Pure Randomness
Hello Friends!
For this week—a time saving startup, some easy advice I should listen to more, and the subjective excellence of Dan Brown.
1. A Startup that Caught my Attention
Growing up in Pakistan and waiting in line to get your car fueled-up, especially when oil prices fluctuated,was an unavoidable reality. However, a fuel-delivery startup based out of Dubai called “Cafu,”, wants to make waiting in line a thing of the past.
Targeting both corporate and retail customers, Cafu makes it super-simple to order fuel for your parked car(s) through a few clicks in an app. According to their manual, all you need to do is “register your car in the app, open your fuel cap, and order a fill-up for a safe and convenient experience.” Cafu uses the backdrop of Dubai and its aspirations of being a smart and tech-forward city to build its customer base.
Photo Courtesy: Arabian Business
My take: Because public transport is still primitive in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region and companies still operate huge fleets of cars, I think Cafu could do well —provided it finds a price point that works well with corporations and retail.
2. An oft-repeated Advice I put into Practice
Never hurts to ask
This easy phrase seems so obvious yet, if you are like me, hard to put it into practice. Whether it’s extra condiments at a restaurant or a gadget with an expired warranty that we want to get repaired, we have probably all been in a position where we felt shy just asking for it.
Here’s what I learned this week: I have considered taking the GMAT multiple times in the past and already had an old prep course subscription that I’d paid $120 for a couple of years ago. Life happened, I never ended up taking the exam, and my subscription expired in March last year. Now, not only had the ticker price for a new subscription gone up to $250, my old subscription had been expired for 10 months. These two seemingly arbitrary points mentally convinced me that it was pointless to ask. Right on the verge of hitting the ‘Buy Now’ button it occurred to me to email and at least ask for a discount code or something, since I was a repeat customer. To my surprise here’s the response I received:
Moral of the story: Return that ill-fitted pair of jeans that you lost the receipt for.
3. An Author I always Enjoy Reading
Confession: we all have our guilty pleasures and mine is the author Dan Brown. Regardless of what people say about him or his writing style, I’ll shamelessly admit to thoroughly enjoying his books (okay, maybe not digital fortress as much,but you get the idea).
In his latest book, Origin, he pits creationism against science through the discovery of Edmond Kirsch, a brilliant futurist, who’s made a controversial discovery. In Kirsch’s words:
I am not exaggerating when I tell you that my discovery will have repercussions on the scale of the Copernican revolution.
But as you can imagine it’s Robert Langdon who needs to uncover that secret. Alongside the beautiful Ambra Vidal, who happens to be the fiancée of the prince of Spain!
Part of enjoying Brown is not taking him too seriously and enjoying the hyperbole his novels contain to add suspense to even the most ordinary of scenes.
Bonus: Brown has the uncanny ability to leave you fascinated with the places that his stories are based in to the point that you WANT to visit them. You can probably imagine why Barcelona’s currently top of my vacation list!
4. Shower Thoughts of the Week
Here are this week’s shower thoughts (via Reddit):
1. People who actually donate to Wikipedia are the real heroes of our time.
2. The more beautiful the kitchen is the harder it is to find the trash can
3. If the Mona Lisa was painted today, it would probably be completely ignored
That’s all for this week!
Cheers,
Rohail
More of one thing, less of the other? Comment here or reach out on Twitter (@rwk93) - Instagram (ro.khan)