Monday, February 22, 2010

Short Stay Rentals

We're now in Indore, having completed our stint in Chennai. The plan is to stay here for around 1.5 to 2 months.

In Indore, we wanted a furnished place to stay in. We tried to find something in Indore from Chennai, but nothing was working out. However, on our first day here, we learned of a furnished apartment. A couple, who are distant relatives of a distant relative were visiting their son in Singapore and we could rent their 2 bedroom apartment. And it worked out. So this is the fourth city where we were fortunate enough to be able to find short-term accommodation.

As someone who cares about optimized resource utilization, it occurs to me that there must be 1000s of such homes and apartments that are kept locked up and being under-utilized. At the same time, there is a decent sized demand for these apartments. Someone should be able to figure out a way to tap into this and create a marketplace.

Monday, February 8, 2010

GatesNotes - A site worth visiting

I recently found out about this site – TheGatesNotes. In it, Bill Gates shares the things he’s reading, viewing, working on and thinking about. It is sort of like a blog, but it has a lot more material.

The whole site is very aesthetically laid out – with his travels, his reading and even several of his conversations shared with the readers.

Under the title “What I’m learning” I found out about The Teaching Company. Bill Gates endorses them with very high words of praise. I plan to check out the “Big History” course and the two economics courses he mentions when I get to the US later this year.

We live in good times, where a good majority of the readers of this blog can have access to the same materials (books, CDs, DVD’s) that the richest of the rich also consume.

On the 5th of Feb, he has posted another article about The Teaching company.

Do take a look at the GatesNotes site and see if anything appeals to you.

Thanks to Nandita P. for the pointer.