Who is Farhan Lalji?

I started this blog as I finished the MBA to document my transition from a graduate to a professional. Professional what? I’m not sure. Right now it’s a marketer working for Yahoo! Allow me to think out loud for a couple of minutes.

Last week I was listening to a great podcast from Stanford University’s Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders series. The particular podcast was on angel investing and had Ron Conway and Mike Maples discussing their experience. Something Mike Maples said really stuck with me, he basically said that we’re lucky enough to have a tremendous education behind us (he was talking about Stanford, but could equally apply to London Business School) so we have no excuse for not doing something your passionate about. I couldn’t agree more.

We had some close friends over for lunch the other day and amongst the great conversation we were discussing our jobs and what we’re doing. Some of us were still trying to figure out what we’re passionate about and some of us know what we’re passionate about and are working in those fields.

Either way, there’s no excuse for not being passionate about what you do. Because if you’re not it’s easy to do something else.

It might seem difficult, but as someone who fell in love with the internet (as sad as it might sound its true) and moved from studying health to doing web development to studying at LBS to working for Yahoo! I have to believe, with passion and commitment, that anything is possible.

A lot of the world doesn’t have that kind of flexibility. Most of the people of the world grow up not being able to make more then a dollar a day. As someone who has access to capital, education, and information I feel blessed and I totally agree with Mick Maples, there is no excuse for not doing what I’m passionate about.

Will I always be this passionate about online? Who knows, I’m not sure. But whatever I decide I’m passionate about I’m lucky enough to know that I have the education and the experience to transition into something else.

Three things I’m thinking about today:

1. It’s kind of crazy that if you build an exceptional brand that gets engrained into people, it’s hard for a competitor to overtake you, no matter how much better the experience is.
Inspiration: the fact that Mapquest still dominates the US mapping market

2. Investment into public transport is only half the battle against climate change and carbon emissions, people need to stop seeing cars as status symbols and more as big polluters.
Inspiration: the new Tata nano and the fact that so many Indians are going to enter as car owners.

3. Standard of living doesn’t equal quality of life, it seems like the more we have the less time we have to enjoy it.
Inspiration (joint):
a) this story I heard about a fisherman who meets a capitalist, and the capitalist says “Why you should sell your fish”
and the fisherman says “Why?”
Capitalist says “Because then you’ll have lots of money and you can build a company selling fish.”
Fisherman says “But why would I want that?”
Capitalist says “Because you can make lots of money.”
Fisherman says “But why would I want that?”
Capitalist says “So then you can retire.”
Fisherman says “But what would I do then?”
Capitalist says “I don’t know… fish?”
b)The story of stuff, it’s a bit long - 20 mins plus a bit of loading time - but definitely worth watching.

As regular readers and friends may know the wife and I spent 7 days by the Red Sea just after Christmas and over New Years. The holiday was a veg out, lie by the beach, get some rays time holiday and we did just that.

The bad – although the hotel promised wifi the connection was slower then dial up in 1995, pretty much non existent. The food was kind of iffy, the weather was up and down (between 19 – 25 degrees Celsius, when it was down we avoided the pool and wore a t shirt), and the hotel was full of Russians (who for some reason butted in line / refused to queue, were loud and wore the most audacious outfits) and Speedo’s – one of my favourite pics is of a man wearing a Speedo with a t-shirt that said illegal missing an l so it read ilegal. New Years Eve was a bit of a nightmare which included a British singer who had a mullet, wore a leather vest and sang Barry White, Lionel Richie and Hot Chocolate! The last point should probably go into a category called the down right weird!

The good – we relaxed, the food was decent enough that neither of us got sick, I had a lot of desserts and barely any vegetables – although the wife would say that was very bad. The weather for 5 out of 7 days was just right; I was able to swim in the pool and the ocean. And we met some interesting people and had some interesting conversations.

The great – Petra was beautiful, we took some amazing pictures there and felt like we had traveled back in time, our guide was amazing with three degrees under his belt we gave us theology and archeological insights. The people are unbelievably friendly across the region. And the entire time I felt amazed to be around the foundation of the religions of Abraham.

Were we to go back we probably would avoid the package holiday crowd and stick to our usual tactics of booking things separately and figuring stuff out as we go along. Never the less, we relaxed, enjoyed ourselves and took some great pictures!

Happy New Year! A week off the grid in Egypt and I’m back bigger (5 desserts a day will do that to you), browner (yes as brown as I already was it is possible for me to get darker), and better (read a good book, that will do it for you). But more on Egypt later, I’ll wait till the pictures are up.Like a lot of other people I’ve made resolutions, if I write them here I feel like it’s more likely I’ll stick to them.

1. Read more. Started off the year in a good way, finished a book on holiday and have two on the go right now. After I felt shamed by N and H about their reading over the year I’m aiming to get through 40 good books this year. If you have any suggestions let me know!
2. Better the body, mind and soul. I know that sounds cliché but I’ve gotten doughier then I would have liked over the past two years. Want to get back into 1998 physical shape; I was pretty, so pretty then. And balance is going to be my theme for the year so if I improve the body, the mind and soul must follow – more cliché, I know sorry, I blame the Tao of Physics.
3. Multi task less. That might sound a bit daft, but this year I want to focus and enjoy every moment without stressing about the other 203,230 things I have to do. When I’m writing for the blog, I’m writing for the blog. When I’m at home chilling, I’m chilling. When I’m working, I’m focused on working. This is more of a trial then a resolution; I want to see if by being focused I’m better or worse.
4. Talk to my friends on the phone more. I’ve been terrible at keeping in touch with people. Relying on those that have skype, msn, and who email me, rather then the ones I really want to stay in touch with.
5. Blog more, 8 posts a month at a minimum. Hopefully I’ll continue the trend of having semi-interesting things to say.

I still have no internet at home – long story, longer post coming.

While calling Orange – which sucks for service by the way – for the 18th time in 2 months, and the second time today, I was put on hold. Now Orange has a pretty good line up of songs but when they played “Before I fall to pieces” by Razorlight today, I nearly lost it. It’s not that it’s a bad song, but some of the lyrics almost made it seem like they were goading me into losing my mind. The lyrics include:

“You just say you don’t know, you don’t know
Oh no you don’t know, you don’t know”

And

“And so I’ll go before I fall to pieces
Yes I’ll go before I fall to pieces
Now I’m just waiting for something that might never come”

Seriously, who picks the song list over there?

Twice in the last three days I’ve read about how legalising drugs may solve some of the world’s problems.

According to William Buiter, a professor of economics at LSE wrote in a column in the FT on Friday that:

“It surely makes more sense for the government to tax the poppy harvest than for the Taliban to do so.

So legalise, regulate, tax, educate and rehabilitate. Stop a losing war, get the government off our backs, beat the Taliban and deal a blow to al-Qaeda in the process. Not a bad deal!”

And Matthew Engal, a columnist with the FT believes that as bad as the Iraq War, the settler based empire that followed the 1967 war in Israel and global warming all are, none of these have,

“Caused as much death, destruction and misery as the laws that have barred legitimate business from the recreational drugs industry and handed a worldwide monopoly of distribution to the Mafia and its imitators.”

After giving examples involving the US, UK and Afghanistan Engal concludes that:

“It is clear that drugs policy would be infinitely better conducted if governments actually had some influence on the business. Legalisation would enable them to tax the drugs, ensure quality control, cut out the most dangerous strains, help genuine addicts, try to prevent the sale to minors, de-glamorise the habit and, above all, deny the gangs and the terrorists their financial lifeblood. “

That makes a lot of sense to me, but I can’t see any government, party or individual taking the first step to making this a reality.

Imperialism, migration, travelling and life have been on my mind a fair bit this past week.

Having watched The Last King of Scotland over the weekend, I revisited the plight of Asians (and Africans) in East Africa during the rule of Idi Amin.  I’ve been fascinated with this period of history for some time now.  As my parents moved from East Africa – Tanzania – to England (my dad) and Canada (my mom), I’ve always felt a connection to East Africa.  In fact as part of my MBA entrance exam I said the three people I would like to invite to my fantasy dinner would be Idi Amin, Pierre Trudeau and my dad.

We also watched Empire’s Children on 4OD this evening, covering the story of Adrian Lester’s travels to Jamaica to trace the steps of his grandfather from St Mary’s to Birmingham.

If that wasn’t enough, the wife is doing an essay for her masters on post colonialism and science fiction.

All of these things make me wonder about our own future travels.  Moving from Canada to England was a bit fluky.  But the future is in our hands now, where do we go from here?  Where is our future?  Is it in England, Canada, the US wherever, or try and make our future by stepping into our past.  Taking a risk and moving to East Africa or even India at some point.  It would be cool to be able to take my family history full circle, from my great grand parents, to my grand parents, to my parents to me, from India to East Africa to England to Canada, and then from Canada to England to Africa and back to India.

In addition, as the wife pointed out, our parents benefited greatly from life in East Africa.  From access to education and the ability to build businesses, our situation would be much different had our ancestors chosen to stay in India.  So it would be pretty cool to go back to Africa and give a little back to the continent.

But then so too would staying in London, enjoying four seasons in one day and British TV be cool.  It’s just a different type of cool.

The wife and I often get into a heated debate about how to solve the world’s problems.

One such problem is war and violence.  My take is that things like sport and business play a vital part in progress, and that politicking and government intervention isn’t enough.

I was reminded about this as I read a posting on nba.com that talked about the Seeds of Peace basketball clinic.  The clinic invites kids from Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Jordan and America to learn more about the game and play the game together.  By cooperating on the basketball court kids have to learn more about each other and hopefully form a bond.  The theory behind camps like this is that when these kids grow up they’ll take these experiences and be less likely to resort to violence against other cultures.

But waiting for kids to grow up can take time that we don’t really have.  So companies like New Generation Technology can also provide a helping hand to peace through enterprise.  Getting Israeli money to flow into Palestine links the two regions and, hopefully, means that by destroying one another they actually destroy themselves.  I love this idea.  And it seems like Sir Ronald Cohen is catching the invest in peace fever as well.

I totally think there is a place for governments and peace discussions and whatever else Tony Blair et al are trying to do; I just think roadmaps and peace plans work politically but enterprise and sport actually can work socially.

I was listening to the Stanford podcast of Stephanie Keller Bottom (of Nokia’s Innovent team) today and found myself sharing an experience with her. It wasn’t that we both have degree’s that aren’t really technology related even though we work in technology – although that is true. And it wasn’t the fact that we think big companies can be supportive of innovation – although that’s true as well. It was when she mentioned that her father didn’t understand what she did.

My mom grew up in east Africa and trained to become a teacher. Since coming to Canada in the 70s she’s worked in a bank for most of her life. To her working in a bank or in the government seemed like really good jobs. Being a doctor or a lawyer seemed like really really good careers. She probably wasn’t the only one, I’m sure there are countless other immigrants who came to Canada around the same time and have the same or a similar mentality.

My wife has tried to explain to my mom what a great career I have, how the education I’ve gone through over the last few years is pretty impressive, yada yada yada, but I don’t think she absolutely gets it.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my mom, a lot. She’s sacrificed a lot to raise me and has done a phenomenal job given what she went through - being in a new country, losing her husband, crappy second marriage - my mom is awesome.

But, it’s interesting that no matter what happens in the next couple of years, no matter how senior I get or what I do, if my mom doesn’t get it I think part of me will feel unfulfilled. I wonder if Stephanie Keller-Bottom feels the same way?

I’m becoming a bit of a spreadsheet nerd.  Whenever I have the opportunity to look at some numbers and do a bit of crunching I get a bit nervous with anticipation – nerdy, I know!  Sometimes I won’t really need a spreadsheet but just love working and seeing the numbers work.  When I was looking for a new set of speakers for the house I put together a spreadsheet on my phone as I went from store to store looking at the number of channels the wattage and the price, broke it down in price per watt and negotiated with the retailers on Tottenham court road accordingly – my wife was pretty embarrassed but we got a good deal and some nice speakers.

I’m also becoming a bit of a Facebook addict, when I have a spare minute I’m busy looking at our MBA class group, or catching up with friends I haven’t seen in ages.

Today I decided to merge these two and look at periods in my life, the length of time spent in these periods and the friends on Facebook I’ve made accordingly.

Using the networks facility on Facebook I worked out that I have friends from my time in Toronto (22 years), in London (7.5 years), McMaster or Hamilton (4 years), London Business School (2 years) and Yahoo (2 months).  I wanted to take into account factors like people might not be on the network but still registered as friends of mine or other elements, but thought it will probably normalize across the board.

After looking at the numbers and my friends on Facebook, I saw that of my 251 friends 70 were on the Toronto network, 54 were on the London network, 25 were on the London Business School network, 3 were on the McMaster network and 3 were on the Yahoo network.

So the percentage of my life in comparison to the percentage of my friends looks like this:
Toronto – 77% of my life, 28% of my friends
London – 23% of my life, 22% of my friends
London Business School – 7% of my life, 10% of my friends
McMaster – 13% of my life, 1% of my friends
Yahoo -0.67% of my life, 1 % of my friends.

So, Toronto and McMaster are underperforming, London is performing adequately, London Business School and Yahoo are outperforming the others.

That’s really interesting as that’s probably how I feel about these parts of my life right now, not too engaged by Toronto or by McMaster at the moment, London feels about right, and I am really happy and engaged by the London Business School and Yahoo friends and experience.  I guess the numbers really don’t lie.