weekly notes, wk 13 / 2024

 

1. 

I travelled to Ernakulam for a day this week. For the first time, took the new Vande Bharat train - it was clean, comfortable and quite fast. Came back the same day, in a state transport bus. Online booking systems have become better. But the bus was delayed by more than an hour and the only way to track was to call the bus conductor to know where they were. Being Easter long weekend, there were a lot of students going home and it was crowded. Onward in the train took about 3.5 hrs and the return through bus took about 6 hrs. Met a couple of friends there, had ice stick candy at a place called Peni, lunch at a Punjabi dhaba opposite Cochin ShipYard and continued the discussions at a juice shop called Haji Ali. 

2. 

We were at Kollam for two days this week. Both days, I picked a random pin near the ocean in the map which was about 30 mins away from home and walked there. I am convinced that there is something going on, maybe in that community around, where people maintain the streets very well, all boundary walls painted and even a house made of tin sheets had a clean boundary made of cloth material. It is summer vacation, kids were playing football in uneven grassy fields, with wooden frames for goal posts and they had some spectators too. First location was coincidentally the same place that we had stopped during a random drive long back and second was a small beach. It was one of the best walks in recent times. 

3. 

Watched two movies - one with chakki, in a theatre after a long time. Manjummel Boys (Malayalam), which is based on a true story of someone falling into a cave that is known as Devil’s Kitchen (named by the British, later called Guna caves after a Kamal Haasan movie that was shot there) and the miraculous and heroic rescue. It was well made. We watched it in an old theatre at Kollam where the sound system wasn’t upgraded, hence the dialogues were coming across a bit muffled. These days I am too critical of most of what I read or watch, not sure if it is an effect of ageing - I felt the stories that are picked for the movies in Kerala are not raising the aspiration levels of our youth. I shouldn’t complain much since I don’t like the fact that Bollywood is disconnected from the realities of life of average Indians, but the malayalam movies are depicting youth who are not interested in education, who somehow scrape through a livelihood and glorify the drinking culture. It is probably the reality, which is depressing.  

 

Watched Anatomy of a Fall (French). It was about a sudden death of a husband, in a family of three, ensuing trial of the wife as a murder suspect and the key witness is their son who is vision impaired. It was about the complexity of marriage, relationships, figuring out what is the truth, what is not and judging someone from slices of their life which never gives a full understanding. We do not know for sure what we truly believe, our memories are sometimes interpretations too and if we struggle to truly describe even ourselves in clear terms, how does someone else decide based on incidental interactions? It had one very long scene of the couple (she does not believe in couples) having an argument that goes into nuances of their relationship and how each is perceiving the other - it must have been one of the best written and acted scenes that I had ever seen in a movie. 

weekly notes, wk 12 / 2024

 

1. 

Watched a series, The Old Man (Disney+), primarily since I wanted to escape and take my mind off things. It had some promise - of an old ex-spy who still can beat much younger professionals comprehensively and his daughter who he wants to save. Good writing - even though I was wondering if the profound dialogues about the meaning of life will really hold muster if we try to understand what it really means. It all sounds like zen koans or beautiful poetry and hints that someone has achieved enlightenment to be able to grasp bigger truths, but is it anything better than hallucination?

Watched a movie in the theatre after a long time, Premalu (Malayalam). It had many laugh out loud moments and I like the main characters from their previous movies (Naslen and Mamatha Baiju). I am not sure if my mood is colouring my perception, but I was thinking if this is degrading the expectations from average Malayali boys/men, who can use booze to forget disappointments or failures and gain sympathy, expect girls/women to take care of them, blame dysfunctional families for poor discipline and behaviour, stumble through studies (make fun of CBSE and math olympiad) and eventually succeed at life by emigrating to middle east or US/UK/Canada/Australia. I am probably intellectualising something which is meant as a light hearted comedy, sort of as a poor man’s Hyderabad Days (as opposed to the movie Bangalore Days). 

2. 

Finished reading “Thinking in Systems” by Donella Meadows. I should write a longer blog about lessons learned from it. I had been thinking for some time that there is an invisible thread connecting many of the philosophies guiding distributed systems development, microservices, buddhism, blockchain, complex systems, open source and how nature works. In my limited power to shape teams, I hope I can apply some of the learnings - in how hierarchies work, how feedback loops are setup, how to have more real time information flows, how to be comfortable with adaptive nature of teams and where to look for leverage to nudge them in the right direction. 

3. 

Continued to listen to long podcasts from The Seen and the Unseen and continuing to write bit longer daily journals. Even some days seem long where I think nothing significant happened, but once I start writing, a lot of things stumble out, thoughts that I was trying to connect from what I read, listen and experience. Slow productivity, slow living, consuming long form reads, not falling into the trap of short form content in any form, writing more, having longer conversations - everything I am coming across of late seems to point to this. Maybe a phase.   

4. 

I read something about building apps for oneself like having a “home cooked meal”. Creating something just to use within family and friends. I had come across a similar idea earlier too, about coming to an era of building personal tools rather than mass produced software. Something to try.  

weekly notes, wk 11 / 2024

 

1. 

I had written daily diary on and off last year. Restarted again last week and wrote every day. Even on the days when I think there was nothing noteworthy, once I start writing, reflecting about the day, there was a lot that happened every day. I keep reading about the advantages of daily journaling and I can see why. It helps to be reflective, realize days are not wasted away and hopefully helps with the memory. Hope to continue. 

2. 

This week I got back to The Seen and the Unseen podcast after some time. It covers people from all walks of life in India - most other popular podcasts are monopolised by Americans, so this is refreshing to know stories closer to home. It has gotten longer and longer, with interviews running into more than five hours, so I had left it at some time, but other more serious ones have become too much of a good thing. I couldn’t make myself listen to one more product management or business or tech podcast. So maybe it is time to take a break and come back to this. It is good to hear about the struggles of people trying to make it here, in academia, economics, politics, media, law, medicine, not just everything being technology business. How lives have been shaped over the decades in India. I used to follow this podcaster, Amit Verma, for more than ten years, through his blog and writing and he had good perspectives on many topics - for example, how people like Trump are giving permission for others who had their extreme opinions that they never voiced until someone like this gave them permission to do so, hence this is not a change in people, but that it was always there under the wraps. 

3. 

Watched three movies this week. Brahmayugam (Malayalam) - it was a horror movie set in 17th century in Kerala, that had usual tropes of Yakshi and Chathan, but given a much nuanced perspective with layers of caste oppression, rich and poor, colonizers, with the poor never escaping from these layers however hard they try. Mammootty takes a negative character and shines again - he continues his brilliant choices (Kaathal, Puzhu, Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam and more). 

Aattam (Malayalam, meaning The Play) - a story about a woman complaining of sexual abuse and eleven people in her drama group deciding how to proceed. It left me shaken a bit, feeling bad about men. Every one of the men revealed their real face - of power grabs, money vs values, prejudices, manipulation, no one thinking about the girl truly even though they all show they care and even those who call her “molae” (daughter). It was like the ending of the Malayalam movie, Ishq, where the man wasn’t truly concerned about the trauma of the woman, but wanted to ensure his pride wasn’t hurt. In one family discussion when some sexist remark was made, Chakki was saying she should make a syllabus of movies for that person to watch to learn - in that respect, I think such Malayalam movies (including Great Indian Kitchen, Jaya Jaya Jaya He and many others) must be doing a great service to raise the awareness levels in the society. 

The Two Popes (English) - was interesting to watch the contrasting views of conservative leaning and liberal learning priests, probably formed by the societies they were part of and their personal histories. Reminded of our trip to the Vatican and finding a side entrance somewhere to escape some long queues, through a hidden tip in some travel website. 

4. 

Watched the announcement of Devin, AI programming assistant and the related comments. Someone tweeting saying “enjoy the last few years of manual programming”. I played with Github Copilot last year and so far it didn’t seem such a massive change is up on us any time soon, but this seems to take it further. We might be in for interesting times in the next five years and hope countries like India which depend on IT for job creation will be prepared for the transition.  

weekly notes, wk 10 / 2024

 

1. 

It was a busy week at work and some sickness at home. Holiday for Sivarathri at the end of the week helped to get some rest. During the week I had to make some quick decisions at work which may have some long term impact. I was thinking about how communication abilities of people become achilles heel for some talented people. I don’t find good ways to find fixes for it, to change people and I continue to try despite knowing it is near impossible. 

2. 

Watched three movies. Anweshippin Kandethum (Malayalam) - which is a crime thriller. I think it doesn’t add much to the usual stories, but it had some good acting and was a good watch. It was good to see the locale of remote Kerala villages compared to city based stories. 

Merry Christmas (Tamil) - watched since I am a Vijay Sethupathi fan, but the film was disappointing to me. It is an adaptation of a French crime novel. The story, the plot twist and suspense was good, but for me it looked forced and artificial.   

Ore Kadal (Malayalam) - older malayalam movie by Shyamaprasad with Mammootty and Meera Jasmine in lead roles. Complexity of people’s lives are way more than the normal films depict, so in that sense, it explores difficult questions. Well acted, but the morality question could have been explored a bit more deeply.  

3. 

I am trying to read more long form articles, to get away from social media, click baits and short video formats. I started keeping a list of articles I read, indexed with tags and a quick one liner on what I liked about it. Taking some notes, extracts as well. Becoming more organized with what I learn.  

Power laws in culture - about how the content explosion is leading to InfiniteTV sort of phenomenon, how there is always going to be few very big hits which may be prequels, sequels or superhero ones that are safe bets which will be “conformed” by social signalling followed by a very, very long tail of content which will struggle to get recognized. 

Generative AI: a creative new world - one year older, but interesting to see the prediction that video content will be like “personalized dreams” by 2030 and “text to product” will be mature by then. What would lakhs of engineering graduates flocking to IT do if this prediction is true? What skills should the current students learn to prepare for this? Next 5 years will be very interesting. I hope people can prepare for the disruptions in work and life due to it. 

Telling a story and making a point - how to tell stories with data. About “making a figure for the Generals” - how to simplify the story to say whether we are making progress or not towards the goal, for senior leaders who will want the gist of the story rather than the gory detail. Building up by showing the basics first and then adding complexity layer by layer. Using different visualizations for distinct analysis to avoid everything being fused in the audience's mind. 

Communication is the job - connected to my first point, to consciously develop the communication skill. Once we have moved to remote / hybrid which is becoming normalized, developing multiple channels of communication and repetition of messages would be key to align a distributed team on why we are doing what we are doing. 

4. 

Completed a 100 day streak with Spanish language learning in Duolingo. Hope to keep going this year and see how to get a bit more comfortable. 

spiritual awakening, lost in translation

One day this past week, I listened to this podcast interview of Cyan Banister, in Invest like the Best. Due to some reason, I felt I couldn’t listen to anything else that day. I usually listen to politics or product management or economics, but that day anything else would have spoiled the mood I was in. It may be that some days are like that - when the mind is contemplative, no clutter or anxiety, less cynical, the body feels healthy and open to receive. Or it may truly be that there was something in what I had listened to. 

Cyan seems to be a successful investor in Uber, SpaceX among others. Of late, I feel all successful people think that they have wisdom to share and everyone is becoming gurus online. Other day I was reading such pearls of wisdom from someone who is good at product management and it was nothing about product management, but about how to live one’s life. It may be that to become truly good at something, one has to become a better person first and in that process arrive at the same universal truths irrespective of what path they are on. 

I was thinking she is like the “high priestess” of capitalism, who feels she is being entrusted with money to do good in the world. Her story seems incredible - from being homeless, being self taught, suffering a stroke at a young age to becoming wildly successful. She talked about being an atheist, but discovering spirituality a few years back, where she feels there is something that guides the decisions we make. 

“I actually had to figure out how to truly believe that the world is magical. And the moment that I truly believed that the world was magical, then the world became magical. It rocked the foundation of who I am. So I had a spiritual awakening, and that's the only way I can describe it. And I can tell you that each one of us is walking a very thin, razor's edge between sanity and insanity at all times.

 

Serotonin regulates a lot of how we perceive reality. I had a surge of serotonin in this lightning bolt like no other. It was basically in a surge of energy that went from the base of my spine at the top of my skull and suddenly, everything in the world looked different. Everything. I started viewing signs differently. I started viewing art differently, conversations I was having with people differently. And I realized everything around us is a projection of our perception and minds.

 

And once you learned how just to be, life gets a lot more simple. All of a sudden, everything you ever wished for in your life just starts coming true, it becomes effortless. It's really weird. It's really super weird. And the only thing that changed in my life was having faith in something higher than myself. That was it. This is why when you ask me what insight or brilliance or whatever led to whatever, it's too easy for our ego mind to take credit for everything.

 

Something gave me that feeling that said, you ought to go deeper into this, you ought to do this. You've got to take this risk, you've got to jump right now. I guarantee you, if you talk to a lot of different people, they'll say, "I don't know why I did this. I just had a feeling, and I now believe thoroughly in that feeling and I believe that, that feeling is the universe or God, whatever word you want to put into it, and it helps guide me." And now that I don't egotistically attach myself to it, I am just a much happier person and everything is just falling into place.”

I am sceptical when people talk about spiritual awakening, but am fascinated to read or listen to people who say they had such an epiphany. I had read a similar description in vivid terms in “Eat, Pray, Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert. I wonder if it really happens or is it a moment of madness? When films or stories talk about someone going through a life changing moment, realizing all of a sudden about the meaning of life or why they are on a wrong path and changing the course altogether, I wonder if it is an instrument or plot twist in story telling to take the story to a conclusion.  

She talked about monoculture - when everything in culture is becoming similar, with commercial interests making movies, books, songs and people similar, to be able to sell more of the same. She talked about Gen Alpha, the ones born in the twenty-first century, doubting why to learn anything in the world of AI. 

Another surprising one was her saying Bill Murray, the actor, is her spirit animal. 

“Bill Murray is my spirit animal. About 20 years ago, I saw a film called Lost in Translation. And I thought this is a person who feels so real. He's not acting. He is but he isn't. I looked at his eyes in that performance and I saw a man who is suffering, who was dealing with some real-life shit that was coming through the film. And not only that, but I felt my own suffering, and I felt a connection to that suffering. It's like when you look at a painting and you see yourself. I saw myself in Bill Murray.”

I had watched Lost in Translation years ago, but had completely forgotten it. Just like the saying that we should re-read some of our favourite books every few years or so, maybe we should re-watch the best movies - we might see something that we were not ready for earlier or was not in the frame of mind or maturity to understand earlier. Luckily the movie was available on one of the OTT platforms. I didn’t remember any of the story, except maybe the only thing that had stuck deeply in my mind was Japan, its buddhist temples and wanting to visit sometime. I could identify with the deep loneliness and weariness of Bill Murray’s character, especially how it crystallises while on travels. Maybe this is what “adulthood” imposes on us, to go through the long slog of life. The easy connection of both of the lead characters and opening up about some of the hard realities of life which is hard to talk about normally. The tenderness, care, trust that one would find a fulfilling path despite the current self doubt, not crossing the line and spoiling a deeper connection are what I could take away now. Maybe I should re-watch in another few years and will see something new. 

monalisa

Yesterday at the end of the day, I wanted to read something before sleeping. I didn’t have any fiction books with me, at least any that doesn’t need much labour to get through. I was scrolling through some poetry accounts and such, looking for a perfect poem. I wondered what if there were blogs that had a slice of life from somewhere that is worth reading. But then I thought, what if I write something - try to describe one person from my world each day, someone who I interact with most days in some way. I could think of many, most of whose names I don’t know. I could use this as a way to remember them. Let me see how this experiment goes. 

First one at random who came to mind is a cashier at the modern “chayakkada” (tea shop) at the office. It is a re-creation of the roadside tea shops, with its thatched roof, built with dried coconut leaves and bamboo, with posters of old malayalam and tamil movie on the walls, glass shelves displaying the snacks, chalk board listing out the day’s menu. When I am in office, I go there at lunch to get a “sambhaaram” (buttermilk). Most days I see a lady at the counter, she is courteous, with a sense of amusement in her face. She has pleasant demeanour, a round face, with a white hair cap, wearing a brown uniform shirt. This is the reason I remember her - I can’t quite place whether she is smiling or not. It is a kind of amused expression of someone overhearing a group having fun and joking around, not quite participating in the discussion, but happy to be there, just the same. When there is no one in the queue, she helps the servers inside with the pre-prepared lime juice, sherbets, lime soda, sambhaaram and the like. Last day, a few friends were ahead of us and they were customizing their orders - lime juice without ice, lime soda with ice etc - each unique, confusing them. My order was comparatively straight forward, I paid and told the chettan at the shop what I wanted and it turned out just my sambhaaram alone was missing. She had gone inside to help out with the orders and rushed back out to punch in my missing sambhaaram, apologetic about why that happened. 

That’s it. Nothing magical, just a random person, in my universe. With a smile that is not quite a smile, but just happy to help.  

weekly notes, wk 9 / 2024

1.

Finished reading book 5 of this year - Tharakan’s Grandhavari (Malayalam, fiction) by Benyamin. I had read three of his books before - Aadujeevitham, Al Arabian Novel Factory and Manjaveyil Maranangal (Jasmine Days). This one is an experimental fiction where the book was originally printed as cards in a box that can be read in any order. Each copy of the book has a unique order, hence they think this can be read in gazillion ways. Be as it may (picked up this phrase from a podcast in the past week), it was a difficult read. There is a story of a murder of youth, suicide of another who is possibly mad and writing two novels himself and there are two stories through that and a secretive lodge. I couldn’t eventually figure out all the stories, it may have been left to the reader's imagination as to what might have happened and my reserve of patience ran out before I could piece it all together. In parts, it was brilliant writing and in parts it felt made me wonder why I put myself through such torture. 

2. 

Watched two movies. Where the Track Ends (Mexican, Netflix) - good to listen to spanish, could identify at least some words. It is a story of a rundown school in a remote village in Mexico, run by a teacher whose eyesight is failing and who is patiently finding solutions for different learning needs of her students. I love stories of teaching and the disproportionate impact teachers have on kids and their lives ahead. A simple story, likeable characters, well acted. 

Forgotten Love (Poland, Netflix) - I am continuing this experiment to watch movies from other countries and languages. But this one is forgettable - a plot that would put Hindi films to shame. A genius surgeon whose wife leaves him taking his darling daughter away from him, getting robbed and beaten on his head, losing his memory and afterwards roaming the country looking for something which he can’t remember. 

3. 

While listening to something else this week, I was reminded of this resolution to read at least one classic book from as many languages and countries as possible. As they say, the second best way to travel to unknown countries is by reading books from those places. I should make this into a proper list to work through it. 

4. 

I am keeping track of a lot more of my activities this year - articles read, books, movies, poems, podcasts, songs, learnings. Hope to keep this up till the end of the year at least. I have to make an app for myself some day to make this process smoother.

5. 

It was a moody weekend. On my morning walk yesterday, I came up behind a mother and daughter, hurrying somewhere. I was watching the kid - comes up to her mother’s knees, walking fast to keep up with her mother, who I guess was late for work. We were coming up from a steep road. The kid had a bunch of her oiled hair tied up at the top with a love-in-tokyo and remaining hair combed down. She was hanging on to her mothers dress. Chakki says she and her friends watch the first standard students playing, they can’t believe the “little human beings” could be so small. One of her friends commented that she wanted to take one from that group to put it in the showcase. As I was thinking about the cuteness of this, the mother swatted away the kid’s hand from her dress, adjusted the dress, her hair and the handbag and continued walking fast. I somehow felt bad for that kid. She continues to walk/run to keep up, quite resilient, determined. 

Some days all I see is the hope, smiles and happiness of the people. But this day I was seeing the struggles everywhere. Many folks working in nearby Margin Free Supermarket going for work in their uniform, another in the uniform of Be-Mart, the corporation workers burning the garbage that people throw at night in deserted roads, people setting up the roadside eatery, many workers from the North. Everyone is trying to make ends meet, in a world which is becoming more unequal as the days pass (as evidenced by the super rich congregating in India for the pre wedding ceremonies for the young uncrowned prince).  

6. 

We had to let go of people from our team this week, triggered by the unseen hands of the economy and unannounced recession. It is painful each time something like this happens. No one loses their job, still it is difficult to let go of teams we build with some effort. It was time to resolve once again to refocus and recommit.    

Podcasts, Feb 2024

Listened to 20 podcasts in Feb. This is one new year's resolution that is still going. I have started taking notes in a running list. I listen to podcasts during the morning walk/run, while doing some chores or during office commute. It is difficult to take notes while listening and I forget afterwards, so I started using speech to text. 

I had used an iPod, some other device in between, downloaded podcasts to my phone when mobile data was at premium, Spotify and Google Podcasts before. Now settled on the AntennaPod app on Android. It is mostly stable, has only podcasts, so no other distraction. I have subscribed to a few podcasts, check the episodes list a couple of times a week and add interesting looking ones to a queue. I pick only the ones that seem interesting and don’t worry about the huge number of unlistened ones in the feed. This keeps the queue ready to go before I step out of the house than trying to figure out what to listen, which kills off the routines otherwise. I had moved to AntennaPod only because it has a listening history and I can make lists like below without much effort, compared to Spotify or Google Podcasts. 

I am trying to learn more about Product Development, be in touch with Engineering and a bit of politics, history, psychology and personal development. Current favourites are Lenny’s Podcast (Product Management), Tim Ferris Show (personal development), Freakonomics Radio (Behavioral Economics), Seen and the Unseen (India, Politics, Behavioral Economics - too long though, beyond even my patience level), Radiolab (Science - All Time Favorite). I come back to KNowledge Project with Shane Parrish (older episodes were gems), Dwarkesh Podcast (newest rising star, just 23 years old), Invest Like the Best (not for investing, but to listen to some refreshing thoughts, good interviews), How I Write (writing tips), Design Matters with Debbie Millman (refreshing interviews with creators), Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History (whatever is available publicly, amazing stories about history) and Engineering Culture by InfoQ (Software Engineering).    

In Depth	The human side of world-class engineering leadership | Michael Lopp (Apple, Palantir, Slack)
Thoughtworks Technology Podcast	Beyond the DORA metrics: Measuring engineering excellence	Yet another framework for engineering measurements, not sure if that will help
Freakonomics Radio	The Curious Mr. Feynman	An insatiable genius, good to hear about his love story, his methods, going to first principles and building up all explanations from there, being curious, story telling
Radiolab	Stochasticity	I was smiling while listening to this. Old episode. Good stories.
Lenny's Podcast	Inside OpenAI | Logan Kilpatrick (head of developer relations)
Lenny's Podcast	Lessons from Atlassian: Launching new products, getting buy-in, and staying ahead of the competition | Megan Cook (head of product, Jira)
Freakonomics Radio	5 Psychology Terms You’re Probably Misusing
Knowledge Project	Dr. Julie Gurner (Part 2): Caring Deeply, Challenging Directly [The Knowledge Project Ep. #172]	I am trying to learn radical candor.
Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin	Robert Greene	Author of the evil book, but he is such a nice guy. Good listen.
Freakonomics Radio	The Brilliant Mr. Feynman	Continuing with Feynman, him going into rabbit holes, trying drugs, exploring boundary of everything including his mind
Freakonomics Radio	The Vanishing Mr. Feynman	Eccentricities. I was listening to a story of him spending most of the time thinking about a problem, then a solution and then coming up with a simple solution.
Tim Ferris Podcast	Master Negotiator William Ury — Proven Strategies and Amazing Stories from Warren Buffett, Nelson Mandela, Kim Jong Un, Hugo Chávez, and More (#721)	This was a classic. Negotiators had fascinating stories to tell. One of Hugo Chavez in this. I took a lot of notes from this.
NPR Throughline	Love, Throughline	How the concept of Romantic Love changed over the years, about classic romanticism, what gets depicted in movies. Modern Love series must make sense.
Brandwidth with Manu Prasad	EP 01 | Brandwidth With Manu Prasad | Fractional CMO & Gurudev Prasad | Co-founder BusyBeeBrands
Lenny's Podcast	How to discover your superpowers, own your story, and unlock personal growth | Donna Lichaw (author of The Leader’s Journey)	Good listen
Design Matters with Debbie Millman	Best of Design Matters: Aminatou Sow	Good listen. What kind of complex lives and stories people have.
How I write	I Met 20 of The World's Greatest Writers. Here's What I Learned.	Good listen, took notes.
Lenny's Podcast	Making time for what matters | Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky (authors of Sprint and Make Time, co-founders of Character Capital)
Dwarkesh Podcast	Patrick Collison (Stripe CEO) - Craft, Beauty, & The Future of Payments	Interesting to see the kind of impact beyond Stripe that its founders are having - into Science Research, Book publishing.
How I write	Amor Towles: The Secret to Telling a Great Story	What a time to be alive when one can listen to the authors we love, on how they go about their craft.