• Timebound

    He’d always been fascinated by time travel. So it wasn’t surprising that he decided to see a sci-fi flick even if there was some apprehension on how Bollywood would handle it. The movie was very inspirational. Halfway through the movie, he wished he could time travel, back to the time he bought the damn tickets.

    until next time, not even timepass

  • Stones

    We really shouldn’t be seen there, because it’s a pub, and we don’t drink. But then, its more than a pub, and I get to listen to some of the best rock that’s played at any food joint, in Bangalore and a bit of jazz sometimes, so that’s how we are seen there.

    On the Indiranagar 100 ft road, you’ll find it (when coming from Koramangala) on your left after the CMH Road junction (the building after Domino’s). Two wheeler parking is easily available, but since the metro construction is going on, you’d be advised to park your four wheeler in one of the bylanes nearby.

    Stones belongs to the same species as Pecos and Mojo. Like I mentioned, we go there for the ambience and the music. The place is dimly lit and the walls are adorned with some good graphics of rock legends. There are some good seating options, and they really play the music loud. So don’t go there when you’re in the mood for mouthing sweet nothings, shouting matches, game on 😉

    Stones would be an idea place if you’re the drinking kind. I’m not sure of the costs of beer, but KF costs Rs.45 for a mug and Rs.225 for a pitcher, hope you can adjudge the price factor from that. But the food is what drags teetotallers  like us here, and you won’t feel too left out, since they serve water chilled in beer mugs. 😀

    You can take your pick from various preparations of chicken, pork, beef, bacon, sausage, prawns, mussels, fish and don’t worry there’s enough stuff for the veggies too. And to go with that, you can have the regular paratha, naan, rice stuff and in addition Kerala Porotta, Dosa and Appam. There are a lot of relatively difficult to get Mangalore, Goan and Kerala preparations here, and you even get a Pork/Beef fried rice.

    Our regular fare here is the dosa chicken curry combo and a chilly beef. The beef will give the Kerala preparations a run for their money, and boy these guys take the chilly very seriously. The chicken curry is boneless and I haven’t come across that taste anywhere else. The closest thing perhaps would be the Mangalore chicken curry we get in the coastal cuisine restaurants. The dosa too has a very special taste, the wife says its because they add butter. It really doesn’t matter but it tastes great!!

    The cost for our regular fare comes to just over Rs.300. Yes, it’s a bit above the general parameter of value for money, but we’ll still keep dropping in regularly, because the value is above the regular parameter of only food, it’s the place.

    Ph: 41481572/3/4

  • Social Evolution

    The issue has been doing the rounds in my head for sometime now, it started with a question on LinkedIn about companies using CSR only for PR purposes, and I thought now was a good time to share my thoughts, at the risk of it sounding like an attempt at gyan. 😉

    There was a very interesting topic tossed up last week here, on the role of social media, not in general, but in addressing the world’s problems. Whether all the coding gurus sitting down and making cool apps that generate thrills from a devouring audience are just doing it for its own sake rather than making a difference. While that question can be posed to just about anyone, and would elicit ‘no’ for an answer unless you were talking to an NGO or someone who works on CSR projects, it seems pertinent because well, its er, social media, and at its core, its about connecting people (sorry Nokia!). And it only seems fair that when the medium obviously has so much potential to change the world by the sheer amount of information it has, and the conversations it spawns, the humans that are so connected and the ones who are making the different levels and types of connections possible should also help out in bailing out those who are not privileged as themselves.

    No, its not intended to be a moral debating session on career choices, although that’s welcome too. On the day i saw the (linked) post, by sheer coincidence I also came upon a few links which provided a start to answering the question. One was a presentation (via Chris Brogan) another, a site that holds immense potential. And yes, corporates can play roles that fit into their overall strategic objective and fulfill their business needs, check this by Motorola. (I’m beginning to have a healthy respect for this brand). Back home, this is worth a look, and I would like to see this Idea develop a bit more before I comment on it.

    But while all these are definite concrete efforts towards making the world a better place, my belief is that the underlying philosophy of social media – sharing, collaborating, and most importantly transparency, is more fundamental and will itself cause quite a few groundbreaking things to happen in the way we develop as a society. With one single service like twitter, the flow of information is such that I am exposed to a multitude of new people, new websites, new thoughts, some of which make a profound impact on me, and on the way i think. As more and more people get hooked on to social media, think of the number of change agents it would create.

    And it is vital for the change agents to absorb the inherent goodness that social media possesses. In an age when shortcuts to anything from file sharing to making money are eagerly lapped up, without a thought on its impact on others’ lives, and tech provides the means to do it and distribute it easily, it is important to ingrain a philosophy that would make developers and users think a little about common good when they engage themselves in social media, a thought that would at least discourage them from doing harm.

    until next time, evolve

  • So, what happened in the end?

    Happened to see ‘Via Darjeeling’ last weekend. It left me with a very poignant thought. About storytelling. Lets take a murder mystery/ thriller.
    When a writer develops a story, it exists only in his head, its origin, its twists and turns, and its conclusion. What happens when the author leaves the story open? Gives the audience all the twists and turns and refuses to give the ending? Worse, what if the story is such that it has many plausible endings?
    Now different members of the audience could propose several endings, based on their sensibilities, but they will never know what ‘actually’ happened. These days, we are so obsessed with knowing ALL the facts, that it would be an absolute blow. And its not like the real life happenings on which we are okay with some ambiguity. Perhaps it would be a good idea to get out of our conditioning that forces us to accept nothing less than conclusive endings in works of fiction, especially in cinema.

    until next time, unending

  • Carp

    I usually don’t pay much attention to car and bike ads, primarily because I am not their target audience, at least for now, and from a brand pov because, they will either show me ads, attitude or stunts (though i liked the most recent Pulsar ad, the music mostly 😉 ) I really can’t blame them, they are dead if they do, and killed if they don’t.

    But I recently caught the Mahindra Logan ad because I thought Kunal Kapoor wore the same clothes (in one shot) he did in the Indian Terrain print ads. :p So i watched to make sure, though I haven’t figured it out yet. And I wasn’t paying attention to the ad content, but I watched it again thanks to a very thought provoking comment on another ad from the same category (cars). That was the Tata Indigo CS ad. I had caught that earlier thanks to its manic frequency and some nice music. We’ll talk about the comment in a while.

    Kunal Kapoor, in the Logan ad, wonders and questions the same rat race we are all participating in, our fear that keeps us from thinking differently, says how style can’t be achieved by showing off, and how one should think different from the herd. Mahindra Logan is more than ‘dikhava’ and apparently ‘the answer is here’. (Er, answer to what? the only question i heard was ‘why?’ ) :p  That would come under the attitude + style category, but quite a ‘straight’ take.

    The Indigo ad was one that a lot of working pros could identify with. It shows an employess whose boss doesn’t miss a single chance to bully him – whether its opening his cabin’s shades just as the employee is about to take a break or showing off a better pen, or a tea set, or coming to his cubicle when he’s about to call his girlfriend/wife or any of the little things, that the ad uses to tell a real and believable story. The twist is in the parking lot, where the employee takes out his absolutely different car from among the regular cars around, while his boss is caught admiring the car, and then burning with envy while he drives off. The punch line- ‘at the end of the day, style does matter’. A ‘style’ ad that is treated with humour. The punch line for me came from the wife, who pointed out that while the employee can drive home in that cool car, the next morning after he drives to work, he’ll still have to work under the same boss, and take the same crap.

    Now, i’m not sure if many people would think that way, but if they did, it would be very sorry for the brand, because would consumers want to be associated with the kind of servile attitude that the employee projects during most of the ad, and then relies on his car to go one up on his boss? Especially if the target audience is a no-nonsense generation that has confidence in its own abilities?

    For me, the lesson was that no humour ad can be consumer-proof. There’ll always be a smart alec around who will twist your communication 😐

    until next time, with consumers like these, who needs competitors?