Curious Random Thoughts

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Cups_of_Tea In a time of war and killing, this book documents an unbelievable journey of one man’s mission of conquering Northern parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan through building children’s schools after a failed attempt to conquer K-2, the second highest mountain in the world and by far the deadliest. The story is very moving as Greg Mortenson tries to achieve the impossible with no knowledge of the language/customs of that part of the world and above all with almost no money in his pocket to start with. The mission to build a school in the village started as a way of saying thanks to his hosts in Baltistan who saved him from near death while he was climbing K-2. The narrative is very gripping with a lot of twists and turns. As I was more than half way reading through the book, I was so moved that I made the cardinal mistake of taking a break and searching for Greg Mortenson on the web. To my dismay I found several articles including the one f...

http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Shoe-Dog/Phil-Knight/9781501135910 Shoe Dog is a very well written memoir that I have read after a long time. I did not expect such an accidental and humble beginning for a company like Nike (formerly Blue Ribbon) as it always conjures up an image of a big multinational out to get its smaller competitors. Its fascinating to read about Phil Knight’s struggles selling Japanese Tiger shoes and his cat and mouse game against the Tiger management. He provides great insight into the perennial cash flow problems at Nike which surprisingly contributed to the success of Nike and how they developed their own shoe when they saw the writing on the wall partnering with the Tiger management. There is a great story of a near death experience for the company when they received a $25 million bill from the U.S. Customs Service at a time when their sales were just as much; all because of under-handed practices by their competitors at that time. For those of you w...