vivek mayasandra

Take Flight Project Imagery + Future

17-05-2012

As you know, Take Flight‘s been a recent project of mine and I want to scale it. The idea is that the sky isn’t a limit, it’s the catalyst. It’s to take a new angle on air travel – away from all the bs of carry-on luggage fees, TSA patdowns and long lines to one which goes to the root of what it is – a way for people to experience the new, the awesome and the unique. The incredible people I’ve featured on the site so far have done just that and more.

Air travel is an insanely unique way of traveling. You fly thousands of feet up in the air with a mini-community of people all seated with you inside a big metal tube with one thing in common – a destination. But that community is made up of as many different stories as people on board – people who are flying to get away from something, who are going to meet someone for the first time, who are visiting relatives, who are going to launch a new business. It floors the fuck out of me.

I made this image as a reminder of the possibilities of stories that one flight can provide out of a picture I took at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport’s Terminal 2c early in the morning. Flights all around me were boarding for places as far flung as Delhi, Brazzaville and Douala, and the people I struck up conversations with during my two hours in the departures lounge were often awesomely unique – people who were going to do social development work in Congo, who were on a business trip to India, who were going to visit their boyfriend in Cameroon. Aviation inspiration, if you will, and perhaps some image-intensive branding for Take Flight going forward.

Asian written perspective

By: Vivek

16-05-2012

Culture, Design

What it says, for those who don’t want to read it:

IN EAST ASIAN CHARACTER WRITTEN LANGUAGES, THERE ARE NO SPACES BETWEEN WORDS. INSTEAD, THERE ARE STANDARD PUNCTUATION MARKS, MANY OF WHICH ARE THE VERY SAME AS THOSE USED IN WESTERN LANGUAGES, BUT SOME WHICH ARE EVER SO SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT. THE INTERESTING THING ABOUT CHINESE, JAPANESE AND KOREAN BEING WRITTEN IN THIS WAY IS THAT THE MAGNITUDE OF CHALLENGES IN FIGURING OUT WHERE A WORD ENDS AND WHERE ONE BEGINS IS ROUGHLY THE SAME AS FOR A READER OF A WESTERN LANGUAGE. BECOMING FAMILIAR WITH READING AND WRITING THIS WAY IS JUST A MATTER OF UNDERSTANDING THE CONTEXT OF WHAT’S BEING WRITTEN. I’M CURIOUS TO KNOW HOW MANY PEOPLE HAD VERY LITTLE DIFFICULTY READING THIS. MY GUESS WOULD BE MANY. THE ONLY REAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WHAT YOU’RE READING NOW AND ANY WRITTEN PIECE IN CHINESE IS THAT THIS IS WRITTEN IN INDIVIDUAL PHONETIC LETTERS WHILE CHINESE IS WRITTEN IN CHARACTERS. JAPANESE IS A MIXTURE OF LETTERS AND CHARACTERS AND KOREAN IS MADE UP OF CLUSTERED CHARACTERS.

JUST A LITTLE PERSPECTIVE.

Culturally integrative architectural design

By: Vivek

15-05-2012

Design, Globalism, Random thoughts

When I was a kid in middle school, one of the first pieces of software I got to play with was Home Design 3D, in which I got to choose walls, doors, roofs and interiors of houses. I’d spend hours after school designing the perfect house, and went out of my way to add unique (and oftentimes weird) features like pagoda-style roofs and red oxide flooring. It was a fantasy of mine to build a house that had all the coolest (or what I thought was cool back in 1999) features from cultures around the world.

Now we all know that the design of buildings is based on lots of factors – local landscape, surroundings, peoples’ preference and most importantly, practicality. What if there was a real estate development company that built homes (or any other buildings for that matter) on the principles of sustainability (which should be a given these days), as well as culturally integrative design?

I’d say a culturally integrative home/building is one that brings together features of different cultures to form a beautifully collaborative structure. Examples of culturally integrative architecture: many of the suburban homes in California, with the Spanish/Mexican tiled roofs, Pacific Northwest modern architecture, the Turkish Airlines’ lounge at Istanbul Ataturk Airport, the obscenely gorgeous resorts in Bali, and The Atlantis resort in Dubai for good measure.

While the focus on cultural integration is something of a personal obsession, I really do think this sort of design will become more prominent in the future, what with the ever-increasing rate of cultural and social mixtures around the world. And perhaps I’m totally wrong and culturally integrative design will take a back seat (and by back seat I mean a ride in the trunk) to other factors that determine architectural design.

Either way, the homes, buildings and interiors of our future are already starting to look different – I’m just saying I would love it if different involved a healthy splashy mix of regional, national and international design tastes.

If you admire someone, reach out to them

By: Vivek

15-05-2012

Drawings

Short note on minimalism

By: Vivek

08-05-2012

Life

There are prolific folks out there who’ve spoken about minimalism far more eloquently than I. Perhaps you’re familiar with the likes of Colin Wright, The Minimalists or Ev Bogue.

It was after reading their works that I felt semi-comfortable referring to myself as a minimalist, or an aspiring minimalist as-such. Before, I never really had a title for it, and only associated minimalism with things like zen-inspired interior design.

I’ve never been much of a stuff-keeper. When I graduated from college to Seattle for my first corporate job, I bought myself a car, some kitchen ware, and bedroom furniture. That was really it. During the 3.5 years I lived in Seattle, not a whole lot changed. At the very end of March, when I quit my job and moved to Michigan, I narrowed my physical belongings down to 3 backpacks. To be totally honest, it wasn’t that difficult. All it required was a razor-sharp answer to understanding why I wanted to do such a thing.

That answer lies in the grand strategy one would apply when assessing their life. In my case, current strategizing revolves a lot around doing work that matters to me, engaging in copious amounts of travel, spending time with loved ones, meeting new people and creating new experiences. Anything in life (right now at least) that doesn’t fit into these criteria is deemed purge-worthy. When I left Seattle, I sold my car and furniture, and gave up much of my clothes and kitchenware to Goodwill. They were simply un-strategic to keep for me.

The more challenging aspects of life in which minimalism can be applied are relationships and time. Writing about these will have to be reserved for another entry, but the gist is the same as that with the physical. Purge of that which isn’t valuable to you so that you’ll create openings for entry for those which ARE valuable to you – whether it be closing out of a toxic relationship with someone (romantic or otherwise), or spending the hours of your day doing that which makes you feel alive.

Conceptually, it’s all very simple. In practice, much harder. I personally haven’t mastered optimal time or relationship selection. But as that mastery continues to sharpen, the continued main thing to focus on is what’s important to you. Once that’s been clarified, getting rid of, acquiring, or best-using stuff, experiences or time becomes painless.

First iteration of a vision for the Take Flight project

By: Vivek

29-04-2012

Take Flight Project, Travel

I started Take Flight as a project to bring together stories of awesome people doing awesome things with the help of a plane ride. I’m feeling a strong need to take this idea further. Here are just a few thoughts of how I want to do that.

Travel indefinitely to places where tech/social/cultural innovation + development are happening
Connect people to opportunities to do work they love and is meaningful
Have it be a global experience

Just a couple ideas. Suggestions/thoughts?

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Time and environment in New York

By: Vivek

28-04-2012

Life, Projects, Travel, Work

New York City has always had a distant, but significant role in my life. Outside the doors of John F Kennedy International Airport’s Terminal 4 was where my mom and I first set foot on US soil. When my family lived outside Philadelphia in the early 90s, we’d drive into New York on a frequent basis to visit the closest family we had in this foreign land. As my parents sat in the front seat, arguing the basic points of the American society they were now a part of, I sat in the back, staring out the window at the strangely exciting mix of water, bridges, roads, towers and general urbania that stretched as far as the eye could see. The buildings of Manhattan were tall, the traffic was heavy and the tales I had heard from my dad of how people from all over this great big world come to this very city every day, were explosively captivating to my five year-old mind.

Last weekend, Sahana and I took off from Detroit Metro Airport on two different Boeing 737s off to the Big Apple with not many plans. This trip wasn’t quite the fleeting escape it had been last August, but rather the freeing, captivating and inspiring experience that was reminiscent of those early trips I’d taken in my childhood. I hate to fit so well into the stereotype of an outsider entering New York, but the vibrancy, energy, excitement, lights, action, people and all the other characteristics that make New York — well, New York — reverberated inside of me and excited the hell out of me.

Seeing a city like this, full of people, bustling with those trying to “make it” and plenty that have already made it, and many who are there for the ultimate urban experience, makes wonder what life must be like for these people. Sure, I’ve had my fair share of working hard and partying hard, but the utter scale of this city turns that concept into a legendary one.

But the most important thing that struck me about New York was how hard people there were working to make sure that their time in the city was full of value. From the fresh-off-an-Arik-Air-flight Nigerian cab drivers to the Chinese shop owners in Lower Manhattan to the new wave of Silicon Alley tech entrepreneurs, everyone spent their time doing what would bring them the most value. And it makes sense – NYC is a city of such endless opportunity and high costs of living that make it ridiculous to NOT work your ass off.

It’s not just time in New York that’s valuable though – it’s time everywhere. It’s just that New Yorkers are fed tough practicalities to deal with (for the First World) which make it absolutely necessary to do what you need to do to get ahead. Sometimes all this can take the form of a dog-eat-dog mentality, which isn’t my cup of tea (I prefer collaborative things or harmonious dog-eating), but all in all, it’s the environment that does the trick. And being in the environment of New York for 5 days was certainly an ass-kicking reminder to get up, start working and start moving things in the direction you want them to go in.

Today’s my 26th birthday and I have a great feeling about this year. I finally feel like I have my shit figured out to an extent, and I feel at ease with a vague idea of what my purpose here is what I’d like to get done. I’ve got a few ideas running through my head of ventures I’d like to create, projects I’d like to start, collaborations I’d love to do – all of which I’ll be sharing here soon. The trip to New York I just took was really a reminder to me that it’s the ass-busting work on these big ole ideas I have that’ll move them forward. And I’m certain a New York-style environment will see me again. Only time, and my actions, can tell.

What kind of an environment are you living and working in?

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Master fundamentals and focus on the big-picture

By: Vivek

19-04-2012

Business, Projects, Work

A lot of the work I’ve been following of people online these days emphasize location independence, freedom businesses and the core levels of entrepreneurship. I’ve met many of these people I admire – and they’re all brilliant.

One thing I’ve noticed very clearly about all these people is a sense of groundedness and strong sense of trust in their abilities. They’re people who’ve pulled together before, delivered results before, gotten shit done before. And keep in mind that the vast majority of these “befores” took place in more traditional settings – school, college, traditional corporate jobs.

It’s not news to anyone that people (for the most part) don’t like working in a constricted corporate environment. But what I think some people tend to overlook is how important it is to have the ability to succeed even in that type of an environment (at least in the beginning). Here’s an analogy: when we were kids, we learned math the hard way, on paper, using techniques like “carrying over” and shuffling numbers around to create equations and solve problems. It was only after that, that we were handed calculators to make the process easier and speed things up.

Learning something the hard way (in this case, working in a traditional environment and learning long-hand division) is often times a wonderful prerequisite for doing things the smarter way (working for yourself and using a calculator). The fundamentals of how to do the very basics get rooted – for example, how to draft a short email, basic business terminology or how to approach a client, and since those things are taken care of, more effort, energy and focus can be applied to delve into the big-picture goals.