Oreos and then some!

Munching Oreos sans milk and working on a paper... thats how I became friends with Aishwarya... a name alienated from her now that shes Oli for me!

Over a homemade meal of Manchurian and that sailor game (whatever it was called), it was time for Kunal and Parth to bear me!

[Queer how everything in my life revolves around food, work and clothes! :P]

And henceforth began a nice tale... Grumpy Kunal... Hyper Oli... The-Grinch-Smile Parth... Breaks at Arcus and Jhaji... Lots of them... Very frequently... Legal and illegal night outs... Movies... (N)ever materializing plans... The night at CTC sans Oli... Lots of sweet memories... which form an inseparable part of my happy moments!

Its a shame I didn't interact with you earlier... but wonderful that I atleast did! :P

Cheers, dost log! :)

Kalyug :O

6 minutes

10:07 PM manojit: inaperfectworld kya hai?

me: ahhh

well... some threads start on twitter

some syntax hain twitter ke

RT = retweet

10:08 PM manojit: ohh

me: #topic

manojit: baad mein ill samjho

me: for these threads

haan so inaperfectworld was a thread

10:09 PM manojit: dis chap posted dat hez waitin in a queue 2 get trasformers 2 ke muvee tikts

kya ho chuka hai yaar

me: :)

manojit: ev1 is a slave 2 d internet

me: its a min by min update

yes

:)

wake up

THIS is the matrix!!

:)

wow

manojit: i knw

me: kya liner maara hai maine

manojit: u shd keep it as a status msg

10:10 PM pretty true

me: :)

manojit: the computer is the agent smith

me: :)

i'll write a post on this too

manojit: cocoa bean?

10:11 PM me: chocolate

:)

this was written outside the lindt choc cafe in aus

manojit: :)

10:13 PM u can UNfollow ppl also na?

10:14 PM me: yeah

10:15 PM manojit: cool cool...bcz i dnt think i'd like 2 follow ppl who update evry second of deir life

me: lol

The 121ers

This post comes way too late for the fantabulous time I've spent with the best possible people on the planet!... on the day I meet them the last time as a non-working person...

There are a few lines from the Scrubs episode "My Finale" which when I first heard reminded me of you all... Kancha, Pondi, Bala, Lord, Tony, Akank, Bhasin, Shreya, Tiny, Biyani... and here they are...

"Endings are never easy. I always build them up so much in my head, they can’t possibly live up to my expectations, and I just end up disappointed. I’m not even sure why it matters to me so much how things end here."

And here it was... doing what we did best.. MBA... Movies (and TV shows), Bakar and Alcohol... Getting into the entire mood of nostalgia... I try to recall how I started interacting with you all...

Kancha...

Day 0: the guy in that awesome Guess T-shirt!

Day today: That awesome friend who beats me at being spoilt! And who still doesn't know directions!

Pondi...

Day 0: that guy from my CL batch!

Day today: That friend who is amazing... and an integral part of my life... and my sole partner in the maximum-marginal-increase-in-weight-since-joining-MDI!

Bala...

Day 0: that guy on the dome with Akanksha

Day today: My docile teddy bear :)

Akank...

Day 0: that female with whom I share lots of common friends

Day today: that friend whos mostly lost.. but is still there

Lord...

Day 0: That studious guy from Sec C

Day today: That old man (and his scorpio) who has been an awesome part of vellaness

Bhasin...

Day 0: that guy who talks a lot in the OCPS class

Day today: that foodie friend with whom the coveted foodie day is pending!

Tony...

Day 0: that insane mallu

Day today: that insane mallu friend who deserves the best!

Shreya...

Day 0: that sweet girl who is fond of spending time on the dome

Day today: that awesomely sweet friend who I shall never forget

Biyani...

Day 0: that guy with common tastes as Akank

Day today: that dancing southie-at-heart uncle who is "brilliant"

Tiny...

Day 0: that girl who talks a lot

Day today: that friend who talks at a rate of 74 words per 30 sec and has been a hell of a shopping partner

To us! To friendship and good health!

Cheers :)

The Indian Ostrich

Excerpts from the book "Maximum City":

Long before the millennium, Indians such as the late prime minister Rajiv Gandhi were talking about taking the country into the twenty first century, as if the twentieth century could just be leapfrogged. India desires modernity; it desires computers, information technology, neural networks, video on demand. But there is no guarantee of a constant supply of electricity in most places in the country. In this, as in every other area, the country is convinced it can pole-vault over the basics; develop world-class computer and management institutes without achieving basic literacy; provide advanced cardiac surgery and diagnostic imaging facilities while the most easily avoidable childhood diseases run rampant; sell washing machines that depend on a non-existent water supply from shops that are dark most hours of the day because of the power cuts; support a dozen private and public companies offering mobile phone services; drive scores of new cars that go from 0 to 60 in ten seconds without any roads where they might do this without killing everything inside and out, man and beast.

It is a very optimistic view of technological progress – that if you reach for the moon, you will somehow, automatically, span the inconvenient steps in between.

Just a Tweetle bit more!

"Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup, they slither wildly as they slip away across the universe..."

Having seen the user base of Twitter quadruple over a period of inactivity from 8mn to 32mn, I gave a final attempt at tweeting or microblogging, as the phenomenon urges to be described by its creators Biz Stone, Ewan Williams and Jack Dorsey. And whoa! I am addicted... to reading random articles on random topics... posted by people, bots, companies and everything possible.

A few months back while registering on Twitter, repelled by the its GUI, I'd thought who would every want this... typing 140 characters to describe what track you're listening to, or on which road you're stuck in a jam... Do we really need this kind of information traversing through the space?

From an article I read online: "Are we really becoming a nation of people who reflexively share information with everyone the minute we have it? We might be. Twitter has no choice but to hope so. They might be right."

With a forceful attempt, I welcomed the social media that is supposed to change the way organizations think, breathe, talk! And gradually, I learnt the art and science of leaving a strand of your thought into the universe, and processing zillion other bits that I receive as a consequence of following others.

Where does all this lead to? How does a platform such as Twitter earn its revenues? Would selling of official users to organizations such as Coca Cola and Starbucks give it the leverage to be what its hyped to be?

Being a novice in this domain, I am obviously not as well read as a zillion other people on the planet... but I feel the players are already in motion... the stage for the fantabulous domino effect is already set... the revolution would come the day local marketing doesn't remain local in this transmission of messages, but via Twitter... to the consumer base "following" the organizations... When consumer research is conducted on the followers of the brand (the demographic aspects of Twitter are already built in)... When a huge mass of users would look forward to tweeted news (I, in the past few days, have already started doing that!)...

Its almost like the scenario in Matrix, when Neo is caught between the two worlds at the mercy of the Trainmaster. You need to be on this Twitter train to get to the other world... the future of marketing and communication that lies ahead!

This is what the power of "what are you upto" can lead to in the next 2-3 years... which will be, no doubt, very exciting times for marketers and consumers alike.

The following is an image I came across in an ebook on social media and marketing. Just pondering at the expanse of the platforms available for a single purpose: to talk! Such is the innate desire of us homo sapiens to communicate :)

Its too late to be a pessimist!

The after effects of some movies do hit you hard... The two major ones for me have been Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and Yann Arthus Bertrand's Home... The contrast between the magical photography and the terrifying message struck me hard.

This 5th of June I went to bed thinking what I could do.

We all have a role to play in the entire game... but before that begins, its important that the issues dawn upon us.

Before I get onto that... the broadcast of Home was a phenomenon in itself... Youtube progressing from promoting classics to broadcasting a 90 odd minute long movie on the website.. one of the main channels of broadcasting the "free" movie, which has been a good marketing effort from the PPR group, outside Europe and the US.

As an individual, I don't know to what extent I can aid in resolving the issue of the catastrophe created by our species. Suggestions and opinions on that part are invited.

A few links I browsed through while the after-effects phase is lasting:

http://goodplanet.org/

http://www.stopglobalwarming.org/

http://www.thebigask.com/

In the end it seems that Agent Smith's words had been very apt: "Human beings are a disease. A cancer to this planet."

Song in my head this week

Audioslave's Be Yourself

Someone falls to pieces
Sleepin all alone
Someone kills the pain
Spinning in the silence
To finally drift away
Someone gets excited
In a chapel yard
Catches a bouquet
Another lays a dozen
White roses on a grave

To be yourself is all that you can do
To be yourself is all that you can do

Pilot v 2.0

Its been a long long slumber. Having shrugged off writing for a few months now, I can't any longer choose to ignore some recent events which point towards my inactivity at my blog.

The questions pertaining my blog have been genuine, I must comment. A few FAQs:

1. Why don't you write anymore?

uhhhhh... :|

2. If you don't want to write, why don't u just delete the URL? Would spare Google of all the crawling.

uhhhhh... :|

The other ones... well I just ignore them and go ahead with what I want to do. Though today, I really feel like writing...

Hence, attempt at reviving the blog is on.

As always, it would be a amalgamation of my thoughts and my dreams :)