept.

Sentimentality is a dirty word.
A song currently not on the top 25
Most recently played on the iPod
Crept up random, uninvited.

Deja vu doesn't quite capture it.
I could run but realise, Memory
Like fire is radiant and immutable.
To remember that I remember.

Mesh is the new Net

[And now in my myriad chameleon phases, I am now operating temporarily as a Tech blogger. I promise this will terminate at the end of this post.]

Those who know me know that I don't normally rave about a product that Microsoft produces, unless it's very very good. I have high standards for technology, not least in the area of look and feel, and so it's very seldom that I come across a product that meets all requirements in form and functionality.

With that context, I'd like to momentarily rave about Live Mesh. The technology and concept isn't new, leveraging peer-to-peer download technology, Live Mesh allows the multiple computers and devices that everyone these days tend to own (the laptop at home, a mobile phone, the desktop at work) to talk to each other and share files. It also comes with the ability to allow remote desktop access, to extend the user's reach into the interface of computers and devices not immediately at your desk. All these brought together with and by a virtual desktop called Live Desktop, that allows you to sync with a virtually hosted 5GB+ of online storage. All that... and synchronizing across mobile devices as well as Macs. Beauty.

I may be using Live Mesh beyond what it was touted to do, which was allow seamless integration across the same platforms for similar files. What I found it did enable:

• One click back-up onto the virtual desktop of key folders in Documents through the synchronization function
• Remote Desktop'ing allowing me to now completely treat my laptop as well as the personal one at home as merely virtual terminals into a seamless workspace
• If my laptop crashes tomorrow, well, the one I use most frequently anyway, I will not cry, because there is literally nothing on it that doesn't have a sync copy somewhere else

Mesh is that fabric of a safety net to catch me when I fall, with hopefully less holes than will let an elephant through. Am loving the interface and speed so far - will have to see if this ends up becoming a paid and potentially slower service as more users start cottoning on to the idea.

New Year's Resolutions and the Ministry of Food

The new year has got me cooking from the Ministry of Food, Jamie Oliver’s new cookbook. I’ve never been much of a Jamie fan, but I must say that having tried the Italian based recipes from the latest cookbook, he’s got something good going on there with the easy to make, train the idiot style of food that actually tastes halfway decent and relatively similar to what you might get at a restaurant for slightly less trouble but a lot more spend.

I’m actually quite impressed by the shortcut aglio olio'esque recipe, and it’s a great book to start with if you’re not really familiar with cooking, or if you are and just wanted to know a quicker way of doing things without compromising tastes.

Foolproof Aglio Olio (as adapted from Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food)

Ingredients:
Olive Oil
Butter [Ed: apparently a North Italian trick, and it's one that works! Whatever you do, do not skip the butter!]
Loads of garlic, sliced
Balsamic vinegar or lemon juice
Pasta
Water & Pinch of Salt

Method:

1. Put a pan of water to boil with a pinch of salt for the pasta. Add the pasta and cook per pasta's instructions until al dente.
2. Put another large pan on medium heat. Note the medium heat is important, err on the low side as you don't want to burn the oils. Glug olive oil, garlic, and a spoonful of butter per person to melt on the pan. [Ed: On the heat, it should take a couple of minutes to sizzle the garlic, I've found that by soaking the garlic in the oil, the garlic takes longer to release it's fragrance, giving you more time to transfer the fragrance from the garlic into the pasta where you want it to be.]
3. When you start to smell the garlic, pour balsamic vinegar or lemon juice in about equal proportion to the oil used into the pan. Stir in the pasta. [Ed: One of the tricks I've found out to avoid that oily taste that usually turns up in an aglio olio done badly is to put equal parts of acid (lemon juice or balsamic vinegar) to the oil. Jamie did a very good trick using cherry tomatoes - slightly out of season ones with extra zing work especially well - and balsamic vinegar to get just that right combination of creamy/sour in the sauce.]
4. Add a little of the water from boiling the pasta to cream the sauce. Stir, taste and add a bit of crushed black pepper if needed.
   

The Art of Corporate Communications

I don't usually wax lyrical about corporate management or any sort of management spiel either. I am proud of the fact that I have never and will never read a management book, despite recognizing the infinite revenue capacities of the genre.

But after an enlightening conversation with an MBA friend yesterday about culture, accents, working in a large, matrixed organization - this morning I had an epiphany about... email.

Many management and communications guru wax lyrical about the evils of cold, heartless email. There are statistics about the number of (useless) emails we write and send every day, spam is condemned, email is condemned as spam. However, having struggled a little with accents across borders recently, I've come to realize that the best tool for working across borders may actually be... email.

Why? Email is an accentless, contextless medium. Despite the potential dangers of such a medium, the flipside to risk is always opportunities, and I can't help but see email as the most effective way for a corporate (read: cold) management (read: antisocial) person to get things done.

1. Know your kitchen. Many management communications articles focus on how remote management and the need for communications across borders due to globalization are hampered by a lack of context and the inability to build relationships across borders, especially in high context dependent cultures. Management comms articles who like to compartmentalize the human psyche focus on how we each have a "communication preference", hinting that you can tell the straightforward from the subtle in how they communicate over the phone - Jack the American blathing his needs over the phone to Yuki the Japanese nodding and silently disagreeing over the conference line. I don't believe any single person has a single communication preference. We pick, or should pick, our communication mediums and preferences based on what we want to achieve at any given time.
   
   So we know that subtlety is not email's strongest points. But then again, email isn't the only tool in the kitchen, and the recognition of the fact is communications' biggest win. Use email to get things done; and phone/webcam and face to face meetings focused on building relationships. In a conference call among many parties, build relationships over the phone and summarize action items in an email following up the call.
   
2. Exploit the blank. Blank isn't always cold and contextless. While over the phone we usually know why we have come together for a discussion, email starts off blank, without a purpose. Exploit the fact that email is without context and emotion to set the tone and purpose of the communication. State your intentions at the beginning of the email, outline key messages by prefacing the purpose of the communication.
   
3. Summary = Clarity. I learnt this trick by accident along the way. Use your advantage in good email management to benefit groups and individuals who don't. How many threads have you come across that warble and ramble across several weeks and individuals? Pull those together in a clear summary to all involved, and you will be remembered as the essential person bringing clarity and efficacy to a situation. By making brevity your best friend, you maximize the chances of your email being read, and minimize the spam-delete instinct that many of us develop these days.
   
4. Think before you speak. Master the art of drafting. I've learnt at several points in my life that email saves you from blurting, and gives you a last opportunity to retract your words before they are spoken. Several tools allow you to do that: Keep emails in your Outbox instead of sending them automatically. This allows you to review your email one last time before hitting the ultimate send button. Save important emails as Drafts, take the time to work on them, it's worthwhile. Put yourself on CC. Most people don't notice emails that they send, but take notice of emails that are sent to them. Copying yourself on key communications allows you not only a point of reference in the future, but builds in that self-criticality that is often missing from blurt-sending.