THE MOPED GANG

On a warm Indian summer night's walk to North Beach, we came upon a scene outside a Chinatown bar - a crowd of kids in hipster-nerd-sexy-schoolmarm attire milling around. We decided to buy a mai tai and hang out. We answered a nerd trivia question - Who is the Captain of the Starship Enterprise? - to get into a dark basement with a small but packed dance floor. Everyone seemed to know each other and we couldn't figure out how. We speculated - the same college? Some type of art-school fraternity? Nope. It's a San Francisco Moped Gang - the band were also members of the gang - and yes, then we remembered what we saw on the way in - lots of mopeds.

TRYING IS HARD AND WHY YODA SHOULD SHOVE IT

This week in Indu's life thanks Winston Churchill and Esther Dyson.

Esther for saying "Always make new mistakes." And Churchill for saying what the graffiti on this phone booth in Venice, CA says.



Also the person who said "Anything worth doing is worth doing badly."

I kind of love that and I think if you've tried something hard you know exactly what that means. You can't be self conscious about looking stupid if you are taking a risk and starting a start-up is about as exposed and illogically risky as it gets.

SIGNS I LIKE IN LA - Part II

INDIA CELEBRATES HER INDEPENDENT SPIRIT

August 15, 1947 is a milestone in Indian history but I can't bring myself to call it Independence Day. India as a place, a people and a construct has been a powerful influence on global trade, culture, religion, academic study and philosophy for thousands of years. To define its "independence" as something that started 60 years ago seems inadequate. Nevertheless, I'm in awe of the courage it took to overturn centuries of outside rule. It was a time of pain and bloodshed too. Today I feel respect and pride. (Pics of Gandhi and Nehru from 1946 courtesy of Rhoda D'sa.)

MAN PRAYING AT GRIFFITH OBSERVATORY

SECRET LA

One particular table at the sunny and sweet Alcove Cafe and Bakery in Los Feliz has secret drawers with messages left by errant customers over the years.

SIGNS I LIKE IN LA - Part I

ON A FERRIS WHEEL IN ECHO PARK

MY FIRST LA EARTHQUAKE

I was on the phone with Matthew Holt when my chair felt like it was shaking. I thought it was the pesky landscaping and waste trucks that go by right outside our bungalow on Willey Lane in West Hollywood. Within seconds CNN's breaking news said it was a magnitude 5.8 earthquake. Later in the afternoon, at the Whole Foods' fish counter, a small group of us shared our earthquake stories. For the next 24 hours, there's a not insignificant chance that there will be a bigger one.

CAT CALL WEHO STYLE

"You. Look. Adorable! I love your skirt!!!" Gay man calls out as I walk past see-and-be-seen cafe on Santa Monica Blvd.

DANCE FLOOR, CLUB RHONDA, LA

STRAWBERRY LETTER 23

A "why we love California" afternoon in Golden Gate Park. Strawberry Letter 23 was playing as these rollerbladers appeared to perform for the camera. It became the soundtrack for the day in my mind. And we also saw butterflies and carnivorous flowers and fluorescent blue shimmery beetles that made me rethink natural selection; all told, a sunny clearing in our urban, laptop-centered, interweb haze.

SPRINGTIME IN INDIA

In our hearts...

My grandmother, Eunice Christabel D'sa, was taken from us this morning. She was surrounded by family, love and support in the comfort of her home in Bangalore, India. She is more with me in spirit today than ever before. I have to leave to get on a plane to host the Health 2.0 conference in a couple of hours. It is what she would have wanted, she was proud of this gathering and this movement. Nothing serves as a more powerful reminder of our commitment to make healthcare more human-centered than moments like this.

The year in gratitude

This year deserves a round-up. On a personal note, it was a year for taking risk, for being surprised, for learning how to collaborate, for sticking with a vision, for not being afraid to be a beginner at something, for immersive travel, for treasuring relationships in the face of mortality and loss.

I met and got to work with a brilliant group of people at Physic Ventures. Their mission, accomplishments and plans for a sustainable and healthy world are awe-inspiring. I'm honored to have been Entrepreneur-in-Residence this past year and look forward to an ongoing collaboration in 2008.



Health 2.0, the conference and community, was born. And announced its arrival through a megaphone. We are delighted that the forum is able to inspire innovators to change healthcare and now with 2 events planned in 2008, we're poised to support the evolution of this movement as it surely takes unexpected twists and turns. Esther Dyson's article about the conference in the Huffington Post is on my wall, and somewhere on my desk is the front page article from the Tech section of the SF Chronicle, where we were quoted, but the absolute best thing about the conference are times like when an entrepreneur said, "I spent 16 hrs on a plane from Israel, and I had no idea there were other companies like us, trying to do things this way. It was totally worth the trip."



And in a quieter way, a little company that we hope makes life better for doctors and patients came into the world. Starting out on paper sketches in 2005, to an executive summary exactly 1 year ago that wise friends and colleagues weighed in on, to a functioning prototype in March built by developers and designers with an average age of 20, using Google chat as our primary means of communication, to a company that will launch with a world-class team and make some waves in 2008...please meet Medly.



We moved around a lot this year. We spent a sticky summer in NYC where I studied directing and screenwriting at the School of Visual Arts.



Over the course of 10 weeks, we slept in 7 different homes or apartments, granted some of that included a trip to New Orleans and to the best kept secret in Mexico, La Isla Mujeres.



At the end of the summer, while we were still in NY, we lost two very close friends, Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake, in a shocking and tragic way. Enough has been written about them in blogs, in the New York Times and in Vanity Fair, so I won't add to that, but they affect us every single day, they inspire us to stay true to leading singular, authentic and creative lives above all.

The travel continued, but for mixed reasons. I spent 2 weeks in Bangalore this October to be with my grandmother who fell ill this year. It was a time of reflection and strong emotions, but I treasured every moment with the most brilliant, articulate, witty, well-read, elegant, graceful and unforgettable 92 year-old lady in India.



I have never looked forward to a year the way I'm looking forward to 2008. If it is a better year than 2007, my cup runneth over. To health, family, creativity and the pursuit of making the world a better place. Welcome 2008!

A brand/context mismatch!

So, I'm all for traditional brick and mortar or even Web 1.0 companies embracing the new internet ways and all, I espouse this daily on the Health 2.0 scene, but the above is just not what I want to see in my inbox, no, not at all. It might as well say the IRS is going to hunt you down, omg, lol, smiley face with wink.

Know your brand and know your place!

Dave Eggers' response to "keeping it real" - not his phrase

I was taken by Dave Eggers' long and impassioned response to a Harvard student's interview question on "how do you keep it real?"

And here's my response to his response.

Dave Eggers' piece resonated with me. Yes to saying yes. But if this were a live conversation, I'd want to put the following to him: what about the implicit contract an artist or entrepreneur (while still early and small) makes with his or her viewer, reader, listener, user? I think Dave doesn't acknowledge that there is an intimacy to the relationship between an emerging artist and audience member/fan, a bond more imagined than real, full of unrequited passion and adolescent fantasy perhaps, but no less visceral to the early fan or the early adopter of a new technology for that matter.

When the artist or entrepreneur gets big, this notion of monogamy or mutual loyalty, albeit illusory, is shattered. So the young person, explorer/discoverer, president of a fan club of 3 feels an inexplicable sense of betrayal and moves on to support the next underdog. Remember "you were working as a waitress in a cocktail bar, when I met you. Now 5 years later, you've got the world at your feet. Success has been so easy for you. But don't forget it's me who put you where you are now and I can put you back down too. Don't you want me baby?" Creepy, yes, but kind of a hard-to-ignore part of the psyche of fan-hood.

And this goes beyond the arts. Mike Arrington, tech guru, writer, investor wrote a sad post about the state of silicon valley now vs. a number of years ago, Silicon Valley could use a downturn right now.

Small is beautiful, big can be devastatingly gorgeous and infinitely renewing, but the journey between the two is by definition a relationship between creator and experiencer and therefore inherently fraught with negotiation.

A short I made in NY

So this little dab of noir was created this past summer during a directing class I took at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. We were given just a few days to write a script with the following constraints: no more than 2 pages, which translates to about 2 minutes of viewing time, 2-3 characters max, and it had to take place in a bar. I was watching and reading a lot of David Mamet and so I was obsessed with manipulation and backstabbing and hatched this little triple betrayal vignette. It was an incredible thrill to audition and cast "real" actors who live and work in New York. I had to prep the actors, talk them through their motivations, question my own writing when a particular character's decision didn't quite make sense to them, come up with a shot list, props, costumes, and I had to learn how to work with a (very talented) DP.

And I had to direct.

I will never watch a film the same way again. Forget what it takes to be a start-up CEO, being a writer-director has got to be the most incredible rush ever. You watch these characters you just dreamed up in 10 minutes come to life in front of your eyes. You watch how each subtle change an actor makes in response to your feedback can transform the entire piece. And the feeling on a set when you're working with actors who take their work seriously is magical. At the end of the last take, the entire crew burst into spontaneous applause. We were blown away by John Hart's (Jake's) performance and I just stood there dumbstruck - did I just write this tiny and temporary world into existence?

Trying out YouTube's Custom Player

My maternal ancestry, beginning in the mid-late 1800s

This my great-great-grandfather, Simon Podwal. The Catholics of Mangalore, a coastal town north of Goa, voluntarily converted to Christianity in the 1600s under the influence of the Portuguese. Many of these early settlers had fled the horrific, forced conversions going on in Goa, that were a part of the Inquisition.



Below is Simon's son, Andrew D'sa, my great-grandfather and his first wife and daughter.



Now we have Appolinaris D'sa, my grandfather, whom I lived with as a child and loved very much. This picture was taken in 1938 in Mangalore. He is a young lawyer 2 years before he is to meet and marry my grandmother, Eunice Pinto.



Switching sides, below is a picture of Rose Pinto, my great-grandmother. She was born in 1896 and died at the young age of 24, in 1920, of Typhoid, a terrible disease at the time that claimed the lives of young mothers and children every year. She left behind 3 children, the oldest of which was my grandmother, who was 7 years old when her mother died.




And here is my grandmother, Eunice D'sa, the year she married my grandfather, in 1940. The picture is a cropped image from a group photo of the Ladies Club of Mangalore taken in honor of a visit by the British Governor's wife. This is 7 years before India's independence.




And finally my parents, Marina D'sa and Paul Subaiya in 1972. Marina was Eunice's 4th child.