The "Real" Madrid experience!

Snow in London, no salt ⇒ no flight to Switzerland! Go to Munich directly, eat good Bavarian food, and squeak out of Munich before the snow catches up...arrive in Madrid. Finally ... no snow to ground planes!

Ready to leave on Saturday...so went to the Bernabeu to buy shirts for RonRik! Walking back to the hotel, I see a big crowd gathered around the entrance, cheering and singing ... the players are driving in, so they can take the team bus to the hotel - game with Valencia tomorrow evening. I hang around, hoping to see a glimpse of some of the best soccer players in the world, since I'm leaving in the AM. Sure enough, I recognize Di Maria as he drives in to a cheering crowd. TV crews are shooting the scene, and yours truly makes it to the real Real Madrid web site, as photographic evidence shows!

Rajat's on the real Real Madrid website

Thrilling enough? NOT!

I walk into the hotel and am told that the airport is SHUT DOWN! Why? There's no snow?! No freeze!

Aha - the human element (Cisco! pay attention!) - Spain's air traffic controllers have gone on a flash strike and Spanish airspace is frozen! Government declares a state of alert and threatens the striking controllers with prison ... well ...my flight is moved out a couple of days! Stuck in Madrid!

Colleague rises to the occasion (Thanks Cesar!!), and I get to see the Real Madrid game vs. Valencia on Saturday, with Cristiano Ronaldo scoring 2 great goals right before my eyes!

"...is this real?"

Destiny, I say! I have the REAL Madrid experience!!

It's all about the video - idiot!

The most amazing invention in the world, after sliced bread, cars and cellphones is ... high definition television! There's been lots of well-deserved buzz over the last few weeks about self-driven cars; an interesting future ahead, but let's talk about what's currently on the pop charts!

It's all about video!!

I just realized that I pay more in (average) monthly bills to Comcast than I do to PG&E!! After food and shelter, I effectively pay more to my video provider - more than I pay per month in gas. The irony is that there's not much TV I watch - maybe a couple of DVRed shows per week. But when I watch something cool on HDTV, it's worthwhile - world cup soccer, NFL football (even when the damn Cowboys lose), CSI Miami (it does not matter how stupid the storyline is, or how hackneyed the acting, the faked-out colors of Miami are gorgeous, pixel by turquoise pixel)

Therefore, independent of wondrous phones and colorful book readers, the big screen is here to stay - I call it the form-factor discontinuity. That's also why Netflix, Apple and Google are all playing for the TV market, since you'll always have users in front of the gorgeous screen. If you consider games as interactive video, the case becomes even stronger. My boys were just pointing out one of the recent PS3 games, and the comment was, "it's just like being in a movie".

It is all about the video. Why? Since it's the best way to tell a story. You may not want to watch the story twice, but there's no better way to tell a story than with brilliant HD video and Dolby Surround!!

I'm not sure who will win the TV wars - but Apple TV seemed to go a step away from where we need to be, i.e., device consolidation. They should have made the iPad the AppleTV!! Why can't I just beam video wirelessly from my cell phone/tablet to the television - why do I need yet another device? At least Google TV seems to have tried to worm it's way into the actual television, and is based on the phone OS!! With built-in search, access to all the web via a full-blown browser, there's a chance it can become a convenient portal to photos and all video content, be it high-quality ESPN or Netflix, or crowdsourced or family videos on YouTube. Maybe Flash videos too :-) Of course, it would help if Hulu, NBC, ABC, CBS stop blocking Google TV :-)

Another argument is that it is also going to be the right place to allow you to interact with the web - this is where WebTV failed, but I'm not convinced that's going to be the predominant use of web access (with user interaction and input).

Why? I'm not sure I'm going to start browsing when I am watching a movie or a  world cup game, or my weekly show.  If I do, it will likely be infrequent. There's a reason that the TV is called the idiot box - I like being an idiot when I watch TV. I love the movie experience and I love the entertainment value of television.

Another "killer app" is supposed to be using the TV for calling. Given that Android is the Phone OS, that makes a lot of sense technically. I like that the TV can become a mega-phone, but I suspect it will not be the primary calling station. When Comcast beams the caller on my TV screen when a VOIP call comes in, I'm not jumping to pick up the phone. Why? Because the call is likely a disturbance when I'm watching a movie or a game. Will I place a call while watching a show? Unlikely. Will I use the TV to place the call, when I could Facetime on my mobile phone? Sometimes! Work-related telepresence?

I could be wrong about all this, since I'm the idiot with the idiot box. I like TV for entertainment - pure and simple. This is also why, given time, I have the capacity to watch *anything* on television ... I'll bet that there are many idiots in the world who prefer "recline" to "upright", at least on the living-room couch!

I can see Tweeting and Facebooking during a game or a show, but the real use of Google TV will be to stream audio/video/photos, and possibly, game content. The other stuff will be sidebar activities, also possible with your mobile device (iPad or phone). It's ironic that Facetime belongs to Apple and not Facebook!

So let's look a few years hence...my car will drive me to work, and I'll be sitting in the back seat, watching video!!

Tradeoffs!

Most articles about Google talk about the great food there. True! Some articles have written about the Google15. There's truth to this - I'm currently facing (despite my skinny frame) the Google5 - extra pounds that incrementally hit - I have a gut feeling about how this will turn out! Tradeoff -> goodg food vs. unneeded weight.

Trying to walk/run it off this evening (first activity in a while), I ran down a little creek near our home in Almaden. I saw a few mallard ducks and a family of quail scurrying into the bushes (yes quail can fly too!). Idyllic and peaceful, with the sun setting over the Santa Cruz mountains, and the water dribbling down the creek. The moon clear in the evening sky!

My eyes filled with tears, since this was hardly a peaceful, lovely day for our community - in the wee hours this morning, (around 3 am), a young boy from our community was killed in a car crash - a couple of teens were returning late when the driver, inebriated, crashed into the traffic light post. The car caught fire and the passenger, a recent graduate of the local Leland High School was trapped in the burning car - gone! Imagine this pretty day for his family and friends, and the family and friends of the driver, who is in jail. DUI!  Tradeoff? Probably one glass too many, one choice too bad, and a young man snuffed out at the prime of his life, another with this weight for the rest of his life.

We are constantly making these tradeoffs - trading off family time and relaxation for incremental importance at work ... a "career" or recognition or a fistful of dollars. I'm not able to see my parents in Bangalore for months on end, as we're here in California for a "better life" for ourselves and our kids. Our son is working very hard in high school - several hours of homework per day plus other commitments, and it's a daily tradeoff between his future and his social well-being.  More likely a tradeoff between a good UC school and another good school. Not much of a tradeoff! If he's not stressed, we're doing it on his behalf.

We're in Silicon Valley in the sun when the rains are pelting the streets in India. We've traded off the grass and the mountains for the concrete jungle and the traffic, the creek for noisy Old Madras Road, but we're losing ourselves in a meaningless quest for ... what?

We blog and tweet and only a few "followers" care about our false sense of self-importance or self-meaning. We think we're doing something important, but are we? We're only making a tradeoff - one decision at a time - that we'll be happy with or regret in the future.

This morning, I made my middle schooler get off the car and run to school so he wouldn't be tardy since all the cars had backed up on the side streets due to the accident (which we were unaware of). Tradeoff - he ran more than 3 blocks with his heavy backpack on his back, so he wouldn't be tardy!

Tradeoff -> no one was tardy today! The principal's phone message just asked us to hug our kids and tell them how much we love them, and that we should reinforce that they should use good judgment in their lives. Make the right choices! Some tradeoffs are expensive. Some tradeoffs are painful. Some tradeoffs don't leave room for others.

There's a poster and flowers at the traffic light near our house. Flowers for an immature decision, a bad choice.

Let's hope that our sons and daughters make the right tradeoffs. I'm questioning mine!