most of us would rather meet up with friends and do fun stuff in the real-world.  Virtual worlds are dying.  Instead, we use status updates and check-ins to show off how awesome our first lives are:

Mobile, social, real-world games (like Foursquare, Gowalla and MyTown) haven’t hit the mainstream because the “games” aren’t all that fun and the right incentives aren’t there.  In other words, a mayorship and 10% off my next slurpee ain’t gonna cut it.  I want a game with rewards like the NYC Key to the City project, which:

…invests regular New Yorkers or anyone else who happens by with the powers of magnanimity usually reserved for the city’s highest officeholder: to bestow a key to New York on a person of their choice, granting extraordinary access to generally off-limits parts of a no-entry-to-unauthorized-personnel kind of city….

The key… opens locks at two dozen locations in the five boroughs, from the baptistry at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in Manhattan to a locker at Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn to a very private and humble room (no spoilers) at the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Queens.

This is so awesome.  I imagine an augmented reality future where life is a game, the world is your board, and the points you accumulate for having fun can be redeemed for new experiences. I’m thinking a mobile web powered version of The Game.

Gaurav Mishra and I have recently been discussing these concepts and came up with an idea he coined as gttgthr.com (Get Togther).  He does a better job then I can of explaining it:

Step 1: You sign up using your Facebook ID and indicate your interest in joining different types of get-togethers: meet up for coffee, watch a movie, listen to live music, go shopping, learn how to dance etc.

Step 2: You browse through a list of awesome things to do in the city around your interests. Like Thrillist.

Step 3: You indicate that you will attend a proposed get-together, or suggest a venue for a proposed get-together, or propose a new get-together. Like Plancast.

Step 4: The system will connect you with [friends and] friends-of-friends who have also expressed an interest in attending similar get-togethers. Like Thread.

Step 5: Once a group has decided to attend a get together, they might get a surprise group deal offer from the venue. Like Living Social.

Step 6: Users can be designated hosts for venues, activities, or even cities. Like Foursquare.

After some debate we both felt that although this app had all the overhyped elements of group purchasing, game mechanics and FB/Foursquare APIs, it wasn’t “the one.” 

What do you think?  How can we leverage the mobile web to create fun, real world experiences?  Do you know of other companies like SCVNGR and Geocaching doing cool stuff in this space?

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Last weekend I gave a short talk as part of the inaugural meeting of IgniteMumbai. It was a really fun experience, the organizers did a great job and the crowd was really into it.

The talk was short, but the format made it difficult: 20 slides, 15 seconds apiece, slides automatically rotate. Not much room for fluff. The hardest part for me was picking a topic that would appeal to 70 strangers and fit within 5 minutes. I iterated through a bunch of topics but ended up speaking on happiness. Like everything else I feel I could’ve done a bit better but was pleased with the outcome.  The first slide didn’t make the vid:

Slides below:

What do you think?  How do you think the talk could’ve been better? You can catch the other 9 talks here.

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Although Goa is a great time, we don’t really get the “Indian experience”. The areas we visited could easily be any beach town in the world (northeast Brazil, Ibiza, Phillipines, Mexico, etc…), in the sense that it’s beautiful but it caters to a sort of generic, globe-trotting, hippy, crowd. Don’t get me wrong, it’s awesome, it’s just not culturally authentic.

We then headed down to the south east of India to Kerala. We first went to Periyar which is a big animal reserve. We got to see some elephants and monkeys which I was really excited about but unfortunately no tigers. Periyar was aight, but my expectations were too high – I was expecting to see some lion king shit and instead got a glorified zoo (the elephants were chained up). On a positive note – we stumbled into a martial arts show, which was surprisingly cool and involved rings of fire.

Next we headed to Allepy to cruise around the backwaters on a houseboat. Before going I was a bit nervous about this, what are we gonna do for two days on boat? We’re a group of young, slightly aggressive, attention deficient Americans, there’s no way we’ll enjoy this. In reality it was incredible, what’d we do? Nothing – played a lot of cards, drank a bunch of beer, ate gigantic tiger prawns, and observed life on the backwater. It was pretty surreal (one of those “I can’t believe I actually live in India” moments), and was the most relaxed I think I’ve ever been. It was a really beautiful place and I think almost anyone would enjoy it.

After my friends left, my good friend Aju invited me to his wedding. We took a 20 hour train ride (AC 3rd class) to Raipur. The ride out there was pretty intense. Everyone says traveling by Indian trains is something you have to do, though I’m not sure – it was a mess. The numberings for the seats were all wrong and there were people with unconfirmed seats also in our compartment. It was cramped and uncomfortable – I’m glad I did it, but it’s unlikely I’d do it again (unless you bump me up a class or two). The wedding itself was great though, I had no idea what was going on. I was told I needed to wear a kurta (traditional Indian garb), and bought one before I left Bombay. I changed into my clothes and went downstairs and everyone else was wearing slacks and shirts, I felt pretty ridiculous until my friends came wearing native garb as well. We also all got turbans… which was awesome. The wedding started with everyone on the groom’s side dance-marching to the wedding (20 min away) in a procession with a band, people carrying 70′s style colored lights and stopping every three minutes to light fireworks. Did I mention Aju was riding a horse? People kept trying to steal his shoes, and I think a little girl tried to bribe me. It was a really cool experience.

Tonight is the second part of his wedding in Bombay, more pictures to come soon…

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Generally my life is pretty awesome.  I work my ass off (today was my 19th consecutive work day), but I like my job so it’s been cool. I’ve been doing a lot of recruitment flying around the country visiting the top business schools.  It’s great talking to the top students here, but grueling.  We’ve done about 400 interviews in the last 2 weeks and have about 300 more in the next week.  Intense.  Sometime soon I’m gonna write a post on things not to do in an interview (like repeatedly emphasize your dance skills, or force your interviewer to read 3 of your poems – true story).

I’ve met a lot of really good people, and go out whenever I can.  I’ve started pluggin’ into the Yahoo and Facebook Bombay expat groups though I haven’t attended any events yet.  Not sure how I feel about that whole scene (seems kinda weird  to come all the way to India to hang out with other “westerners”).

Sometimes I feel like a minor celebrity.  I went unannounced to the bank last week, introduced myself to the branch manager, his response, “yes I know who you are.”  Kinda creepy, though in my ‘hood there aren’t too many non-Indians around.

Anyone knows me knows my favorite thing is eating, followed closely by playing basketball.  I’ve been playing ball a few times a week and finally made the official Andheri West YMCA team!  We played in a tournament last week, where we won two games but lost in the quarter finals.  My first game we won easily against the Mumbai police (though as my dad warned: “beating the police team may have it’s own dangers”).  We then proceeded to get smoked by the Maharashtra Railway.  Apparently these guys “work” in the sports department, are recruited to the company cause of their athletic skills and get to play ball 8 hours a day (note to self: get a job at the railway).  We had a crowd of 100 or so people which was the biggest crowd I’ve played in front of.  I also got heckled a bit which is awesome (I’ve always wanted to be heckled).

Though I haven’t been studying as much as I should, my hindi is getting better.  I can at least pick out words in conversations and say really basic sentences (Hahm kab party jayenge?  When are we going to the party?)  It’s almost time for another poem…  Any time I try to say anything in Hindi people get a huge kick out of it (probably cause I make at least 3 mistakes).  My goal is to be able to tell a good joke and not only have people understand what I’m saying but also laugh, so far I’ve been wildly unsuccessful.

Finally I’ve decided to give back to the community and get involved in some sort of volunteer work.  I met with a group Atma, and in our conversation they randomly mentioned they want to start an after school basketball program close to where I live.  Perfect!  I can do that.  I’m meeting with some people next week to get it going.

I’ve been super busy but I think my time will free up soon.  I will continue to try and write weekly.  In case you don’t hear from me, you can always follow my alternate persona “the chef” at the other blog and twitter.

Till next time… main snanalay mein gatha hoon (I sing in the bathroom).

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Last week we soft-launched at a big student festival at the top engineering school in Mumbai IIT’s TechFest.  We setup a booth and asked students the output to three code snippits, if they could answer and explain, we gave out some t-shirts.  It turns out people will do anythig for free stuff.  The booth was packed the entire time. It was a really great experience, interacting with students, talkin’ up CodeChef and walking around wearing a giant chefs hat. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive and I’m looking forward to seeing how big we can make this.

Some random pics from techfest below (look for the cool chef’s hat)…

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How true..

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Goan highlights included:

hammerheads for sale:

cows on the beach:

and awesome parties:

This morning I arrived back in India, decided to take a prepaid taxi to my apartment (not sure if this is cheaper or more expensive then using the meter). The guy told me the price was 250 rs, then charged me 240 and handed me a receipt for 220.  What I got a real kick out of though, was the second bullet point on the receipt:

“In case of breakdown on the way driver will arrange another taxi for onward journey and pay part fare to next driver”

Only in India…

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Chidya udthi hei

Nadi beti hei

Ek aurat gati hei…

Unke daanth safedh hein

Unke paanv lambhe hai

Mere dil ko chot lagi hai…

Translation:

The sparrow flies

The river flows

One woman sings…

She has white teeth

Her legs are long

I have hurt my heart…

I also like saying mera nashta guhrum hai, but I couldn’t fit “my breakfast is hot” anywhere in the poem above.  Next week I’m learning about food, which I’m sure will really get the creative juices flowing.

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• When I miss a shot in basketball people yell out, hard luck! A good shot is lovely!
• I’m often asked, What’s your good name sir?
• When Indians refer to their hometown it’s called their native place
• Older, unrelated people are often referred to as Aunty and Uncle
• Fortnight is used frequently (I still have no idea what this is and refuse to look it up)
• Men are referred to as gents
• We have guys who take care of logistical stuff who are called office boys and peons
• Saw this on a resume I recently checked out: Born on the 17^th day of July, Nineteen Hundred and Eighty
• And my personal favorite: Every Tom, Dick and Harry was at the restaurant.  This one especially doesn’t make sense since wherever it is they are referring to, there is undoubtedly no Tom, Dick or Harry present.

Tomorrow I’m starting Hindi lessons and very excited.  Here’s a short email I got from a tutor I contacted:

Hi Amit
It seems you are an Indian.Why do you want to learn Hindi?Lets know then accordingly we will arrange.
Regards,
Sandhya

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