After a long time I come back to my blog. The update this time is, I am in Tel Aviv, Israel visiting for work reasons. Arrived here on 14th May and will be here up to a month. Having spend a day in Israel, walking the streets here, reminds me so much about India. The weather is so beautiful as well (at least so far).

I would love to catch up with people here in Tel Aviv. Anybody wanting to catch up? Any suggestions as to what to see when? Any tips?

There has been buzz on the Internet about Friendfeed lately. I had read about it that it is a content aggregation site etc. etc. I never checked it out and registered on it until today. Alright, I have not spent a lot of my time on it yet. But what it is so far? It is a content aggregation system where an individual can collate all his feed and share it with friends. The aggregator shows the updates by different icons, so if it is a Twitter post, it will show the Twitter icon, if it is a blog update, it will show blog icon to make it easily recognisable. Good idea, but just not for me at this stage.

The changes are that I will be seeing more then 50% of the same information as I normally do subscribe to my friend's blog and I follow most of them on Twitter as well, so I want to reduce duplication. I am not Robert Scoble who gets 1 tweet per second but it's hard for me to keep up with Twitter not only at work but even at home. It can get into a part time job in itself.Above all, I would prefer a tool where there can be some kind of conversation rather then just aggregation of the content.

I hear, content aggregation is big business!

I started listening to the audio book of The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner a while back. The audio book is nearly 12 hours long and I am nearly there. I am on the last chapter. As I have understood, the book is about Eric trying to find out happy places in this world. So what do I think about this book now, having given it nearly 12 hours of my life? On the sliding scale of 1 to 5, I will give it 3.25.

My curiosity about happiness and happy places in the world is what drove me towards this book. I think it started off great but started to loose me nearly half way. From then on I found it more of a travel book (although I have never read one) than a book on looking for happiest places on the earth. One of my issues with the book is Eric when travelling around the world is asking and referencing more questions to Americans who might be traveling or migrated then trying to truly understand the local culture being with local people and from their eyes. Local people (Gone Native) is what makes countries happy countries or unhappy countries IMHO. In the book it seems he has hung out with more Expats then the local people.

I have laughed while listening to this audio book. It has made me happy. Eric’s travel notes on Bhutan were the best highlights for me in this book. Eric has written the book in a way that makes a reader feel that he is travelling as well to the places that he went. Listening to the book, I now know what all not to do while I am in Qatar!

I am still 30 minutes away from finishing the audio book and thus the book. But I am not sure if Eric was successful in fulfilling his quest.

Have you read this book? What do you think about it?

If Eric was to ask me the question if I was happy or not, I would now say “Happiness is better not quantified, I am just happy experiencing it”.

Last week was my last week working on a Accenture project atleast for now. It was fun 11 months, especially working with a colorful team there. Some really talented and some really talented with the fun environment they can create at work. The project I was working was really busy but I have learned some life long lessons from it that will help me in my career and life ahead. Along with it, I have made some friends that I see as life long relationships. So thanks to all my mates at Accenture.

I start a new project, a bit more challenging in a weeks time from now. Will keep you posted more about it.

My fellow Melbourne friend Vishal Sharma is planning to do a carnival of Australian startups. He says he will be covering 1-2 startups everyday and is also asking startups for sponsorship of this coverage. Anybody interested on following this should check out his blog.

Vishal, would you still do this carnival without any sponsorships as well?