Year: 2008

  • A Matter of Time

    He knew people changed, but this change astounded him. The last time he’d seen the guy he was just an acerbic old man who growled more than talked and hated the concept of love. But now he was a young man who seemed kind, just and fully in love. Maybe it was just father time!!

    until next time, chota akbar 🙂

  • Hide and Seek

    ..and some embrace the world in all its flamboyance, exploring each and every pore for all its worth. Some retreatinto self made shells or spaces where no one can find them, literally or virtually. Some of us succeed in losing ourselves, some of us in finding ourselves, and the unfortunate ones fall in between.


    until next time, where art thou?

  • Stan is young

    Does that make sense? At least as much sense as Youngistan? Unless you’ve been living in outer space, you couldn’t have missed Pepsi’s latest TVC featuring *hold your breath* *Bhansali meets Farah* a combo package of Bollywood’s latest finds – D Pad and R Kap. Hey, ain’t i allowed to use youth lingo? :D. In fact, if you’ve been in outer space, there are better chances of catching the resident of Youngistan.

    This blog has been a fan of Pepsi, and the blogger had a huge attack of guilt followed by remorse when he equated the earlier work of Pepsi (My can, featuring John and SRK) to some customisable toilet devised by Pepsi. He couldn’t even blog about it till now. But we digress.

    That Pepsi has managed a casting coup of sorts is a no-brainer. But have they been used well? I think not. While Youngistan has a catchy twang to it, the ad per se has a very ‘leave your brains at home’ feel to it. That too would have worked fine, if Pepsi had decided to do a combo spoof on both the movies starring the trio. A sort of ‘Spy Hard/ Hot Shots’ approach to Bollywood. IMHO, its exactly the kind of ad that’ll make the ‘youth’ go ‘Phooey’. I know I am not exactly youth anymore, but hey, remember the Pepsi ’18 till i Die’ commercial, with Amrish Puri? The ad, me thinks, falls in that huge space between the stools.

    So Pepsi, Youngistan sounds cool, can we have a better storyboard please? Apparently, some 30 scripts were rejected before this one, and the idea was to show the ideas that the youth come up with when they improvise on the spot. If this idea is a representative, i fear for the country. Meanwhile, wrt my last post, maybe, just maybe Tata Sky could’ve been co-branded in this ad? 😉

    20392_4.jpg

    pic courtesy : agencyfaqs

    until next time, yeh dil maange more

  • More Socialising

    I’d written this a while back on social networking sites and their relevance/irrelevance, and now i see this. If you’re too lazy to click, Orkut is letting developers make their social applications available to Orkut users.

    In the post I mentioned earlier, I had written how Facebook scores over Orkut due to the sheer pull of different elements which cater to my interests and the way it also allows me to relate to my friends on many different planes. The simple idea being that I’m a blogger, an F1 enthusiast, an avid reader, A Heroes fan etc . My friends also share many of these interests, and there are multiple applications which cater to all of these. Orkut’s only efforts so far has been groups (which Facebook also has) and that was just not enough. The latest announcement means that Orkut’s expansion of services are going to be in that direction.

    While that may spark the thought that it might level the playing field, I , for one, dont think so. For starters, Facebook already has the first mover advantage in the space. That can be argued because crowds have a tendency to flock towards the latest new thing as far as social networks go. But, I’ve seen a lot of Orkut users climbing on to Facebook and then saying ‘Its way too confusing’. For the non-confused Facebook user, its a good place to be, because the confusion acts a filter which prevents the clutter in Orkut. So I don’t think a lot of Facebook users will go to Orkut for the applications. That, however is something that depends a lot on the applications developed. Lastly, Orkut has managed to collect a lot of users hat are undesirable. These are spam/porn guys and the ‘I want to do friendship with you’ specimens who are still regulars in Orkut. So, while Orkut’s applications might be killers, a lot of potential users might be put off owing to the damage already done, the new privacy features notwithstanding.

    until next time, socialise 🙂

  • Documentary

    He waited patiently, then impatiently, while they searched. Strange, they said, the document numbers above and below his were intact. Irritated, he wondered why they didn’t convey this when he called up the day before. As they took the documents from a separate drawer, their looks said it all – couldn’t you have conveyed THAT earlier?


    until next time, customer service for dummies