Blowin' In The Wind

What ails Steve Jobs?

Two people familiar with Steve Jobs’ current medical treatment said he was not suffering from a recurrence of cancer, but a condition that was preventing his body from absorbing food, reports the New York Times. Doctors have also advised him to cut down on stress, which may be making the problem worse, these people said.

Jobs, 53, recovered from pancreatic cancer after surgery in 2004, but has appeared unusually gaunt at recent appearances.

Worryingly, Mayo Clinic endocrinologist Michael D Jensen told the Wall Street Journal:“Most hormonal problems are eminently treatable. (But) I would be hard pressed to think of something (other than a recurrence) that would require a five month leave of absence.”

Jobs, in a staff letter, said he was taking medical leave till the end of June because "I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought".

In June last year, when Jobs appeared strikingly thin at a company conference for programmers, an Apple spokeswoman said he was recovering from a “common bug.” Soon afterward, Jobs acknowledged to the New York Times that he was suffering from digestive difficulties related to an operation he had as part of his cancer treatment. Apple revealed in early January that Jobs was suffering from a hormone imbalance that was impeding his body's ability to absorb certain proteins. recalls CNET News.

Jobs, in his staff letter, said he was passing day-to-day management of the company to his chief operating officer, Tim Cook, reports the Wall Street Journal. But he added:" As CEO, I plan to remain involved in major strategic decisions while I am out." Cook filled in for Jobs in 2004 when the Apple chief took time off to battle his cancer.

"Apple loses billions"

Apple shares dropped sharply in after-hours trading, reports the New York Times. VentureBeat notes:

At 4:46pm, before Jobs’ announcement was made public, Apple’s stock stood at $85.60-a-share. By 5:00pm just after the announcement hit, the stock had plummeted nearly 10 percent to $78.44-a-share. That’s almost $6.4 billion lost off the company’s market cap in 14 minutes.

The stock actually fell even further after the initial plunge, by 5:08pm it was at $77.94-a-share. Since then, it’s come back a bit, and currently stands just a tad above the $80-a-share mark — still well below where it ended the trading day.

Cook: "The guy who makes trains run on time"

Cook is thought to be a good choice to run the company during Jobs’ absence, although he’s not the person who will develop Apple’s next iconic product, said Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates, reports Macworld.

“Tim Cook’s the guy who makes the trains run on time. He’s not the creative genius,” Kay said. “Even though in some sense he is an excellent manager and is the backstop for Steve … that’s not going to do anything except make the trains run on time. That’s not going to decide what the train should look like in five years.”

Cook, who majored in industrial engineering at Auburn University in Alabama and did his MBA at Duke University, joined Apple in 1998 after stints at Compaq Computer Corp. and other companies. He put Apple's operations back on track and is considered to be the key architect behind the company's supply chain and logistics strategy that allows the company to efficiently outsource the manufacturing of its products in Asia.

Jobs and his designers

Jobs' health is key to Apple, reports the Wall Street Journal. He co-founded Apple in 1976, was dismissed in a boardroom coup in 1985 and began a second leadership stint at Apple in 1997. He is widely credited for reviving the then-struggling computer maker in the late 1990s with hit products such as the iMac desktop computer.

While Jobs takes an unusual hands-on role in design decisions, people familiar with the company's inner workings say the company's design team should be able to keep churning out innovative products, barring an exodus of top talent, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Jobs serves more like an "editor in chief" in refining and improving ideas for Apple gadgets, according to former Apple executives such as Bill Bull.The hands-on work of Apple's innovations depends more directly on subordinates such as Jonathan Ive, an Apple senior vice president who oversees the company's industrial design team. His group is primarily associated with the physical look and feel of products, such as the unusually slender Macbook Air.

Jobs on death

Jobs has publicly talked before about how the prospect of death spurs him on, the Journal adds. In a commencement speech he gave at Stanford University in June 2005, Jobs told the crowd that "no one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share."

He added, "Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life."

The Jobs email

Greetings of the season

A merry Christmas and a happy New Year. I am off on a holiday to Calcutta (Kolkata) today for the 12 days of Christmas. Hope to be online again in the second week of January.

Walk the line

I won't get to see my son when I go to Calcutta (Kolkata) tomorrow to spend a few days with my wife and our parents. He is at his college in America. When I last saw him, he played this song for me on his iPod. My wife and I were travelling with him from London to a university where he did a semester late last year. He was listening to music. I knew he listened to some of the music I liked. So we ended up sharing the earphones. And he played this song. Johnny Cash singing I Walk The Line. It's one of the greatest love songs I have ever heard, almost on a par with my all-time favourite, If Not For You by Bob Dylan.

I was moved by the music and sharing that moment with my wife and my son. We spend so little time together. She teaches at a college in Calcutta. He is in America. I am in Singapore. So, before leaving for Calcutta tomorrow, let me recall that moment when the three of us were together.

I also found videos of a younger Johnny Cash singing I Walk The Line, but this is the one I liked best. The voice and the lyrics give me the goosebumps. Here are the lyrics:

Going home

"Gimme a ticket for an aeroplane
Ain't got time to take a fast train
Lonely days are gone, I'm a-goin' home
My baby, just-a wrote me a letter"

The words are from The Letter the Box Tops are singing below, which is perfect for the occasion.

Nobody wrote me a letter, but, yes, I am going home tomorrow to be with my wife and our parents in Calcutta (Kolkata). So no more blogging until I return to Singapore early next month. I won't to get to see my son, though. He is at his college in America. He didn't come home for his summer holidays this year, working as an intern instead at an office about an hour's drive from his college.

I will be flying to Calcutta by Air India Express for the first time. My wife came by Air India Express when she visited me at the end of May. Normally I fly with Thai Airways because Singapore Airlines is too expensive. But flying Thai means changing flights at Bangkok. Now that Air India Express has launched direct flights between Singapore and Calcutta, it's really good for people like me. Our only options earlier were to

• Fly Thai and transit at Bangkok,
• Fly with Bangladesh Biman and change planes at Dhaka -- which no one in our family has ever done -- or
• Take the Singapore Airlines' direct flight to Calcutta and pay through the nose.

My wife used to fly with Singapore Airlines because changing planes in Bangkok is a bit of a bother. She found the Air India Express service quite all right. So, here I go. As for The Letter, this is how the song goes:

Why is God beautiful?

Rambling Librarian tells me that Gandhi said celibacy made his marriage better. This was apropos of one of my earlier posts where I asked what is marriage without sex. Well, Gandhi, for all his greatness, hardly gave unalloyed happiness to his wife and children.

Not everyone can be as ascetic as Gandhi. We have heard, of course, of sacred and profane love. But is such a dichotomy really possible? When I posed that question about marriage and sex, I was really thinking of love and happiness. And what is love and how do we express it? Through a touch, an endearment. When I think of my wife, who is in Calcutta (Kolkata) while I work in Singapore, I see her face, hear her voice -- I see her as a woman, not as an abstraction.

We are ordinary people who enjoy music, movies and good food, things that appeal to our senses. We are sensual by nature.

Isn't that why we beautify churches, temples and mosques?

Have we ever seen an ugly Jesus Christ or a dowdy Mother Mary?

Why do the faces of Hindu gods and goddesses radiate beauty and serenity?

Why is Buddha so calm and serene?

We love beauty that is palpable, tangible, physical.

It is sanctioned by the scriptures.

We Hindus happily celebrate the love of Radha and Krishna, worship the Shiva linga, have our erotic sculptures in ancient temples.

There is eroticism in the Bible, too, in the Song of Solomon. That is said to be an allegory about the relationship between Christ and the church, between Christ and the individual believer.

If that is so, it is hardly unusual. Hinduism too encourages believers to love gods and goddesses with the same ardour. Even Islam, perhaps a more austere religion, has its Sufis who sing their love of God with passionate abandon almost reaching a trance-like state.

Beauty is truth -- truth beauty, that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Those were the last lines of Keats in Ode on a Grecian Urn.

I don't want to know more.

All I want is the warmth of love and happiness.

My wife arrives in Singapore

My wife flew in from Calcutta (Kolkata) yesterday to spend her summer holidays with me in Singapore now that her college has closed. She looked lovely in her new rimless glasses and a magenta silk sari. We will be together for three weeks.

We are meeting for the first time since October last year when we accompanied our son to Britain, where he spent a semester at a university.

He is now back in his college in America. He is spending the summer holidays working at a company about an hour's drive from his college. He last came home to Calcutta before going to Britain with us. We chat almost every day.

Now that my wife is here, I want to spend every moment of my free time with her.

There will be no more posts here until she returns to Calcutta in the third week of June.

Poems and maps

I just added links to a few pages I created. Neither the Google Maps nor the poems are mine. I added the maps because Calcutta (Kolkata) is my hometown and Singapore where I am now. And the poems happen to be particular favourites of mine. Clicking on the horizontal tabs at the top of the page will lead to the maps and the poems. (And so will the links underlining those two words.)

Day Bath

Valentine's Day isn't complete for long-married couples like me and my wife without the significant other in our lives. My wife in Calcutta (Kolkata) loved this poem when I read it out to her over the phone from Singapore. Both of us were thinking of our son, now in college in America. This poem took us back in time when he was a baby and loved being bathed by his mum.

Day Bath

By Debra Spencer

Last night I walked back and forth,
his small head heavy against my chest,
round eyes watching me in the dark
his body a sandbag in my arms
I longed for sleep but couldn't bear his crying
so bore him back and forth until the sun rose
and he slept. Now the doors are open,
noon sunlight coming in,
and I can see fuchsias opening.
Now we bathe. I hold him, the soap
makes our skins glide past each other.
I lay him wet on my thighs, his head on my knees,
his feet dancing against my chest,
and I rinse him, pouring water
from my cupped hand.
No matter how I feel, he's the same,
eyes expectant, mouth ready,
with his fat legs and arms,
his belly, his small solid back.
Last night I wanted nothing more
than to get him out of my arms.
Today he fits neatly
along the hollow my thighs make,
and with his fragrant skin against mine
I feel brash, like a sunflower.

Technorati Tags: debra spencer,day bath,valentine

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! It's past midnight here in Singapore. I just spoke to my wife and my son in Calcutta (Kolkata).

He flew home before Christmas after spending a semester at a university in Britain.

He will return to America when his college reopens later this month.

My wife and I went with him to Britain in October. That's when I last saw him.

My wife and I flew back to Calcutta a month later, and then I returned to Singapore.

Of course, I miss them and speak to them whenever I can.

My wife has finally bought a computer and just got an Internet connection.

I wish we could be together again. I seldom blog about my family now. But they are always on my mind and I had to start the new year by chatting with them and writing about them.

I am staying up to wish them a happy new year all over again an hour from now when the clock strikes midnight in Calcutta.

Changi and Heathrow

Heathrow needs a third runway for Britain's continued prosperity as a world financial centre, the Guardian reported yesterday quoting Gordon Brown. Heathrow needs more than a new runway from my experience last month when I flew to London with my wife and my son. He is spending this semester at a university in Britain and will return to his college in America early next year.

We flew with Air India from Calcutta (Kolkata) to London. Heathrow is overpowering in its vastness and impersonality. The underground corridors we had to walk through seemed interminable, ditto the queues at immigration. The officer at the counter, however, once we reached him, was friendly. A bearded Sikh gentleman from India who has lived in Britain for more than two decades, he waved us through in no time.

Friendly too was the driver of the private taxi waiting for us. He took us in a lift down to the carpark, helped us with our luggage and pointed out the sights as he drove us to our friend's house.

I didn't realise how inconvenient Heathrow can be until I was back at the airport again with my wife for our return flight to Calcutta. A friend dropped us off. But we couldn't just drive up to the terminal and alight at the kerb the way we do at Changi airport here in Singapore and Dum Dum airport in Calcutta. We had to walk quite a long way from the dropoff point. The busy traffic made things worse. Our friend couldn't wait with cars piling up behind him. We had to get out of the car and grab a trolley and push off fast. Luckily, there were two of us. My wife could keep an eye on the luggage while I got the trolley.

As we walked to the airport terminal, the traffic and the crowd reminded me of the Howrah and Sealdah railway stations in Calcutta. But not even the bustle outside prepared me for the scene inside -- it was so crowded. I thanked my lucky stars we were flying to Calcutta and not to Bombay. The queue for the Air India Bombay flight snaked so long the head was hardly visible from the tail.

But I was impressed by the politeness of the airport staff and the security people and the order they maintained. The security checks proceeded smoothly, which seemed amazing considering the sheer number of people involved. The only place where I have seen so many airline passengers is O'Hare in Chicago, and there too the checks were smooth and efficient, but it's amazing all the same.

After the checks, of course, we had to cool our heels for the boarding gates to open. It was good we could rest our feet, for when the gates did open, we had to take another long walk. We had to walk for almost 20 minutes according to the TV monitor in the waiting lounge showing the distance to the gates.

The little airport in Calcutta seemed so pleasant after the vastness of Heathrow. As usual, we had to wait a long time to get our luggage; Calcutta isn't the most efficient of airports, but it's not big and impersonal.

And now I am back in Singapore. My wife is in Calcutta, my son in Britain. Much as I miss them, I must admit there's a lot to appreciate about Singapore -- not least of all, its airport. I didn't have to walk a long way to the immigration counter. My suitcases arrived smoothly, shortly after I reached the baggage carousel. I could push the trolley all the way to the taxi stand just outside the arrival lounge. Changi airport is designed for happy landings.