Fine Dining- An art to challenge your expectations

Food innovation is the new buzzword which hasn’t left any stone unturned to outshine the magnitude of innovation being done all over. For innovation, although sky is the limit but when it comes to food, I guess there is no limit. Restaurants these days are sinking their teeth to the core to come up with ideas which titillate our senses and fulfill all our dreamy gastronomical desires. Unique fine dining experiences are no longer confined to just ambience, presenting the regular food nicely and good service but the span is infinite and extends to every possible element which sometimes is not even within the ambit of our anticipation.

Unfolding the mystery of what all is happening inside the food lab today is like churning sea water to see the world beneath the ground level. The biggest change that has overtaken the whole idea of giving a pleasant experience is to play with your senses and challenge your expectations. The magnitude of your expectations being challenged or senses being duped is directly proportional to the pleasure you experience out if it which is mainly driven from “Molecular Gastronomy”. So basically molecules i.e. smallest unit of a chemical compound is being used which participates in different chemical reaction and change the way a food looks, tastes, as well as feels. The craziest element of molecular gastronomy is virtual flavoring (mainly through the process of evaporation) which doesn’t even allow you to set any expectation. Just imagine an eggplant tasting like banana, looking like potato chips and eventually being used for a dessert; would you even conceive something like this? This is the real world of food experiments happening today.

Molecular gastronomy is given affect mainly with the use of liquid nitrogen to change the food temperature very fast and play with its texture, presentation as well as flavoring. We all would agree that we eat with our eyes. The temptation to hog mainly comes from the way the food looks like which signals our mind to brace for the binge. An additional temptation as of today is around the element of surprise with the deceptive appearance as well as aroma. This element of surprise which deceives your senses actually creates sensation and addiction of trying food more frequently and experience the bliss. Food chains have rightly captured this and are competing around innovative style of cooking, use of bizarre and unmatched ingredients and unique presentation to sensationalize your dining experience.

Apart from the food, the entire dining experience covers tons of other elements which are also repackaged, recreated and presented differently to break the monotony, make you feel special and give you a unique experience. The most common of them is around fancy cutlery which has to go in sync with the opulence of the restaurant and the innovative presentation of the food being envisaged like toy trucks/giant wheel for starters, tiny gas cylinder for beverages, pressure cooker for Indian curries, telephone booth/typewriter for the bills etc. Sometimes the food and the cutlery is so fancy that it gets confusing as to what is there for decoration and what is meant for actual consumption. What also is equally fascinating is the food as per your mood and the best example is the Sunday brunch which is meant to fuel your lazy weekend morning with a fizz & instigate you to slurp till you burp.  

Another leg of different dining experience is around ambience which is based on specific themes like beach, royal ship, metro, cave, Bollywood, sports, vintage, Jungle and so on. One of the most blissful experience I had in terms of a very classy ambience was at a plush restaurant in Gurgaon where you go to the 4^th floor using the lift and come back to the ground floor through an escalator where you get to see an awesome art in the form of landscaping accompanied by a water reservoir surrounded with flames which is simply impossible to put into words. Obviously, if something like this is curated specifically to add to your experience, it makes a hell lot of difference and can’t be bypassed.

It’s very exciting to plan and zero in upon a venue out of countless options. The marathon of excitement continues with the unique description in the menu or having a digital menu, ambience, combination of ingredients never heard before, fancy cutlery, the reconciliation of your expectation with the food being served, customizations like private dining, customized decoration & menu etc. This is one of the most competitive area which keeps the food chains on the edge to keep thinking out of the box and benefits the customers to have endless divine experiences. If all of it continues in the same fashion, days are not far when we will have championships like Olympics to showcase insane level of culinary skills. Bon Appetite!!!

Relationships at workplace

From the gamut of different relationships that I have come across, I believe relationships at workplace are the most complex one. The complexity attached to this equation is attributable to multiple factors and decoding this entails tons of maturity. Logically, if we see today’s working conditions, an individual spends most of his/her life in office. It’s quite obvious that if we spend considerable time with folks in office, we tend to get closer to them than anyone else especially when the workplace is not in your hometown. It’s also obvious that we will carry similar emotions for them that we would have for our near and dear ones as they fall in the same bucket but from a different source.

Healthy relationships at workplace have countless benefits and can surely generate better results than it would generate otherwise. This works even better if it’s a team work and most/all of the team members are known to each other before the kick start of the project. This simply means that the team can save time in on-boarding & getting to familiarize with each other. Team members will know and easily grasp/adapt to the working style of the other members which is mainly driven from their acquaintance. The best thing about this arrangement is the excitement amongst the members to work with their besties and to get away with the hassles of working with someone whom they know partially or don’t know at all.

It’s a known fact that if the members are absolutely comfortable with the working environment, they tend to give their best as they don’t carry the baggage of apprehensions relating to other team members.  Also the members get along well for work purposes as well and are not hesitant to share their views or voice out routine challenges/issues, if any. This further strengthens the teaming between different members and diminishes the possibility of people issues which is one of the most common epidemic and can create a dent on the smooth flow of the project. Till the point we talk about healthy relationships, it has countless benefits and surely better than any other arrangement. But I wish life was as seamless as it seems to be.

The same arrangement can be equally complicated and hollow if we see things outside the project output. We should also be mindful of the fact that independence is an indispensable pre-requisite of any organization/project/work arrangement. Independence is presumed to be hampered the moment any relationship is established/known like sibling, husband-wife and any entity would make sure to place them separately in a way that they don’t cross ways with each other. But why is this done? What if two sisters or husband-wife working together can produce best results? That simply means that there is something much more important than the work productivity. If the independence can be hampered for established/known relationships, it can surely cast shadows on other equations like close friendship.

Imagine someone appraising his wife, interviewing his brother, allocating work to his son, providing feedback to his best friend etc. Can we assume that all of these scenarios are as normal as any other appraisals/interviews/work allocations/feedbacks? The answer may be yes but no one would advocate this and would consider the outcome to be objective. That’s one of the grey area which makes relationships at workplace quite toxic and raises eyebrows from everyone irrespective of the level of objectivity maintained. Sometimes the safest bet to avoid an issue is to avoid the situation which can create the issue.

I have come across many cases where members themselves raise hands requesting for change of arrangement as they sense compromise of independence at a very early stage. I strongly feel that if someone is genuinely interested in one’s career and in a close relationship, the smallest favor they can do to everyone is to avoid working with the concerned person so that no one is prompted to question the arrangement and also they can be relieved of the pressure for not being objective. Maintaining healthy relationships and independence is the moral responsibility of every personnel and more we embrace it, lesser is the probability that it will have adverse effect on anyone!!!

Disclaimer: Nothing written in this blog has reflection of any individual known to me/place of my work. It’s purely based on experiences we come across quite often and share with each other.

Facebook or book of invisible faces?

Today the brand equity of Facebook is almost at par with the brands which fulfill our basic necessities of life. Not having a Facebook account is as good as not having an email id or a mobile number. This forum is considered to be the only platform whereby you can be connected with your acquaintances. It hardly matters that you are active/inactive user, visit Facebook 10 times a day or once in 10 days, know how it works/not even aware of basic functionalities. All that matters is that you ought to have a Facebook account which allows you to peep inside someone’s personal space to the extent someone’s personal life is at display.

From the user perspective, the domain of Facebook is huge and everyone uses it the way they perceive it to be. For some it’s the medium to be updated of what their friends and family are upto, for some it’s the forum to let everyone know what they are upto, for few it’s meant to share important updates on their journey/work/achievements and for few it’s for posting for the sake of posting. In all above scenarios one thing is common which is to let the world know of the things which they might not have known otherwise.

While users use it in different ways, the real objective/face of Facebook is way beyond our imagination. Sometime back everyone used to wonder as to how this is a listed entity with market capitalization of more than $100 billion and what’s their source of income. The only source of revenue common public were aware of was the advertisement income. The users could see small icons of few brands in the right hand corner of the home page based on the options they selected while creating their profile. A Layman never bothered to reconcile the revenue which could have earned with advertisement on the home page and their actual revenue.

We all should be mindful of the fact that the creator of Facebook is the one who at the age of 19 had 4k emails, pictures and addresses of everyone connected to Harvard. After gaining access to this vital information, he called all of them as dumb f***s for sharing it just like that. You can now imagine the ideology and the principles which would have laid as a foundation to create Facebook. The only difference is that now the numbers are magnified from 4k to 2.2 billion. So basically all your personal information, preferences, the sites you visit, the places you travel and the personal conversation you make is tracked round the clock without your knowledge but may be with your permission which is embedded in the settings and not known to 95% of the users.

Just imagine how is it possible that you visited any site, say for online shopping, when you were not logged in to Facebook but when you log in Facebook later on, you see all the products you scanned on the home page. Magic, isn’t it? The worse is that Facebook tracks all the internet users even when they don’t have a Facebook account. Facebook is also alleged to track WhatsApp conversations and use it for generating advertisement income.  So the moral of the story is that if you are an internet user, you are tracked for everything by someone whom you don’t even know. Isn’t that scary? Well the reality is that all of this is just a drop in the ocean. The magnitude of the real issue and some of the allegations on Facebook is quite grave and can shock you to the core.

After tons of apologies by Facebook in last decade, The Cambridge Analytica fiasco alone is expected to affect 87 million users where their personal information is alleged to be misused for political elections. Steve Bannon who was the campaign manager for Trump’s 2016 presidential election had served as a board member for Cambridge Analytica. Cambridge Analytica is said to be a Company which uses data to change audience behavior. They use data to target voters with hyper specific appeals which is known as psychographic modelling. Although the networking baron Zuckerberg says that it was done without his knowledge but so far his responses have not been convincing at all. Being the CEO of Facebook, he was unaware of the basic functioning of the entity and preferred to stay mum on most of the questions which itself indicates the existence of smoke and mirrors.

Data privacy has been the biggest threat for ever mushrooming digital world. Automation and digitization are the buzzwords today but it’s important to keep our eyes opened for the floodgate of risks this platform is exposed to. We tend to demean those who don’t embrace technology but we should also factor in their apprehensions which are not apprehensions anymore. No matter what will be the outcome of countless severe allegations on Facebook but surely it had invisible faces which were always existing, busy in minting money and laughing at their users. Next time when you share your personal information on any digital forum, think twice on your expectations of data privacy, check countless options under settings and surely don’t be too possessive about it as there will always be a threat of invisible faces watching, monitoring and tracking you in every possible way!!!

Shoebite, an invisible scar in the soul

As per the internet definition of shoebite, it’s is an ugly sore that occurs on the foot after wearing new or ill-fitting shoes (new or ill-fitting shoes brush and rub against the skin, causing friction that eventually results in inflammation, pain and swelling). If I reread the definition by replacing shoe with people, the whole description sounds very familiar and close to something we come across very frequently. So in real life, an ugly sore occurs in our soul when ill-fitting people rub against our equation/relationship which causes friction and eventually results in pain, broken heart and sometimes permanent scars in our soul.

We all know that practically it’s impossible to keep everyone (with whom we interact/meet/work or who are indispensable part of our journey) happy all the time. To this point there is no issue as this is something we brace ourselves for and don’t find it unusual. The surprise comes when someone we trust or the ones in our close circle (by any means, not necessarily the blood relationships) do something/act unexpectedly which is way beyond the boundaries of our imagination/anticipation. Such instances surely resonate in our minds where we try to introspect and find an answer but are unable to do so.

Although the real issue is not the gravity of the act done by someone but is the expectations we develop unconsciously with everyone which differs in magnitude based on the equation we share with each individual. Someone rightly said, “Serenity comes when we trade expectations for acceptance”. If we think logically, anyone will behave/do what they are supposed to or what they are, so what is there to be surprised or get affected. If it’s just the fact that we got to know another shade of an individual out of the 50 shades then the emotional churn should stop with a surprise. It shouldn’t go to the level of feeling sad, heart broken or not able to come out of thinking about the incident hundred times a day.

This is a very common emotion we all go through almost on a daily basis but it’s high time for us to introspect and work on ourselves. We have to understand and acknowledge the fact that each individual is unique and there is no way any person can think/act the way we image it to be. The real secret of happiness is low expectations. We have to learn keeping very low/no expectations from everyone around us and peace will follow automatically. Even if we have some level of expectation, it has to be flexed based on different scenarios as how an individual reacts in a particular scenario differs significantly. As long as we accept the person the way he/she is rather than magically imagining their behavior to sync with our preconceived framework, life will be quite simple and pleasing.

Most of the people I have come across have got great fetish for shoes. With all enthusiasm and sparkle in our eyes we buy new footwear and reserve it for special occasion expecting it to complement with our look. But alas, the glister it had under LED clad rooftop fizzles the moment it starts biting. Can we blame the shoe/brand for this? May be not, as we should have been wise enough to factor in this common behavior. That’s exactly the ask in real life too with different people. We can surely avoid shoebite with different people if we wish to do so. We simply have to make provision for the unforeseen behavior and keep the horizon of your thoughts wider so that other emotions don’t coincide and make invisible scars in our soul!!!

Being unrealistically different to be realistically the same

Being unrealistic is the new reality and there is a paradigm shift in the way basic lessons of life were learnt. If you even think something routine, rational, logical and achievable it means you are obsolete and can never meet anyone’s expectations because you are not being unrealistic. It simply means that you are not challenging the status quo which should be part of your dreams and you should be already dreaming to make it a reality (how and when is not relevant here). This emerging concept is applicable for every walk of life and not confined to few situations/relationships.

If I take example of any workplace, every individual is expected to be a superman with barrage of super natural distinctive powers. It’s so unfortunate when a subordinate and a supervisor meets and the focus is completely on how distinctively the later has done anything in comparison to the peer group. Ideally the subordinate who has done an excellent job should be strutting with tons of confidence. However, he is actually forced to keep his chin down even after long list of achievements just because people have already done it in the past or doing it in the present. How justified is this logic that each and everything an individual does has to be unique and meatier than the entire group or else the eligibility of excellence is completely exhausted with blink of an eye? An individual who is not even aware of what majority of the individuals are doing is expected to surpass them, that’s quite sensible. It’s like expecting an individual to research how anything was done in past 500 years by anyone in this world and accordingly plan their work to do it magically different.

I fail to understand that why we all have the pressure of doing every damn thing innovatively as if we are NASA scientists. Why simplicity is losing its charm and so called innovation (which is mostly repackaging the old stuff endearingly and making it look different/attractive) has to be infused forcibly even if it doesn’t make sense. My generation has grown seeing/listening/doing things which our predecessors, to the nth generation, have done consistently without even pondering or questioning it and that always was a matter of pride. But today, it can even affect your survival if you don’t twist the bread and call it a wrap than roti-sabji. Just imagine a millennial saying “It’s been 10 years and I am going for a morning walk”. Logically there is nothing weird about this but being unrealistically realistic, it sounds odd and bizarre. You expect to hear some fancy form of exercise which helps in burning calories faster than any other form you have ever heard of.

Not sure how attached we are to the realities of life than we ought to portray being attached to the realities of the tons of unrealistic things hovering around us. This pressure/situation is like a pinhole in a balloon which might not be seen or even felt but gradually this pinhole will shrink the balloon to zero. A rooftop can’t be swanky if the entire structure is in a mudland. Innovation or something extra can be cherished only when we first learn to embrace and value the things which are already existing. How owning a Ferrari is relevant if you grapple to have basic necessities of life?

Being different or thinking different is surely an art but the science of basics can never be undermined. Anything done which entails hard work, commitment and giving your 100% might not sound wow or innovative but it doesn’t mean that it was less than 100%. In this era of innovation, synergy can be achieved only when routine things are synced appropriately with non-routine ones. So coming back to the drawing board, the first ask is to be realistic, work hard on basics and finally strive for excellence (not necessarily being different) and things should fall in place as long as the change or being different is encouraged (not as a pre-requisite but as a backbone which will eventually strengthen the basics).

Disclaimer: Nothing written in this blog has reflection of any individual known to me/place of my work/my journey. It’s purely based on experiences we come across quite often and share with each other.