news that brought smile

After ages i think after seeing the 1st page of today's TOI (pune edition), I must have have smiled while reading. For a change, today's front page didn't have any news about politics, murky presidential elections, scams, rape, murder or any other depressing news. Today's main news items were all about determination. It was all about the light at the end of a dark tunnel. The news items were about SSC results in the state and the main headlines were dominated by girls from the backward & poor community who have scored over 95% or so and topped their categories in the state results. Children of vegetable sellers, of shop helpers who against all odds managed to shine. Children with ambitious dreams. Children who know that the road ahead now is even difficult but they & there parents are leaving no stones unturned to see that they fulfill their dreams.

On 2nd thoughts...

Had I not quit advertising...

I wouldn't have met some wonderful people in my next company like Ekta, Tanuj, Shalini, Amit who would go on to become an integral part of my life.

Wouldn't have had a chance to scale the treacherous route to Leh with amit & that too on a bike.

Wouldn't have got the opportunity to leave Delhi forever and come to Mumbai (the city that I once hated the most to relocate) - where i spent the best 3.5 years of my life and made some new friends.

Wouldn't have had the chance of going on site to UK and gain good experience (and in the process also save a bit for my car's down payment!)

And lastly, wouldn't have been posting this blog from the newest city that i am residing in for the past 1 year - Pune.

So whatever happens, I guess happens for good. :)

My advertising days...

Was watching Pranaya Roy on his programme - 60 yrs of Indian Destiny on Sunday. This time he was covering advertising. The panel of guests were Prasoon Joshi, Aleque Padamsee, Piyush Pandey & Prahalad kakkar. As they talked and discussed the history of advertising, showcasing various old & new ads, I was reminded of my days in advertising. My memorable 2.5 years of association with Contract - as copy trainee & Crayons Advertising as a copy guy. The time of my life I had there. The highs that me & my art partner used to get after creating campaigns which we knew might never get printed but can get us jobs in other agencies (in advtg. lingo we used to call it portfolio ke liye ads.), the kicks that i got after I saw my 1st printed ad (it was a shaving cream ad in a Chandigarh local newspaper), the crazy, wild things we used to do at office & team parties. I remember once after a heavy boozing session, we ran out of stocks and then at 1 am in night we went to local bootlegger who supplied some desi stuff and what kicks we had! A small dose of it was enough for satish - our client servicing team guy to make a call at 2 am in the morning to one of our leechad client and puke out all choicest maa-behen abuses :) Then the time when me, Vishal (a budding body builder & client servicing guy) and my art guy - Ashish went on a holiday to nanital, got drunk & bashed up a guy who was irritating us at telephone booth, next day when senses dawned upon us - packed up and escaped from nanital to Mussoorie (those of you who are familiar with that part of the world can realise the distance we covered - and that too in state transport buses where even animals travel in the bus with passengers!) so that we don't get lynched by that bashed up guy's friends :) And why Mussoorie? Coz the bombshell of our office - a girl called Sonal was vacationing there and we thought she would like to have company of 3 smart looking men :)


Then i remember recording my 1st radio jungle and how I rulaoed the producer & voice over artist ( a sweet babe from Gurgaon) to squeeze my script and record it within 30 secs. The kicks that i got after hearing the jingle on radio for the 1st time.

And yes, how can i forget to mention about Prasoon Joshi who once appreciated my TVC film ideas which i shared with him when i had gone for my O&M interview. It so happened that I was showing my portfolio to an ACD in O&M and Prasoon stepped into his room. Suddenly the light went off. As we waited for the generators to start, the ACD asked if I had worked on any TVCs, which i said yes and shared few of my TVC storyboards. Both of them found the ideas humorous and Prasoon even commented that 'you have a good thinking mind'. I even made through the O&M interview but stinking politics of a CD who had just joined the agency saw me left out and that was the turning point in my decision to quit advertising.

But yeah..I do miss my advertising days.

Sarkar Zindabad

Just caught up with Sarkar again on Filmy. Can't help but shower praises for Abhishekh's mesmerizing performance. The powerful dialogues & screenplay make it worth watching each time it comes on TV.

Think Flat

These days I am reading the Annual Report of Infosys. Why I am stressing on 'reading' is coz the annual report is no less than a good reading material. Titled 'Think Flat', it takes off where Thomas Friedman left in his best seller book - The World is Flat. The initial few sections including the in depth interview with nandan nilekani reveals how Infy is creating exciting, winning opportunities in this flat world. Those of you who have not read the book, would recommend you to read it. It gives a good insight of the dynamics of global economies and how they have adapted themselves in this new world without boundaries that we are living in.

This Blog is rated PG-R

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My few minutes of online fame :P

There is a site called BlogInterviewer.com. They conduct interviews with the most interesting bloggers on the Internet. My blog is also present there.

Click on this link to go through the interview.

Map of online communities

(click to enlarge)

Source: http://xkcd.com/c256.html

Why I want to watch Shivaji

I am no Tamilian. Neither a kannada. Heck, I don't even know whether Shivaji - The Boss, the Rajnikant movie is a kannada or a telgu movie. For me, everything down south is uniform, no divisions based on caste or languages. And as some of my friends from South would vouch, the feeling is mutual :)

Yet i want to watch Shivaji - The Boss. The only reason why i want to watch is that it stars Rajnikant. The great rajnikant. The only person on this planet who can give Newton a run for his theories. Ok, make that 2nd person on the planet (how can I leave out Mithun da).

Sample the latest stunt from his movie. Rajni has a gun in his hand and he wants to shoot someone down. Now the other person is not within his shooting range. So what does he do? He throws the gun in that goon's direction. The gun whizzes in the air in that goon's direction, the trigger gets fired automatically, the fire is shot, the goon dies and that's not all. Like a boomerang the gun comes back in Rajni's hand. Mission accomplished.

Tell me honestly. How can language be a barrier when you have stunts like these in movies. For me, if i go for the movie, my paisa vassool would be just watching this stunt. :D

Soon to arrive, new kid on the block....

Take a hard look at him.

Next time when you see him, he might be signing autographs at crosswords. Meet Anil Goel. A good friend's hubby, which makes him my good friend too. No, make that my best pal, my langotiya yaar, my Veeru. Why the extra makkhan? Coz that's what I would be parroting in first half of 2008 when the dude releases his maiden novel :D

You can get to know more of him on his personal blog.

But on a serious note, I really feel inspired by his new venture. Of what i know of him, his hectic corporate life has been keeping him endlessly busy (he handles an investment banking account for a leading MNC IT consulting firm in Mumbai) and still finding time to follow up on your passion , your dream - that's motivational stuff, at least for me. One of my closest friend, who knows me better than I do myself had been egging me to take the next step ahead and pen down a book or something. She knows i have the flair for it and can make up for a good read. Even I have been nursing the desire to write something and have started sketching few ideas - but the lazy bum that i am, have always found refuge under the pretext of being loaded with work or have parked that thought somewhere at the back of mind. The trouble is that when it goes in the store room, chances are it gets covered with cobwebs and gets forgotten until one day, someone comes with a broom ( in this case the dude in the pic) and cleans the room up.

Now have to make sure it remains that way.

why hutch why?

Why hutch why?

Why do you always come up with one brilliant concept after another? Why do you make ads. that are so refreshingly different and stand out from the clutter, always. Why do you put your heart & soul into even chut-put promo ads. Why can't you make those ooooh- so -aaam adami - feel good Airtel kinda ads? Why can't you make those 'Yeah to bada toing hai toing hai' kind of ads?
Take for instance your Eskimo ad. Instead of showing those Eskimos coming from different part of the country and assembling in a location and heading to a house, as a bedazzled man looks at them and realizes it's his own doing (and then focus on the Live search feature on Hutch phones), why couldn't you just show it direct in the face. At least that would have saved the Eskimos the trouble of coming from different parts of the world and more importantly, saved me the trouble of stopping by any channel to watch the ad. knowing the fact that the programme that I want to watch on some other channel has already started.

Don't do it Hutch. Your advertising has already reached where Sunita Williams spent past so many months. Now which other level do you want to elevate it to?

The cat & the baba...

On sunday night while I was just about to sleep, I heard my mom screaming in her sleep. It seems she was going through some bad nightmare. We all rushed to the room and woke her up. Badly shaken, she woke up, didn't say much and then went off to sleep again.

Next day she told us that she saw a black cat in her dream and the cat was stalking her. usually whenever she has seen the black cat in her dreams, something good had happened. Like she told us that before I was born, a day or two before that, ahem...she had seen the cat. So, a good omen, but for what? We didn't know.

We then headed for an appointment with our lawyer. We had to show him the draft copy of our agreement papers before heading to the builder's office for final submission of demand drafts and completion of other formalities. After the meeting, we had a quick breakfast at a small cafe nearby. Just when we were planning to leave, a sadhu baba dressed in the garb of Sai baba approached us and asked us if we could spare some food for him. Now me being me, I don't really entertain sadhus, especially ones who beg. But my dad belongs to a different breed. He took out his wallet to offer him some money, but the sadhu refused the money and requested if we could feed him with something. So stuck with the unusual request, dad asked him to step in the cafe and told the waiter to serve the sadhu with a plate of vada sambhaar. My dad, who himself is a staunch believer of sai baba, in someway felt that perhaps it was god himself in disguise or else when do you come across fakirs & babas who refuse money. Not thinking too much about it, we reached the builder's office.

The marketing lady before getting down to start the formalities gave an offer to us. She said that just yesterday someone had canceled his booking (which was made about a month back) and the rate that was offered to that person was Rs. 25 less than our negotiated final rate. She said if we wanted, she can pass on that rate to us. A quick calculation and we realised with the new rate, it would mean a saving of over Rs.28,000 to us. An unexpected gift like this, who can say no! Just 2 weeks back we had spent over 5 hrs to negotiate and cut down rates by over 3 lakhs. A rupee more of rate cut was met with stiffest of resistance. And here within 2 minutes we got a further discount of over 28k. After completing the formalities , happily we stepped out.

The events that took place ysday night and today morning played in my mind and b4 even I could say anything, mom & dad voiced it. The cat + feeding the baba = unexpected savings

The rational side of me cannot accept it. But somewhere in back of my mind, I can't discount it either.

some blogcamp pune snaps

@ registration table


Melody making her presentation



Melody again




Lunch by the poolside

Abhishekh from SMS Gupshup does his act

some of the posters that greeted us

Pune BlogCamp -2

8.30 am - Kick in

Bloggers, both professional and waiting in the wings have started gathering at the registration counter. There is excitement in the air. No one knows what lies ahead. Volunteers pitch in for work that requires immediate attention. Registrations are done, T-shirts distributed and someone is around to take a snap of each participant not before they have worn it and displayed their name card in mug shot style.

10.00 am

Tarun sets the ball rolling. The hall is kind of full. Around 150 participants are there now. Lot of student community can also be seen. A general round of intros are made. Some keep it short & simple, others put in their marketing speel, which gets booed. There are some interesting characters around. For instance a person who introduces himself and tells the audience he does photo blogging and after a small pause informs he mostly shoots photos of his neighbours and posts it on his blog!!! Everyone breaks into a laugh and tease him about the place where he lives and give ideas on how he can increase traffic to his blog by doing live streaming/video casting of his neighbors ;-) The person sitting next to him gets up and introduces himself as his neighbor - again the audience breaks into laughter!!! There are some 'celebrity' bloggers also in the crowd. Prem Paniker of rediff.com (liked his Lord of the Strings tee) and Sakshi Juneja who in some way is unofficial PR agent of rakhi sawant make their presence felt. So popular is she on the blog space that she even had a stalker follow & harass her, which she shares in a discussion later in the day. Interesting to see that there are a few guys who have made blogging as their full time career and earn their bread & butter out of it! One of them even shares some of his trade secrets on how to popularize your blog in a session later. Then there is a guy who plans to start a blog for men without gfs!!! ;-) Over all, pretty interesting bunch of people and you know it would be one hell of a knowledge sharing & learning session.

10.30 am -5.00 pm

Lot of presentations are on the whiteboard. 2 Different threads are started. Some of the interesting thread that I attend include a presentation made by Purple Nova guy who has a product in market that turns your home PC into a hosting platform & there is no need to have a Ip address to host your stuff which means, no need to depend on a hosting provider for Ip address, space, other hosting needs etc. Blogging through SMS? Sounds mind boggling isn't it but if you believe the guys from SMS Gupshup, it's the next big thing and already it has picked up a lot. Btw, even i tried my hands on it and created my 1st virtual SMS blog, sitting there. Abhishek Thakkar's gigantic personality & his witty style of presenting the SMD Gupshup funda was hard to miss. More details about it can be found on their site. Oh btw, did I mention that the entire campus was wifi enabled. Many bloggers did live blogging from the campus. The signals were weak at times so many of us, including myself had a hard times logging in. Melody made an interesting presentation on flaming & how to tackle with it. There was another interesting discussion on podcasting and another one made by Niresh Kothari on how to popularize your blog. He is the same guy who runs around 15 blogs & website and has made blogging as his full time career. The guys from Fropper shared the concept of ezeblogging through their template driven blogging approach. Those who are new to blogging would find it very easy & useful. The Sulekha presentation didn't really go well with the audience, probably more to the fact that they were trying to 'hardsell' Sulekha as the best thing that happened around, which bloggers were not so ready to accept. Also the the fact that Sulekha branded themselves as web2.0 platform based site but couldn't respond back convincingly to the web 2.0 related queries that people had.

5.30pm - Kick out

experience sharing, feedback session and next steps were discussed. The knowledge sharing session was worth the day spent. Not to mention meeting so many people with diverse background and getting to know them. Looking fwd to the next Bar Camp now.

Uncorking@BlogCamp Pune

Some blogs are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and tasted.


The tone was all set for Blog Camp, Pune – the 1st of a kind initiative on the lines of Bar camp being held in Pune. What is it that brings so many people together on a single platform to collaborate through different channels to start up an ‘unconference’? What is it that drives people to use blogging as more than a collaborative tool, what it that makes people from as far as Bangalore to show up on a lazy Saturday afternoon to attend the sessions. Seeking answers to questions like these I landed up at Blog camp Pune which was held in SCIT (Symbosis College of IT), Hinjewadi, Pune. On the way, picked up a guy who was also planning to come for the event.

For the uninitiated, Blog Camp pune was a free unconference focusing exclusively on blogging, organized by bloggers for bloggers. It’s an ad-hoc unconference where people come together with no fixed agenda and topics are decided then and there itself. Depending upon the topics that people would like to discuss about and present, multiple threads run throughout the day and participants attend the topics of their interest. Lot of knowledge sharing happens.

My back has gone for a toss again so finding it very difficult to sit straight and write about it. So will be writing more posts about it tomorrow.

Na teri...na meri....

Shivraj patil
nahi
Bhairo Singh Shekhawat

Patil....
Shekhawat...

Patil....
Shekhawat....

Ok. Chal na meri na teri....

Pratibha Patil Shekhawat

happy?

How googled are you?

Read somewhere recently that in US, people like to name their new born babies with names that are google friendly. In other words, the names should easily appear in google if someone searches for it. Their concern - that everyone searches for records of people on the net and that they should not be left behind (wierdos).

Btw, how google friendly are you? Does your name tops the list? Is the result specific to the context? In my case, i have hijacked top 3 and half pages of results that appear if you type my full name. And yes, all results are in my context :)

I wanna talk n talk n talk Ms. Jolie

If I bump into Angelina Jolie, what will I do? I will just talk and talk and talk. Talk endlessly for the whole night, morning, evening and endless nights. Who wants to do any other things with her when you can simply talk.

Duh! Who wants to date a cartoon?

Sample this radio spot that's hogging the airwaves in Pune these days:

Girl 1: Hurry up we are getting late
Girl 2: hang on, tell me will this eyeliner shade look better or this?
Girl 1: (excited voice) What's up darling? Who is this new boy?

Girl 2: Jigar. The Official mascot for 2008 Youth Commonwealth Games.


My 1st reaction: Huh?!

I think it's a slap on the face of all men folks in Pune that instead of dating men, gals are now going out with cartoons. Not that they don't, but this time around a real cartoon character :D

I am sure some potbellied Director of DAVP (department of Audio Visual Publicity), sitting in his AC cabin would have conceptualized this gem of a radio spot and all his jonnies would have ensured that it is executed to the hilt.

Btw, the best part of the radio spot is Jigar talking at the end. He is supposed to be a 'tiger' but croons like donald duck. :D :D

Roti..Kapda and now another Makaan

The hunt for the house ends. Yesterday booked a 2 and half BHK (1222 1132 sqft) house. Will get possession in August 07. The apartment is located in Rakshak Nagar Gold - very close to Zensar office and strategically located near the MIDC IT park. So close, that it will take me 5 mins to walk up to my office! :D Can even see office building from one of my bedroom's drawing room. Though it used to take me on an average 1.5 hrs to reach home from office, but I will truly miss my stay at Aditya Shagun & Bavdhan locality which is more like a mini hill station.

Have posted a screenshot from Google earth to show where the apartment is located. The sattellite image is not updated as I can see only few buildings, but you can get an idea how close it is to my office.





PS: Calculated today.... the distance from apartment to office is .8 kms. :D :D :D