I Got A Post Card From Norway

It feels as amazing as it sounds. I am unable to curb my excitement as I write this. You can be star struck by meeting amazing people, but you lose your vision when that amazing person leaves you a gift. That is exactly what happened with me today.

Unfortunately I don't have pictures of people to tell the tale but I will leave you a link later to check out the interview with Mr. Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner. Let's begin from the beginning. As always I was sitting at my desk, minding my own business reading some of today's newspapers from the pile lying next to my computer. Yes, that is part of my job, not leisure. In front of me the 10 channels we watch on big TVs were all showing election results. Donald Trump was close to winning. One of my colleagues noticed a couple of foreigners behind us and she let me know as well. The place behind us is where all the Firstpost live shoots happen. Initially we thought they were going to talk about the elections and got back to our work.

I looked again and noticed that the man didn't look American. Somehow you can tell apart a European from an American. Suddenly there was a notification on my phone. "Tech2 is live now" it said. Well, as usual I ignored the notification and walked straight to the shoot area, behind the camera. I am allowed to do that because well I am an employee. Bad joke. Nevertheless, I must admit I did not know the man being interviewed but I did read on the post that he was the founder of Opera and Vivaldi. All my college memories came to life when I read Opera. Opera Mini was a browser in every single handset with GPRS back then. I loved it. I adored it. There he was, the founder of Opera in front of me being interviewed by Tech2. I listened intently to the interview where he spoke about opera and the differences he had with the board there. He also spoke about Vivaldi and it's possibly the most innovative browser out there. I am not kidding. I told him this after the interview personally.

Well, the interview got over, I walked upto him, introduced myself and we spoke about Vivaldi too. By the way, the man is seriously tall. At a decent 178cm, I had to look up in order to look him eye to eye. He's from Iceland, one of my favourite countries, and those Scandinavians don't come in small sizes, which explains his height. Coming back to the conversation, we had a nice little chat for 5 minutes. We also talked about Trump who by this time had already won. I shook his hand 3 times. I was as dumb as it could get. I am in media, I need to get used to meeting the elites and here I was offering a hand shake thrice in 5 min. He was really humble throughout.

The conversation was over, I went back to my desk, got some work done and went for lunch. When I came back from lunch someone tapped my shoulder. It was Nash, the Tech2 guy who interviewed Jon. He gave me a bag and said that it was for me. The first thing I saw was the Vivaldi Post card. I knew this was a gift from Jon. I was ecstatic.

Let's see what I got:

The gift bag that was left for me.

The Postcard from Norway

The message on the postcard.

The things that came out of the bag.

Norway gave you Cheese slicer, Paper Clip, Vivaldi. I might have misplaced the gas turbine and fertiliser though.

Now that I have stopped going outside and meeting celebrities, I am getting the opportunities to meet them in office. Yesterday it was Sapna Bhavnani, once a week we see Rohan Gavaskar, and every other day I meet Ayaz Memon. Today it was the technology glamour day and I got to meet Jon. My day was successful. I must say this was a truly unique experience. A genius and innovator, a person who is actually trying to make your life easier by changing the browsing experience as you know it. The joy of meeting someone like that is far greater than the joy of meeting an actor.

With this note, I'd end my blog. Do watch the interview and try out the Vivaldi browser. No I wasn't paid to say that. I just loved it that much.

-Naimish Sanghvi