In the beginning there was nothing....

....God said, 'Let there be light!' And there was light. There was still nothing, but you could see it a whole lot better.
Just read the essay by Pual Graham "How to Start a Startup". Inspiring and informative piece, full of profound advices.
Carving out theories behind success and failure of businesses, and to make out predictive pattern out of those, is indeed favourite pastime for some,and for some it is even their livelihood, yet the list of various B-School case studies and theories is never ending. Every now and then, people came up with some new explanations.
3 years back, I had written one of my course TermPaper on the Analogies between biological and business systems. And while doing that, I'd come with the notion that just as the "mutation" in the evolutionary biology cannot be predicted, can only be accounted for, business systems follow the same logic(or non-logic) of evolution.
Now coming back to the essay, it had some solid points, advices, humors and rumors.."Does your product use XML?"...its a good read anyday.

Close encounter of a third kind

It was 4 am. I just came back home. feeling hungry, i looked for something to eat. not a thing in the fridge. i thought, lets forget it, this is not my day. just sat..reading newspaper, couldn't hold it for long..."explored" the kitchen cupboard, damn, nothing readymade in there. came back again...after five more minutes i was in the kitchen again, opening the cupboard again...

Now...my cooking CV includes 5 omelettes(first one of which was burnt beyond brownness), 8 tea, and once 2-minute noodles....all of which are my achievements of past two months. and yeah i can chop onions too, have done that twice or thrice, helping my flat-mates.
i could see flour, which i was sure i couldn't make a thing of....and then there was rice...ok..decided..i'd cook rice...

Poured in some water and put rice on the gas..came out of kitchen...after 5 minutes i heard some strange noises from kitchen...rushed..all the water had evaporated and i could see the rice grain was only half the size of normal cooked rice.i poured in more water and this time i decided to stand there, chopping onion..past experience was reassuring...but i needed a knife.."the one" was somewhere in pile of dishes in the sink, which i couldn't dare break in...the other knife was a 12 inches long thing, i always wondered why would somebody use it..i could now see why!

I looked through my window..somebody from the opposite apartment,which is across the road(approx 20ft away), was peaking through the window (not THAT window!, kaushik, the one below that),..i didn't realize i was making so much noise....anyway..i waved to the person..assuring- nothing wrong here, buddy!

now the rice was almost ready..there was more work to do..i had seen people cooking fried rice.....i poured the rice on pan, but rice stuck on it...oh i forgot to put oil..damn..did the mending...onions, salt..perfect...

i was ready to taste my first ever real cookery accomplishment...i
couldn't wait for "the moment"..but i decided to make it really royal..so,switched on the TV, now i was ready....and...no anti-climaxes here.... It was the tastiest thing i have ever eaten...forget pizzas, the Taj
food, iitk wala dhaaba...

G:/personal/bin/