Skip to main content

Stirling retreat


A well deserved outing out of Glasgow, after three and a half months here saw me and the mates going to Stirling, a city, well, a very small city an hours drive from here. Not that we could have chosen a better day for the trip, the mercury plummetted to a bone chilling -5C!
(Pic:In an animated discussion with his royal highness while the jester looks on)
The main attraction of Stirling, the Stirling Castle, the place of cornation of the legandary Queen of Scotts, and witness to the wars faught by the Scottish heros William Wallace and Robert the Bruce against their English counterparts. The scenic beauty of the palace took us a while to absorb, so did the entry fee to the castle (still not recovered from it)!

Well, it brings me back to our roots, as Indians. Not that we didn't build castles and forts similar to this one if not better, my point focusses on our stingy attitude. Having paid the amount for the castle entry, we cribbed on the fact whether we should pay an additional sum for taking an audio tour, which inevitably, we didn't. Then throughout the trip, we ate each others heads off going on whether it was actually William Wallace who was the king who poisoned his servant to check the authenticity of the mysterious unicorns tusk or someone else and why did he not use it as a battle sword in the first place against King George of England! I guess the audio extra would have put us out of our misery!


Anyways, the golden rule is that, you will find Indians all over the place, and even in the remote city of Stirling, we managed to find an Indian restraunt where we decided to lunch!


Back to Glasgow in the evening, I think it was a fair trip all things considered although I don't think I will ever visit a castle in the near future, not without an audio tour atleast!


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Understanding the job

Working with a product company, one of the bigger dilemmas facing the Product team is what to build based on the backlog of product items. Listening to a Harvard lecture podcast online recently, I came across a concept which helped me clear this dilemma. It simply asks a question- what is the job that your product is hired to perform? Ideas for the product you are building can come through various routes. We're going to lose this customer if we don't incorporate this now, this is something the CEO really wants to see in the product, it's been sitting in the backlog forever etc. But a very good way to go about prioritizing what goes into the product is to find the answer to the question- what is the job that your product is hired to perform? Imagine the product to be an employee who is hired for a particular profile. Now there are certain roles and responsibilities or KPI's which will define whether this employee is fit for the post. The same logic will apply to the p...

F1 in India!!

All you Formula 1 fans out there, F1 is finally coming to India, to Delhi specifically speaking!! Talks were going on(they always go on..and on) for the past ten years to get the F1 on track here in Gandhi land, now finally its a go! Few months ago liquor dude Mallya proposed to get the track as Rajpath and the surrounding roads around Parliament(as if we have less trouble there already!!), but good'ol Ernie wants a new track altogether. Hey, wouldn'tve been cool if the track was the same one they thought about earlier?? Burning rubber at 300km/hr+ in front of Rashtrapati Bhawan!! Where would the pits be? possibly inside the parliament!! Anyways, the very fact that F1 is coming has got me super excited! Just to see the Ferrrari's and McLaren's zooming past and the sweet sound of the roaring v-8's would be a delight. The only thing I am worried about is the snails pace at which work is carried out here in Delhi, in India as a matter of fact! Alonso crosses the first ...

Art of the Start

Building out something can be one of the best experiences one can have. As kids, we took great pains building structures using Lego bricks, modelling clay into art which put renaissance sculptors to shame, or making barracks and castles of scale in sand where we were nothing less than kings. These activities gave us a sense of achievement and entitlement. These were some of our first products. Some of you would have gone on to build sand walls around those castles, and moats to fend off intruders. You were the consolidators, empire builders. If you build out that castle and kicked it to the ground to then make another masterpiece, you were in the true sense a serial entrepreneur. Sat on the sidelines and got the other kids to build stuff for you? No comments. Fast forward to today. Looking to be a pioneer and build out something, or provide a specialised service? Ever wonder what it would be like if everything you ever imagined went on to fruition the moment you thought it out? Woul...