Of Lions and Beasts
Jul 20 2010

 

Lion Statue in Barcelona, Spain

Of Lions and Beasts

The lions stand defiantly,
Overlooking the aging sea.
The ocean waves around my skin;
The quiet roar won’t let me be.

The plastic cages keep me bound,
Tightly, softly in a dew-like tether.
They move my mind to places I cannot go;
Which lead me to regions nether.

So I must wait until the time,
The rising sun will shine upon my heart.
And take me to a warmer clime;
Where love is appreciated like discriminating art.

But the beast that lives in all of us,
Is harshly judged by one and all.
And will never truly live without much fuss;
Until we can safely emerge from underneath the shawl.

© June – July 2010 Aruni S. Gunasegaram
Barcelona, Spain; Austin, Texas

I decided to share another poem on my blog.  This one didn’t come as easy as the Streets of Barcelona.  Well, I’d say 90% of the words came, but it took longer, and I had to do more editing before it felt right.  I wrote most of this while sitting next to this statue of the lion in the photo.  These statues were just across the street from a little port where they launched tourist boats to sea.  I played with the visual presentation a little bit.  If you look closely you’ll see that one line in each stanza is slightly longer than the longest line in the previous stanza.  You’ll also see that the first and third lines in the first two stanzas don’t rhyme but they do in the second two stanzas.  In a poem I wrote on the airplane flight from Madrid to Dallas, the last words of the 1st and 3rd lines of each stanza relate to each other but don’t rhyme.  I didn’t realize that until after I had written that one which surprised me a bit.

This poem is about the majesty of lions and the beastliness of them as well, just like humans.  Humans are so powerful and noble, yet we often forget that we are also made of animal/beastly stuff that surfaces from time to time.  The lions and lionesses, fortunately, have no such rules to deny their beastly sides because they are free to be what they are unless they are captured and put in a zoo.

The reference to ‘shawl’ has to do with religions that require their women to be covered up so that men cannot see any of their flesh that might tempt the beast in them.  In Western religions women don’t have the same rules to hide most of their body, but I’ve come to discover I/we hide other parts of ourselves: our true minds and thoughts.  As women, moms, wives, proverbial keepers of the family, we hide behind those shawls for many reasons mainly because we were told in lore they would keep us safe.  The trouble is they don’t keep us safe from our true selves and what’s hiding behind those shawls might be much more provocative to others (men or women) than mere flesh, which could explain why in some parts of the world a woman’s opinion/voice is just not heard.

I’ve seen other women cling to customs/behaviors and judge others based on them.  Not because they believe them to be right or true but because that’s how they were taught, and they are too afraid of change and sometimes even freedom.  I’ll be writing about a book I’m reading on the topic of choice.  With choice comes more freedom but also a lot of anxiety and stress.  The more options we have, the more knowledge we have about the ‘paths not taken.’

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Portuguese Food, Culture, and Technology
May 29 2010

I’m still in Portugal and luck has shined on me.  The weather has been great, the people have been great, and the experience has been new and adventurous.  I’ll do a post on my Portuguese incubator, tech transfer, and entrepreneurial experience next but part of that has to do with the culture and possibly the food.  In the interest of time, here are some highlights because I don’t have time to make the bullets work with the pictures:

The food is good but not the best in the world.  They are known for their salted cod dishes, and I think I tried cod twice.  I’m not a big fan of cod.  The joke is that they have 1001 cod based dishes. However, the best meal and wine I had was at a restaurant called Fernando in the city of Porto recommended by one of my colleagues and we did have to bust the bank (our per diem for meal reimbursements was long overshot) on this meal but it was worth it.  The grilled prawns were probably the best I had ever had.  The red wine that another one of my colleagues selected was outstanding.  The multiple ways they prepared the huge crab were delicious.  I even took a picture of it and it’s the one accompanying this blog post.

The customer service is over the top.  We in the US think we have good customer service but outside of maybe Nordstrom’s you don’t see this kind of customer service.  They go out of their way to make sure that you have what you want.  The best example is that the restaurant I mentioned above gave another of my colleagues a free bottle of the white wine he liked.  They also let me try what they called a different kind of shrimp which was really a barnacle (I have pics of that too) despite me making a funny face at how weird they looked.  Another example is a shop owner opening up especially for us to look at her knick knacks and port.  A third is the Director of the Digital Media incubator spending the late afternoon with me to find some things for my kid’s school and good port!  Her name is Fatima which I found a little coincidental because the girl Santiago falls in love with in the desert in The Alchemist (which I just wrote about) is called Fatima.  Barely a touch was exchanged between them, yet they both knew.  The book ends with Santiago finding his treasure and then going back to be with her.  I know it is a fable, unrealistic romance, but us humans (especially us girl humans) fall for that kind of stuff.  My whole point is (please excuse that aforementioned little reverie) is that you feel very much included in this culture.

I was disappointed that I never made it to a port/wine cellar in Porto.  I hear they are lovely, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t get to try several ports and wines.  I tried their famous Vinho Verde (green wine) and even though I don’t usually like white wines, I liked it.  One of my colleagues recommended a type of white port tonic drink (can’t recall the name) that was really nice and refreshing.  I am going to bring some port home!

They love their sports teams (i.e., football/soccer) and the gear is expensive but my son wanted a Portugal team shirt so what is a mom to do but buy one! 🙂   Their loyalties on the different soccer teams are fierce in different regions in Portugal so be careful what you say.

It’s been over a decade since I’ve traveled for business to Europe and technology has come a long way from internet connection, to Wi-Fi, to Skype.  I can use Skype on my iPhone to call my kids for something like 2.1 cents per minute compared to $2 per minute if I used my regular plan.  Of course I have to be in a free Wi-Fi spot and it’s not always clear but to me that is amazing.  I’m sure I’ll still get phone charges because people have called and texted me and I don’t have a plan (and it wasn’t worth upgrading for the time I’d be here because international plans aren’t cheap).  However Wi-Fi is in places I never thought it would be.  I find this particularly cool because Wi-Fi Alliance has been headquartered at the Austin Technology Incubator for a few years now.  The hotel I’m about to check out of has ethernet connection to the Internet but the microphone on my laptop isn’t configured/working so I can call out on Skype but people can’t hear me.  Sigh.

The people still smoke a lot here.

They don’t take American Express in most places except for the hotels.  Ah well.  I guess I could have left home without it.

Now, I’m off to Spain…

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Turning Metal Into Gold – The Alchemist
May 23 2010

One of my favorite fables is written by Paulo Coehlo.   It’s called  The Alchemist  (Amazon Link) A Fable about Following Your Dream and it was required reading in my class when I taught entrepreneurship at The University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business.  It is about a shepherd boy who has a dream one night of finding a chest full of treasure.  After meeting a gypsy and a king, he decides to trade in his sheep and follow his dream.  Along the way he faces many challenges, gets in a rut, meets interesting people, never gives up, meets the love his life who waits for him, and eventually finds his treasure.  When I first read the story the parallels to entrepreneurship struck me.   Entrepreneurs often have to blindly follow their vision when others around them think they might be a little off their rocker.  Entrepreneurship requires a lot of faith, hard work, and luck.

The reason I’m re-reading and writing about the book now (in an airport; finishing up in a hotel) is because I was on my way to Portugal for a business trip.  It happens to be Entrepreneurship week in Portugal this week, and I was selected to go as part of a team to give a workshop on entrepreneurship to Portuguese technology transfer and incubator officers.   I have traveled to many places but not Portugal and I’m excited about the opportunity.  So far Porto seems to be a very beautiful city.  On the way back, I’ll be spending a few days in Spain to visit my cousin Ashan Pillai (wikipedia link), a prominent viola player.  Not only does he have his own wikipedia page, he also has a great website.  The shepherd boy named Santiago (which also happens to be my son’s middle name) is from Spain and he travels to Egypt to find his treasure and discovers it’s not there!?  It’s somewhere else and the book describes his journey where he does eventually find it.

Do you feel like you are on a journey…an impossible one sometimes?  I sometimes do….an interesting journey to find my treasure whether it be riches, love, or the tangible/intangible impact I can leave on the world.

One of the biggest takeaways from this book that I always hoped my students would think about is when you take a chance to follow your dreams “the world conspires to help you.”  Have you ever noticed that sometimes when you are making a hard decision or pursuing a dream, a project, or a task and you feel ‘in the zone’ that things seem to become easier and people seem to show up at the right time to help you out?  Some people call it coincidence or luck…which it is but it also makes you wonder.  A few quotes/statements I like from the book are:

About the world’s greatest lie:  “It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate.  That’s the world’s greatest lie.”

“The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world, and never to forget the drops of oil on the spoon [that you are holding].”

“My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer,” the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky. “Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself.  And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams.”

Of course like anything in this world the heart must be balanced with the head to keep things in order and to make progress but a company (or a person) without a heart, a dream, or a vision will not go very far.  This is why I believe the Founder of a company should stay with the company as long as possible because they often represent the heart, which we all know is necessary for a human to survive.

For the skeptics out there (myself included), The Alchemist is after all just a fable and Santiago didn’t have a wife or kids while galavanting across the desert.  Those are pretty big responsibilities.  However, many famous fables, Biblical or otherwise, have inspired people to do many great things!  So take it with a grain of sand…like the ones in the vast desert that lay between you and your treasure.

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