A big week

This is been a big week -- work-wise. On Monday, we made an announcement that I was taking over as the CEO of Gridstone Research, the company that I cofounded 3 1/2 years ago. This has been in the works for a few weeks now, and that was the reason for my being rather busy. In keeping with the mores of these times, we made the announcement via a blog post. My colleague and co-founder, Basab Pradhan, the previous CEO -- also posted on his blog. Unfortunately, after several nice messages, the discourse began to get pretty nasty, and he had to turn comments off on his blog. It always surprises me how normally civil people feel no hesitation to behave indecently when they are safely behind the anonymity of the Web.

I posted a link to the announcement to FaceBook, and was quite surprised how many people noticed and congratulated me. Thanks, everyone!!

On Wednesday, I had an early meeting at the le Parker Meredien hotel in Midtown. My meeting was at the Knave, a coffee shop just off the lobby on the ground floor. It was a nice discovery -- very quiet and just perfect for a quiet business discussion. The Espresso with steamed Breve that I had was also excellent (a great formula for South Indian coffee in America, complements to my cousin Maha). I must make it a point to bookmark this place for future business meetings.

Since I was in the area, Sandhya asked me to stop by Times Square to pick up tickets for the Lion King. We have been lucky and got excellent seats in the first week of April for a show on Saturday afternoon. We're all looking forward to it, and I hope Dhruv enjoys it. He loves the movie. There are some people who've told us that children often either get scared, or don't appreciate the abstract nature of the performance -- I don't know which way it’s going to be with Dhruv.

On Friday, I had a business lunch with an old colleague and potential client, at this excellent Indian restaurant on 51st St. -- Amma. It's a small hole in the wall, and in fact you enter from the entrance to an apartment building. While it is small, the food was excellent -- and also quite innovative. More importantly, unusually for an Indian restaurant, the food was extremely well presented. The sort of place that you can take a client without breaking the bank or feeling embarrassed.

Our good and close friend from California, Kala Swaminathan, flew into town on Saturday. Sandhya had taken off for a grand reunion with some old high school friends -- and so Dhruv and I took the subway to the airport to pick her up. We got there comfortably enough -- although on a weekend the E line was not as fast as it was when I went on a weekday (it’s an Express on weekdays). We took a taxi back instead of subjecting her to another trip on public transit.

Since Kala was in town, we had asked a babysitter to come in on Saturday evening, and left Dhruv with her to spend an evening out. We had reservations at the famous Café Wha? at 9:30 PM, and decided to spend an hour or so at MacDougall Street before the time for our reservation. The two ladies dressed to kill, and we set off.

We first grabbed an excellent pita sandwich at Mamoun's Falafel -- a little dive of a place where not more than three people can stand at any given time. In fact, we had to stand outside to eat, but the food was excellent and totally worth it. One piece of advice – don’t try the hot sauce. It’s really hot – even by my ‘Indian’ standards. Not feeling satisfied, we then went to the Kathi roll company for a Kathi roll each. Suitably fed, we then walked over to Café Wah so that we could get good seats in time for the show.

We got really nice seats close enough to the brand, but not so close that we would be deafened by the music and ordered some appetizers and drinks. They had this really odd rule -- we had to sit across the table from each other, and so Sandhya and Kala got to face the band, while I got to see the band on TV. There was also this other odd rule -- the waiter had to give us a little slip before we could leave the place, for example - to make a call (there’s no cell phone coverage in the place). It seemed like people sneak out without paying their bills, and the slip system is to ensure that they can’t do that. The band was top class, as advertised. I can't say I enjoyed the standup comedy piece as much but the music was so "our generation" that the evening turned out thoroughly enjoyable. Given how crowded it was, we had to share our table with five other people – two girls and a guy, and a couple. We initially thought that the guy was with one of the girls and the other was her sister, but as the evening progressed, the band asked people to get up and dance. The way the Guy was dancing with the ‘sister’ left us in no doubt that she wasn’t that. Enough said.

We left at about 11:30 PM, and walked to La Lanterna -- which was up the street a block -- for dessert. La Lanterna is an Italian restaurant with a very nice indoor garden and an excellent assortment of Desserts. We were greeted by someone who seemed like the owner – an older gentleman with a thick Italian accent. He made it a point to compliment me on my good fortune to have the company of two beautiful women on an excellent night – which caused me to beam from ear to ear. Both desserts that we ordered -- Pecan Pie and Ice Cream and Caramel Custard -- were superb and drew an excellent evening to a perfect close.

On Sunday morning, we walked to "Ess-a-bagel" nearby -- to have breakfast. This place prides itself on the quality of its bagels, and refuses to toast them. I had an egg on an onion bagel which turned out to be quite substantial, and really tasty. It was interesting to watch the ebb and flow of the patrons at the store -- they seem to come in waves, and at the peak of the wave it was almost difficult to find standing room. Lots of people seem to just stop by to pick up bagels and then take them home; some of them were even still in their pajamas. I'm thinking seriously of getting a bike -- we have such excellent eating options within a five block radius that keeping the bike will mean that I can just ride over, pick up stuff and get back home.

From there, we walked down to 14th St. and caught the subway to Central Park. We entered the park close to Seventh Avenue and Dhruv spent a happy couple of hours climbing up and down the rocks in that area and playing in the children's playground. I had an interesting experience where a child, who I had noticed earlier, was sobbing copious tears. On my asking him why, he told me that he seemed to have lost his parents. I had noticed his parents earlier -- an African-American gentleman and a Caucasian lady -- and I saw them some distance away, lost to the world in passionate embrace. I took the sobbing child over to them and they were all considerably relieved.

We then walked over to the eastern edge of the park -- were Dhruv found another little play area to play in. Sandhya and Kala waited for a friend of Kala's and then promptly proceeded to ditch Dhruv and I -- and go off shopping down Fifth Avenue. We took the bus home. It was projected to be nice and warm, but it had actually gotten quite cold.

Sandhya's nephew came over to stay with us that evening. It is funny how our guests seem to come in waves -- it was exactly when Kavitha was visiting that Priya Sehgal arrived from India. It was exactly now, when Kala is visiting, that we have a couple of additional guests -- and have had to borrow an air bed from Sonia -- for the guests.

All told, quite a busy week - first the transition to a new job role for me, then a really active weekend with Kala being in town. Sorry it's taken me some time to write this post, but get ready for another one soon.