Programming the driverless car for India

In Google’s California campus, the spooky spectacle of driverless cars moving quietly on the road is apparently common. Now Google is letting these cars roam the city streets, and, according to a recent article in the New York Times by Matt Richtel and Conor Dougherty, the cars are not enjoying sharing the road with human drivers.

The article describes how, seeing a pedestrian at a zebra crossing, a self-driving car slowed down, but the car behind it didn’t. The result? The pedestrian was unharmed, but the Google car ‘was hit from behind by a human-driven sedan’.

I smiled. Then, as I read what Donald Norman, an expert on autonomous vehicles, had to say, I chortled aloud: “They (driverless cars) have to learn to be aggressive in the right amount, and the right amount depends on the culture.”

How appropriate it would be for the car to be trained in India, I thought, affectionately reflecting upon our famous driving culture. I imagine being tasked to travel in the driverless car in Chennai (with the ability to take over control at my whim) to figure out what changes are needed in the car’s programming to inculcate an appropriate sense of aggressiveness in it.

I get into the car and input my destination into the map. The car reverses silently into my colony road. When we reach the main road, instead of turning right, the car switches on its indicator and waits. Immediately the driver behind us blares his car’s horn and gesticulates ‘Move, idiot!’ with his arm.

The phone may be smart, but...

Do you remember the traditional camera, a box-like thing with a lens in front and something black and plastic-like called the film inside? The film served the useful purpose of limiting the number of photographs that could be taken and therefore ensuring that people were judicious in using the camera, taking pictures only of stuff they needed.

Then along came the digital camera. Immediately the need for thrift and common sense vanished. Instead of limiting themselves to perhaps 20 pictures of their child’s birthday party, people took 200. Where earlier an animal lover might have exhausted a full reel on a visit to the zoo, returning home with 36 photographs, they started taking 36 of each animal! I once took a visiting friend, his family and their newly-purchased digital camera to the zoo. The 17-year old daughter, assigned as official photographer, was enthusiastic and unrelenting in her duties. I felt sorry for her, clicking so furiously that she did not have the time to view a single animal through her naked eye.

“Why don’t you look at the animals, Ritu?” I asked and reached for her camera. “Let me hold that for a while.”

She pulled the camera close to her chest and looked at me as if a trunk had replaced my nose. “Why?! I’ve captured all the animals here and I can see them later at leisure, on the computer.”

However, even the most prolific digital photographer didn’t carry the camera everywhere: so they only photographed worthy occasions like birthdays, weddings and zoo visits. And they could share these only after removing the card from their camera and loading it into their computer.

But now, with the smart phone and its built-in camera, things have got out of hand.

Crazy pricing is the right pricing

My accountant friend KS Srinivasan invited me for a quiet dinner at a restaurant to seek my advice. He described his large ancestral property in Kodaikanal and told me he was converting it into a resort. Now that his children had left home, he and his wife wanted to move there permanently from Chennai and run the resort.

“But I have no qualification to be an hotelier,” he said.

“Nonsense, Srini!” I said. “You own the property – that’s the most important qualification. And you’re an accountant, able to count the money as it comes pouring in. That’s all you need. Hire people for the rest. How many rooms in the resort?”

“30, with half of them air-conditioned.”

“How will you charge for the rooms?”

“`5,000 per night for AC and `3,000 for non-AC rooms.”

I shook my head gravely. “You should charge `7,000 for rooms without air-conditioning.”

“That’s crazy!”

“Crazy pricing is the right pricing today,” I said. “Say Person A flies from Mumbai to Hong Kong, via Singapore. Person B takes the same flight, but gets off at Singapore. Who pays more, A or B?”

“A!” he said immediately. “He’s flying a much longer distance.”

“Wrong! B pays more because his flight from Mumbai to Singapore is non-stop, whereas A’s is not! Pricing based on the logical cost of providing the service is so old hat it smells of mould. Pricing today is based on perceived value only. The trick is to name your rooms appropriately. Call the cheaper room ‘normal air-conditioned room’; call the other ‘premium natural weather room’ and describe it as: ‘Kodaikanal’s natural beauty and fragrances brought inside your room’.”

The science of sleep

“Hi Paddy: over here!” my friend Balwant Sinha cried from across the room. “I’ve been dying to talk to you.”

I was touched by his greeting. I didn’t realize how much my company meant to him. There was obviously something heavy on his mind that the poor fellow needed my opinion on, some weighty problem that only I could solve.

“Really sorry,” I said, sitting down next to him. I looked deep into his eyes with empathy. “What’s troubling you?”

“How well did you sleep last night?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Forget that. What are you dying to talk to me about?”

“That’s it: your sleep, man! How well did you sleep last night?”

“Ok, I guess,” I said, “but…”

“Don’t guess!” Sinha sounded cross. “Do you know that extensive studies have highlighted that not getting proper sleep is a key issue today?”

“Yes, I’ve read something like that. But getting to something more important, why…”

“Nothing is more important,” said Sinha. “So think: did you sleep well last night?”

I threw my mind back (not literally, of course) and said, “Yes, I slept well.”

Our bureaucracy is alive and well: part 3

A week after being thwarted at the passport office my friend re-submitted his application with a fresh schedule F stating unequivocally that he had been staying at his present address, as opposed to his permanent address or his previous address, for the past six months. Three days later he received his new passport. But he also received a text message requesting his presence at the neighbourhood police station for post-passport-issue verification; so he went there and handed his passport to the sub-inspector.

“Show me proof of citizenship,” the police officer said.

“It’s in your hand,” my friend replied.

“No, I need your birth certificate or school leaving certificate, preferably CBSE.”

My friend was surprised that the police thought so poorly about the passport’s ability to prove one’s citizenship but since he had carried his thick ‘passport-preparation file’, he did not press the point.

“Take both,” he said.

Instead of showering him with kudos for providing two documents where only one was required, the policeman said, “Also need proof of residence.”

“Again?!” My friend was shocked but also well prepared, ‘proof of residence’ being the biggest obstacle he had had to overcome on the path to passport. “Here’s my employer’s letter showing my address. Using it I transferred my private sector bank account to Mumbai: here’s that passbook stating my address. With this I acquired a public sector bank account: here’s that passbook. Submitting this I got the passport, already with you. That’s four proofs of residence and please note – all carry the same address, exactly.”

Our bureaucracy is alive and well: part 2

A month ago I ended my article feeling sanguine about my friend’s passport prospects. To recap for readers with a weak memory and other readers who, to their great regret of course, missed the article completely, my friend had, after three unsuccessful attempts to submit his application for a fresh passport, finally collected all the required documents, in the right format, texture and sequence. He now had to go back online, submit a fresh application, seek a fresh appointment and pay up a fresh `2,000.

“All the best,” I had said to him on the phone and added a tennis analogy, as I often do in life’s crisis moments, “Serve well and keep your eye on the ball.”

The good man followed my advice. He went back to the passport office, having practised his serve and his forehand, determined to win this tournament. When he saw that his previous nemesis had been replaced with a new clerk at the desk, he took it was a positive sign that he had been handed an easy draw. But, watching her as she pored over his documents, he realized that this new player was a seasoned member of the circuit. Soon she looked up and said, “This passport was issued in a different city. You can’t renew in tatkaal!” But it was a weak ball. Like Sampras at the net, my friend dispatched it gleefully: “Doesn’t matter. Old clerk said it was okay. Also, the passport instruction booklet carries no mention of this rule if I provide annexure F, which I have.” She was flummoxed. Quietly, she proceeded to examine annexure F before finally accepting defeat by handing the documents to him and asking him to get them signed by the officer before coming come back to her for a token.

My friend then swiftly proceeded to the officer as directed, confident but not complacent. He knew that a first round victory is a far cry from winning the Wimbledon trophy and that this officer was a top-ranked player, a veteran of the tour.  So he handed the papers over to this champion, who immediately began examining them closely – making a tick here and a mark there. My friend waited, prancing on his toes, preparing for a strong service to be fired at him.

Our bureaucracy is alive and well

When an old tennis friend of mine had to renew his soon-to-expire passport, I warned him that the process might be bureaucratic and that he should exhibit patience, tenacity and an unwavering will to win if he hoped for success. He said that I was mistaken, that doing it today was as easy as sitting on a cushioned bench. All he had to do was fill an application form online, submit it online, pay `2,000 online, apply for an appointment online, land up on the scheduled date with the required papers – just his old passport and a proof of residence – in his hand.

“Three days later I’ll have a new passport in the same hand,” he said, sounding smug.

I was curious to know what happened; so I called him a day after his appointment. 

“I missed it,” he said morosely. “The proof of residence proved tricky. I don’t have an electricity, telephone or water bill since I moved to Mumbai recently and am staying in my company flat. The passport office accepts a public sector bank passbook showing my address; so I went to one to open an account. But they asked me for proof of residence. I explained to the manager that I was opening an account in his bank because I did not have the proof and for no other reason. Instead of showing sympathy, the man got annoyed; but then relented to say he’d accept a private bank passbook as proof. Unfortunately private banks require proof of residence too! Luckily my private bank accepts a letter from employer if you’re ‘changing address’. So I transferred the account from my previous city to Mumbai submitting my employer’s letter as proof of residence, then opened an account with the public sector bank submitting the private sector bank passbook as proof of residence, so that I can apply for the passport submitting the public sector bank passbook as proof of residence. It’s like progressing through levels of the computer game Warcraft, but not as much fun. I’ve asked for a second appointment in three days, by when the public sector bank will complete the paperwork.”

When he reached the counter for this appointment, the clerk told him that annexures F and I were missing. My shocked friend said that this was because the website made no reference to them. In a bored voice the clerk informed him that he had heard that story many times before and had not found it gripping on any of the occasions.

The 'uncle and aunty' syndrome

We all know that age carries clout in India. As the website indianchild.com says, “respect for elders is a major component in Indian culture”. In ancient times, this meant youngsters would touch the feet of elders in greeting, talk to them deferentially and fetch things for them. But the modern guideline for respecting elders in India is crisper: simply address them ‘uncle’ and ‘aunty’.

I discovered this truth early in my marriage, at the tender age of 24. A couple older than us and their three-year old daughter were staying in the ground floor of our apartment building. On our first visit to their house, the girl smiled sweetly at us and said, “Hello uncle; hello aunty’. My wife and I found it endearing to be addressed like this by the little one.

Two days later, we were trudging up the stairs to our flat when the door of the apartment on the second floor opened and a man walked out. He politely moved out of the way to let us pass and smiled.

“Hullo uncle; hullo aunty,” he said. I looked at him closely. He had a thick moustache and a three-day stubble that made him look more adult than me. Yet he was calling me ‘uncle’ and his only excuse was that I was married!

“Hullo,” I said coldly and offered him my hand. “I’m Paddy. And you?”

As he shook hands with me his smile became more friendly. I thought he had recognized his error and would now address me by my name.

“I’m Ajit, uncle,” he said. “I just finished my B. Com and am looking for a job.”

Maybe he needed a broader hint.

A league apart

When I was visiting Mumbai recently, my friend Rakesh Joshi called me.

“I have to tell you about the revolution taking place in Indian sports!” he gushed over the phone.  We agreed to meet that evening for a drink.

When I reached the bar, Joshi was already there, a half-consumed mug of beer in front of him.

As soon as I sat down he said, “Do you know how the sports scene in India is transforming into something spectacular and mind-boggling at the same time?”

He hadn’t even asked me what I would like to drink! This told me how excited he was because otherwise this polite man would never have committed such a breach of etiquette. However, I was not excited and my etiquette was very much intact; so I calmly ordered a mug of beer for myself, waited for it to arrive, took a deep sip, wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and then spoke.

“No, I have no idea. Please tell me.”

“Simple concept,” he said, “Learning from the huge success of the IPL – the Indian Premier League – for cricket, Indians have launched similar leagues to promote other games.”

“But I thought the IPL was a success because cricket is popular,” I said.

“So did I! But we were wrong. It appears that cricket is popular because IPL is a success!”

I frowned and tried to concentrate. “I’m sorry, I don’t get that. What do you mean, cricket is popular because IPL is a success?”

“Not sure,” he said briskly. “It sounded nice, so I said it.But what I do mean to say is that by shortening the format of cricket, IPL has made cricket even more popular. And it’s doing the same to badminton and kabbadi and hockey!”

Rajnikanth and the Japanese

In Tamil Nadu, we worship our film stars (in many cases literally: by building temples, installing their images as deities and actually conducting pooja). And of course among all the stars we adulate, Rajnikanth has a special place of his own. This macho hero, who can fell twenty rogues with one punch and cause a building to collapse by simply blowing hard on it, is revered in every nook and canny of Tamil Nadu, loved elsewhere in South India and pretty well-known even in the rest of the country. But I always took it for granted that the super star’s popularity, like the big rivers of the country, stopped at the shores of the nation.

“Do you think,” a friend asked me a few years ago, “Rajnikanth has fans outside India?”

I shook my head.

“Well, he does – in Japan!” he said.

“I don’t believe that,” I said. “That’s like telling me the Japanese have suddenly started eating uttapam instead of sushi.”

“They may not have taken to uttapam”, he said, “but they’ve definitely taken to Rajnikanth in a big way. In fact,” he continued when he saw me still looking sceptical, “Rajni’s 1998 film ‘Muthu’ was the first Tamil film to be dubbed into Japanese: it was released under the endearing name of ‘Mutu: Odoru Maharaja’ and it grossed a record $1.6 million in Japan.”

Man's quest for beauty

Man has always been besotted with beauty in his beau. But with the woman moving from kitchen to boardroom, the child becoming more mature – or cheeky – at a younger age and the inanimate object becoming sleeker and technologically advanced, it is only appropriate that man is no longer stuck to this hidebound, restricted notion of beauty. He now desires it for himself.

After writing about this phenomenon (in my usual incisive fashion) last fortnight, I met an old friend Sumit Chatterjee at his club. Chatterjee, careful about his appearance even in college, had become increasingly dapper and well-groomed over the years; therefore I was surprised to see his shaggy look today.

“What happened?” I asked. “Did you lose your razor? Are you waiting for an auspicious day to buy a new one?”

He looked annoyed as he softly ran his fingers around his stubble-bearing cheek and chin.

“I don’t use a razor any longer,” he said coldly. “I use a beard trimmer.”

“That’s not a beard!” I corrected him. “Grow it two more weeks; then call it a beard.”

“I have no intention of calling it a beard,” Chatterjee said. “It’s fashionable stubble. Have you typed ‘Brad Pitt images’ into Google?”

Beauty and... where's the beast?

In my early days of living in Singapore, I remember sitting through the movie ‘Beauty and the Beast’ with difficulty: the film had lacked that drama and pizazz necessary to hold the raptured attention of an action movie buff whose last cinematic experience had been ‘Mission Impossible II’. I had got suckered into this outing in the first place, along with my wife, by a friend whose children had been pestering him for days to watch this Disney entertainment. “Let’s all go,” my friend had said to me enthusiastically on the phone, “I understand it’s fantastic.” Later I learnt that he had understood this, not – as I had assumed – from some eminent film critic of the New York Times, but from the very six-year old twins who had wanted to watch it in the first place. Talk about a biased sample! Anyway where was I? Yes, I was walking out of the theatre with relief that this particularly move experience was behind me.

“How did you like the movie?” my friend Ravi said when we exited.

I smiled gently to convey: “It was awful, but I’m too polite to tell you that.”

He interpreted it differently. “Exactly! I loved it too.”

“Me too,” said his wife Rita. “But the concept of ‘beauty and the beast’ is no longer valid.”

My God! I thought, don’t tell me watching that drivel wasn’t enough: we’re now going to analyse it too?

Getting more sophisticated about drinking

In a previous column I explained how gracefully Indians have been climbing the social staircase, exhibiting particular elegance when it comes to drinking alcohol. And as in other walks of life, the woman has begun to walk side-by-side with her man on the alcoholic alley, imbibing the stuff with equal relish. With alcohol inside her, she can no longer be relied upon to drive the happy husband home after a boisterous party. She may sportingly agree to a coin toss to decide who wins the right to drink and be driven (but if she loses the toss, she may simply order a taxi and close the argument).

But while both sexes may sip whisky shoulder-to-shoulder, dispensing drinks is still the man’s domain. Showing kindness and grace, the woman allows her man freedom to choose the liquor-stocking furniture; arrange it in a strategic location; buy all the accompanying dispensing equipment – wine-openers, corkscrews, ice-picks, soda-makers and cocktail mixers; ensure their maintenance; select the right array of glasses to serve beer, whisky, wine and juice; keep them all immaculately polished; stock sufficient quantities of liquor to meet the needs of a wide variety of thirsty guests, including the unplanned ones (“My cousins were in town and were dying to meet you”); ensure availability of ice and soda; and finally, serve each drink precisely as ordered. The woman looks on with benign indulgence as we do all this fun stuff.

A few weeks ago, I observed the suave aplomb of the male host as he offered his guest, a portly banker, a drink.

“Name your poison.” He said it grandly but the statement's splendour was slightly diluted by the fact that he had employed it on his three previous guests.

Getting sophisticated about drinking

If you’ve seen upwardly mobile Indians lately – which is a roundabout way of saying if you’ve kept your eyes open lately – you would have noticed how incredibly sophisticated they have become. They drive fancy cars, wear cool eyeshades that match their Bermuda shorts, bark out Americanisms like “cut to the chase” and even play golf. But the area where their progress from crudeness to elegance has been breath-taking is their attitude and behaviour towards alcohol. If you throw your mind back twenty years, you will recall that drinking used to be considered wicked in India, much in the way that gambling was. The two vices were always linked in my mind, probably because the Hindi movie villain would invariably plan devious plots at the gambling table with a glass in his hand (and Monica standing seductively at his side). My mother would lecture me on the evils of alcohol while my father nodded in sage agreement, undeterred by the drink in his hand.

In those days, Indians started drinking when far away from their parents, relatives and well-wishers, usually in the college hostel. And they developed the habit in a quiet, unobtrusive – one might even say furtive – manner, devoid of any ostentation. They usually indulged in the activity with friends at a bar. And they did not consider stocking the stuff at home where it would be visible in broad daylight.  On the rare occasions that they hosted a ‘wet’ party at home, they would serve their guests from the single bottle purchased on the way home from office, about an hour previously. And the bottle was invariably either Old Monk Rum or Bagpiper Whisky: the only choice that the guests had was the amount of water and ice they wanted with the drink.

Amul: the invaluable Kurien legacy

Dr Verghese Kurien, the man behind Operation Flood, passed away on 9^th September 2012 at the age of 90. In 1949, Kurien began the transformation of the dairy co-operative model in Anand into a nationwide institution. Thanks largely to him, India is the biggest producer of milk today. Many Indian prime ministers have recognized Kurien’s contributions, from Jawaharlal Nehru who inaugurated the first dairy “factory”, to Lal Bahadur Shastri who made Kurien chairman of the National Dairy Development Board for his “extraordinary and dynamic leadership”, to Manmohan Singh who described him as an icon of India’s cooperative movement and the dairy industry. In 1989, when Dr Kurien was awarded the World Food Prize, its founder Dr Norman Borlaug called him “one of the world’s great agricultural leaders of this century.”

We are all proud of the dairy legacy Dr Kurien has left us. But we’re equally proud of the brand behind that legacy: Amul, which comes from the Sanskrit word amulya, meaning invaluable. Amul was at the heart of the milk movement, being sold in pouches, UHT packs and as solid infant milk food. However, to cater to a largely vegetarian nation that literally drinks milk, Amul expanded to offer products such as cheese, paneer, yoghurt, ice cream and shrikhand. But the product that has caught the fancy of the nation is Amul butter.

Perhaps the brand is so popular because of its mascot, the loveable, wide-eyed girl in polka-dots who introduced us to “utterly butterly Amul” in 1967. Since then, she has appeared on hoardings across the nation posing as a cinema actress (Madhuri Dixit for example), politician, cricketer, villager, artist, wrestler or just herself, and making tongue-in-cheek observations on subjects of topical interest. The nation waits with bated breath for the hoarding to change and reveal what the sassy girl chooses as the next target of her wit (revisit this ad campaign at http://www.amul.com/m/amul-hits).

A Filmy Rescue of Cricket

I belong to a group of middle-aged, slightly-spherical Indian men that plays an enthusiastic and clumsy game of tennis every weekend. We were relaxing at the court-side after an energetic session a few weeks ago, when a fellow player announced in a voice reeking with smugness: “Sorry, Folks, I can’t play next week. I’m off to Australia to watch the game.”

“Wow!” I said, “When are you going to Melbourne?”

“The Melbourne game is over, ass. I’m going to Perth tomorrow for the third test in the four-test series.”

“There’s another game going on in Melbourne,” I said, “It’s called tennis. It’s the game we just finished playing. But of course it’s only a Grand Slam event, one of the four biggest tennis tournaments of the year. That’s nothing compared to an India-Australia cricket test.”

Sarcasm about the magnificence of cricket slides past a die-hard cricket enthusiast like ice cubes on a marble floor.

“Exactly!” he said, “Unfortunately I’ll only catch the last two days of the test.”

Overcoming the birthday overload

I don’t mind wishing the odd fellow Happy Birthday occasionally, but the wretched day arrives every year for everyone, including Eskimos, coastal Maharashtrians and my extended family. Every member of this group – in typical disregard for my convenience – was born on a different day and expects to receive a thoughtful greeting card from me every year. The list is long and requires careful prioritization. First, of course, is my wife; she is followed by my son and daughter; then my mother and mother-in-law. Next are my sister, brother-in-law, nephew and sister’s brother-in-law. After this my sense of order collapses because, creeping out of the woodwork, come a bevy of uncles and aunts and, due to the power of reproduction, countless cousins who, thanks to the power of modern-day transportation, are spread across the globe. The result is a staggering pile-up of birthdays every year.

Handling this annual workload requires a management system. Luckily I’ve studied management. So, by explaining the principles of strategic planning, workflow optimization and cognitive dissonance to my wife, I suggested to her the following method of dividing the work between the two of us: I would take care of her birthday card and she would handle the others’. To my surprise, she refused. Having encountered this problem before, I dealt with it in my usual way: I abandoned the scientific approach and resorted to abject begging. It worked.

From icons to relics

Imagine we were back in the 1980s and you asked me to offer odds if you bet that the Ambassador would disappear from India’s roads.

“A hundred to one,” I would have said, laughing heartily.

At that time, one couldn’t think of India without the Ambassador, a vehicle that had ruled our roads for half a century. If owning a car itself was a luxury, owning an Ambassador – the vehicle used by ministers and secretaries, commissioners and generals, executives and tycoons – was an unabashed statement of wealth and prestige. If you were lucky to be born into an Ambassador-owning family, you probably rode the same car to kindergarten, high school and college. Thrift, that majestic Indian virtue, did not reduce with wealth. If anything, the rich had more possessions to practise frugality, using their toothbrush even after its bristles were puffed out like broccoli and employing the same refrigerator for two decades (hopefully changing the food inside more frequently). The Ambassador, with a sturdy engine sitting in a bulbous body of steel, was built for endurance (if for little else). Repairs were cheaply carried out by hundreds of roadside mechanics using inexpensive – if somewhat dubious – spare parts.

But you’d have won the bet. Today the Ambassador is a non-entity. 7,500 Ambassadors were sold in 2009, less than 0.5% of the 1.8 million car market (Honda sells 5,000 City cars every month).

Finding Church Bollywood

I was surprised to read in The New York Times recently that many Indian tourists are visiting Switzerland, accounting for 325,000 hotel nights annually. The article opened with the story of a couple from Mumbai travelling there for their honeymoon.

Switzerland is of course an age-old tourist destination. People flock there to breathe the clear cold air, soak in the beauty of its pristine mountains and gaze at the majestic banks holding much of the world’s not-so-pristine money. Skiing enthusiasts zoom down Switzerland’s snow-laden hills for a week and rave about it for a year. Food lovers dig into popular Swiss dishes like sauerkraut and fondue.

But these don’t appear to be attractions that would attract Indians. The prospect of a cold holiday – rendered colder by sliding down mountains at high speed – leaves us cold. If we want to see buildings that are stacked with cold, hard cash, we can walk along Juhu in Mumbai or Raj Path in Delhi. As far as food is concerned, we’re unlikely to be enticed by sauerkraut and fondue; when we travel abroad, we carry our own food (along with utensils to cook it). And we can simply appreciate the beauty of Switzerland’s mountains and gardens by watching a Bollywood movie.

Losing hair

There was a time when making polite conversation used to mean talking about innocuous topics, like the weather for example. When I met a friend, he’d remark:

“Hi Paddy. Very hot weather we’re having lately, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Mike,” I’d say (if his name were Mike). And I might comment about the sharp difference in weather between Singapore and Chicago.

Alternatively we would talk about sports. He might ask me if I watched last night’s tennis match between Nadal and Federer and whether I agreed with him that it was awesome. I would answer both questions in the affirmative and go on to compare the match with another one the two gentlemen played last year.

Or it could be movies. Or politics. You get the idea.

While these topics are innocuous, there is a school of thought that says they lack zing, that they are boring, precisely because they are innocuous. Books have been written on the subject, with titles like How to Convert a Conversation into a Friendship. To save you the cost of buying one and then the torture of reading it, let me summarize the wisdom it will impart: