Tweet Tweet: Is that the sound of change for a Blogger?

I have finally taken the plunge. I am on Twitter now.

I was not a virgin at the social networking scene. I already have Orkut and Facebook accounts. Agreed, that I use them less now than when I first began, but one thing remains unchanged—in my mind, I always treat my Orkut and Facebook accounts as platforms to have a conversation with someone, kind of like a public chat room. Twitter to me is more about expressing my little thoughts without necessarily having a conversation. My first “tweet” was not exciting at all: I let the world know that I was going to leave my office in 5 minutes, because my in-laws were coming from India. I didn’t think this information was going to be important to anyone in the world. I was not communicating with anyone to make a plan through my tweet, but still, writing this down and seeing it published on the web felt liberating.

This communication without any specific purpose is the fuel that runs the social networking engine. I have really close friends (including family members), who just don’t see the need for social networking. These are people whose company I really enjoy. But I can clearly see that they don’t get anything out of the experience of social networking without any specific purpose. My personal viewpoint is, you are not forced to use social networking. It is a tool to cater to you, and if you can use it to your advantage, then why not? After all, social networking is still free!

Lately I have attended some high-visibility silicon valley conferences where venture capitalists and tech company executives were pulling their hair out thinking how to monetize this phenomenon of social networking. But I don’t think anyone even dreams of charging the users money for accessing the social networking sites like Orkut, Facebook, Twitter and others. There is just too much competition for the patronage of the users. But people are taking notice at the behavioral patterns of the users that emerge from their social networking footprints. Even video game company CEOs admit that they recognize people’s need to connect socially, and as a result, the famously individualistic traditional model of video gaming is evolving into a more socially-connected playfield, where each player is interacting not only with his/her machine and the virtual characters, but with other real players (often friends rather than strangers across the internet) playing simultaneously.

Coming back to Twitter, I posted three tweets today…all related to my professional field (which is intellectual property law, if you must know). So far I have only used LinkedIn for web-based professional networking (and often for a purpose), but I can see how Twitter can make that social/professional demarcation fuzzy. After all, a thought is a thought, whether personal or professional, and if you happen to be on Twitter at the time that the thought occurs, you are going to tweet, whether you are at home, or at work. I know people set up Twitter profiles devoted to focused topics (including focused professional topics), but I am too lazy for maintaining multiple Twitter profiles. So my tweets are for sure going to be a hodge-podge of whatever is going on in my life.

One thing I am interested to see…is Twitter going to kill or at least influence negatively the blogger in me? After all Twitter is not only about social networking, it is about microblogging too. Till now, I have only blogged when I have had a topic which was at least moderately substantial. Fleeting thoughts sometimes begged to be written down, but if they didn’t fall under the umbrella of a theme, I couldn’t entertain them to be included in a blog. I also blog when I feel like a rain cloud: so heavy with unreleased words in my brain, that writing is the only way to feel light again. I guess Twitter is going to provide some sort of shelter to those flickers of random thoughts, and there is a real chance that I will experience frequent catharsis, and will not feel the need to unburden myself through a blog as frequently as I do now.

Well, flash fictions didn’t kill short stories. May be blogging and micro-blogging can co-exist too. I have to wait and watch myself. And what’s more, I think a middle ground will emerge. Twitter has this 140-character limit, so you are forced to keep your entry short and succinct. But what if you need a little more room to complete the story? There is a program called Twitzer (a Firefox add-on) that shortens your text so that you can go beyond 140 characters. There is a real chance that someday somebody will offer a formal platform for mini-blogs.

Until then, happy tweeting (and blogging).

Avatar's: Ethnic Confusion

Not a lot of restaurants would have the balls to have just one dessert item in their menu, and cryptically describe the experience of tasting the dessert as: Close your eyes, and picture the sweetest concoction of dessert flavors from around the world coming full circle on one plate of bliss. Divine.

One Indian restaurant in Sausalito, California has proven that you can afford to be audacious when your dessert alone is reason enough for a repeat visit. And other items on their menu are not far behind either.

I am talking about the Avatar's restaurant, located at 2656 Bridgeway, Sausalito, CA (north of San Francisco, across the Golden Gate bridge). It was a chance find for us. We didn’t read any elaborate review or didn’t get any prior recommendation from friends whose feedback we trust. We were trying to decide where to stop for lunch on our way back home after a very refreshing camping experience at Petaluma during the Memorial day weekend, and Sausalito seemed to be a good choice. We were in the mood for Indian cuisine after two days of eating mostly campfire-grilled stuff. A quick search on Google suggested Avatar's. We automatically assumed that it would be at a waterfront (or at least an ocean view) location. But when the GPS navigated us to the address of the restaurant along an industrial back road lined with auto repair shops (with damaged Maseratis and Porsches nestled inside---after all it is Sausalito), our heart sank a little. The front of the restaurant wasn’t fancy at all, and you don’t even catch a glimpse of the ocean or the bay. Anyway, we walked in. The furniture was simple and the interior was rather cramped. I needed to go to the bathroom. I had to walk through the kitchen to go to the back of the restaurant to access the most ordinary-looking bathroom at the end of a narrow alley. Other than the beautiful black and white framed photographs of Indian village people adorning the walls, we didn’t find anything to be impressive about the restaurant yet.

I later realized that the owners intentionally build up the drama by keeping the surroundings devoid of gloss. They want you to mutter to yourself, “I hope at least the food is good.” I am sure the head chef Kala Ubhi and her brother Ashok Kumar, the unassuming smiling hosts who take part in everything from taking order to cooking and serving, rejoice their success even more when the initially-skeptical patrons like me walk away gushing about the food, and end up writing a blog about the gastronomical experience!

The menu proudly describes the cuisine as an “ethnic confusion.” The history of the restaurant, as printed on the back of the menu, tells you that the restaurant opened doors in 1989, when Avatar Ubhi, the now-deceased founder of Avatar's, envisioned the unique customizable cuisine that the restaurant has been offering. In the early days of the restaurant, a journalist coined the term “ethnic confusion,” and it stuck. Avatar's encourages you to concoct your own masterpiece. And they are extremely flexible to suit your dietary need. That may mean a dish with extremely light or no oil, a pure vegetarian dish or a vegan alternative.

We were four adults and two pre-schoolers in our group. All of us claimed that we didn’t have big appetites when we walked in. But once we tasted the soup du jour (mulligatawny soup) with the homemade parathas and chutneys, and lightly curried button mushrooms as appetizers, we kept ordering more and more parathas. We even ordered parathas and soup to take home, even before we got to the main courses. The Avatars' magic spell had started. I think I saw our host Ashok smiling at that point. He sure has seen this happen before---many times.

The Punjabi tostadas with ground lamb mixed with yoghurt and tamarind sauces served on top of mini-parathas were great as the main course. The Basmati trio (chicken, lamb and vegetables on a bed of rice) was equally good.

The teaser description on the dessert menu allured us to order at least one dessert dish to see what this divine “Avatar’s dream” really is. It was a slice of cheesecake placed on a sweet syrupy circle resembling a rising sun, and honestly, I really tasted pure bliss when I mouthed the first scoop! Needless to say, we ended up ordering a few more of the Avatar’s dreams, and even the little ones licked their plates clean.

Rarely you come out of an Indian restaurant with so much satisfaction and so little greasy feeling in your stomach. Avatar's is brilliantly successful in keeping the focus on food, and not on anything else. And yes, the service is great too. Before we stepped out, I approached Ashok, our gracious server and host, and got a menu to take home with me as a souvenir. I knew I was going to write a blog about Avatar's soon, and I here I am.

It takes confidence to make the term “ethnic confusion” stylish. Avatar's has that -- in abundance.