TrendSpotting via Social Networking Sites

Some pretty Interesting patterns

1. Going abroad is cool, really cool

God knows how many ppl hop on to the networking bandwagon when they are in edmonton or little rock or washington.

On last count there were 38 towns and cities called washington in Wikipedia in USA. Edmonton's can be found in USA,UK and the Australia.All this just makes the above mentioned trend even more popular.


2. You got kids. Pls let the world know.

Michael Jackson, was hauled up for holding prince from the balcony.

This emerging trend is becoming more observant as i move up the age ladder.

Guys and Gals or rather young mumma and puppa just make sure the kid is happy and not as much of a net freak as we all are.


3. Trekking/Jogging/Mountaineering/Hitchhiking

The Great Indian Outdoor Journey has begun. Perhaps brands like Timberland and The North Face should finally begin their trek to India...or atleast to the young Indian consumer on Facebook.

4. Gizmo's ......

You got mail. You show it. You got a Google Wave Account. Shout from the top of your voice.

5. Degrees Help

Its the new caste system of the world. I mean don't go far, see my own blogger profile for the same.

Journeys via the marquee degrees you obtain is definately far shallower than experiencing life.

Guess the best way somebody described it was a 5 minute dialogue by Boman Irani in the movie bluff master.

Some of theese even i am guilty of, but by and large i observed the same , rather than participating in the same.

Changeling

I changed my blog template today. Changed it after 3.5 years. I edited my profile. Changed my place from Kolkata to B'lore after 3 years of being here. I had got too used to kolkata. I got even more used to blore.

Had a great run in both cities.Literally. Have written before about kolkata, so this post should be about bangalore.

What can i say about my life here.

Stayed alone for 15 month; then moved in with angad since the last 6 months;
Richards town and its park. The movies at Everest . Small town life in a big city.
Quizzes at KQA ; pubbing at Opus ; Monopoly at Kartik's ;Jogging at Ulsoor;Running at Cubbon;

The best possible entertainment.Long hours, first time with SAP, first time at sales,murli for company to drive to markets. Learnt stuff, cried cribbed, but generally enjoyed.Food for thought with Mikhail, evenings with goutom, sujata , rajshri, jishnu, .....with music and great food.Cultivated a baggage of even more beautiful memories than kolkata.

Had a brilliantly worked out life. As there is no such thing as a perputal motion machine, this great setup too will have to go.

There is enough anecdotal eveidence that this has to happen.Just don't know where ITC will put me next.

Hope it still would be bangalore.

Either ways,i will always cherish my time in Bangalore. Next time though would like to stay.

3rd time lucky - An ode to Mr Sekhar Chandra

My first 3 bosses, in my rather short corporate carrier were from my own MBA Alma mater - xl. In fact only my current boss is not an xler.

The 3rd amongst those, but perhaps the one who left the most lasting impression on me, was Mr Sekhar Chandra. He retired a few days ago.

We gave him a good farewell. But he is the kind of guy who will celebrate it as his birthday. God given or acquired , on wouldn't know but he had an amazing sense of humour.

Here is one for the record. On the last day of his working life , he met another colleague while peeing at the toilet.He replied to goutom the colleague --- isiko Peer Pressure kehte hain.

If you gave a smart ass comment, you would get a smarter retort back.You sent him a cheeky mail, you would get a cheekier one from him back.He was my boss for a year.

He taught me some valuable lessons on tobacco industry,and taught me some rather invaluable lessons in life.

His corporate climb was far from spectacular, but his impact on me was spectacular.

I used to discuss golf with him, a sport i have no idea about. I gave him a pack of assorted confectionery some 13 months back. Going to his cabin, eating a candy and talking to him about anything was my favourite stess buster for a year.

In his last days he was busy writing anecdotes from around the ITC sales organization in the last 30-40 years. I was his part time editor, though i may have only edited a story or two. In fact he liked a blog entry of mine and used it too for his collection.

During the last phase of the project , during the last days of his active working life, we tried to find an appropriate title for his book. I was so stuck on Gen 42- the answer to the universal question in ITC , a double pun on 42 of hitchhikers guide to the galaxy and Gen 42 - an antiquated but an extremely useful report created for adequate stock planning in ITC. He showed me the folder which kept his collection of stories. Rather i peeked into the same, and saw that there was no presence of " Shit Happens" my blog entry which was to be made into a story.I was anyways going through some other strange notions on some other work and personal front related issues. I just added this , and i thought perhaps he never really put my story and just told me the same so that he could use my help.

15 minutes into my imagination, he casually showed all those stories to me , including my " Shit Happens" which was now renamed "Diary Notes". The story had been there all along.

He taught me perhaps the most important lesson on that day - the importance of trust.
Trust i guess is a weapon we need to rely on even when it gets broken. Its something we just need to trust.

That was Mr Sekhar Chandra. You can trust him to say a few lines on this passage. And trust me they will be memorable gems and not some random lines.

Scattegories for Scatterbrains

Name Place Animal Thing

This is a game almost any body who was a kid once , which means everybody knows. it didn't take much , just two sheets of paper ,some pens and pencils and all the imagination in the world. this wonderful experimental apparatus, helped pass time in the classes in which teachers were absent, in the long car and train journeys , you took with friend s and cousins to marriages,picnics, family reunions, and when i got bored with fighting with my sister during vacations.( One side note --- Summer Vacations is the most important loss in the transition from a student to a corporate types)

Well now Parker brothers the guys who gave the world Monopoly , have come with Scattegories. Its as an often used copy in some old ITC product lines goes "same great taste, great new pack". But seriously its been packed well. Its got not 1, not 2, not 4, but a 26 sided dice. One face for each alphabet of the English Language.And its got many lists with things from Animal Names to Things in a zoo written on them. The objective is to max all items on the list with the alphabet which has appeared on the dice. If you think its easy try doing it in 1 min intervals for which they have given timers.

The result is great commotion, confusion and a lot of fun. Playing with more people means you realise how similar you and your friends think. I mean common, have can all 4 (lalith/pranay/angad and i ) think of only Herr as a title with H. Especially when you can have his or her majesty.Every time same answers come , you don't score.

Try playing this game. To me its an ultimate party game. If you are a quizzer or were in any way enamoured by lit fests , then this one's a game, for you.

Go on . Your time starts now....tick tick tick....

The Gut Runners " Quiz Story"

Its been over 15 months since coming to Bangalore the new economy town from the old economy kolkata and some beautiful things have happened in my evolution as a collector of myriad facts.

I have been quizzing since my days in anand ,gujarat. Anand though was the answer to more quiz questions than the number of quizzes it hosted.

Schooling in Delhi , helped shape up a little in quizzes.My dad for some reason only read business books( guess 80' were the heydays of Biz Guru's) and so i read them.New more corporate facts than an avg kid. But also knew less fables and comics.

i attended DU for a month. Now that's where some quizzing did happen , but i decided an engg degree from NIT Jamshedpur was the best thing to acquire in life.

The acquisition though came at the cost of quizzing. Sitting in the steel heartland , limited my quiz cicrcuit to hosting them and a few occasional excursion trips to kgp and dhanbad.My college was truly an enigma. How an institute could survive on suck lack of govt attention and mismanagement is a tribute to the students leveraging the education to cling on to a better future.
Read some stuff, but there wasn't much to pick up from old second hand sakchi book shops. The quizzing peer group was small, dispersed and fighting its own demons.We just wanted to get back to our city sheltered environments in one piece (body and soul) with a degree and hopefully a job in hand.So quizzing was the last thing on my mind. Though we all chipped in with our bit through LDS( the lit soc)

In the end managed to accomplish all the three.Moved over from there to xl. Xl was literally the other side of the railway tracks for me.The journey from NIT to XL is huge in a very different way.Only deepak bhat ,mansij majumdar and i would possibly know that. The Delhi city brat , went back to the city civility from the engg college in the cow belt state. But the quizzing scene still did not change. a packed first year and desire to jog in 2nd year made sure that i did not make any quizzical journeys. This despite the fact that for the first time i had in my class more than a couple quizzers.

Then life took me to ITC and Vizag. One gorgeous year , of which i have no memories as my life was onto bigger problems. None were job linked as i had a ball of a time touring up country markets and visiting the Orissa hinterland . It was the return of the native. But quizzing , well i realised that Vizag Steel had a great quiz team when i met them in Cal.

And so after the year in Vizag moved to Cal.Went to a small sos quiz on a Saturday for the lack of a better entertainment option . Qualified , came 3rd and the bug came back to haunt me. Went to Tata Crucible 2006 , and qualified tops and came last. But the bug was on and i had lots of catching up to do.Quizzing introduced the antidote to all my problems. Friends and colleagues , with similar calibres in school were now eons ahead.I was rusty, but the bug was on. Kolkata quizzing truly improved me. By the time i left , i was a regular in finals, lots of podium finishes in biz quizzes(Clay Court in the language of general quizzers) and some in the general ones( the elusive grass). But i had improved.

And then i got transferred to Bangalore.I'll be honest , getting into a final was to me now an achievement akin to a podium finish.Tata Crucible 2007 , no qualification.

So i quit quizzing.For 1 month until a friend from cal came down. Together we went. Think we failed to qualify for the first 8 quizzes. But by the 8th we had 2 more partners and at least a full string quartet.

Sometime in the same season , the gut running ( check chariots of fire for what a gut runner is) amateur got a real lucky break. BT Acumen 2007. Won it. I had lost BT Acumen 2006 from cal on a buzzer.

The win helped keep the already waning passion alive.But then the grass court season restarted and the "just missed qualifying syndrome" started again. But the misses were becoming nearer. I think our quartet managed 3 qualifications.3 on some 14-15 quizzes.Liked it. I was improving. In 2008 i restarted going to opus , a pub quiz.Its beautiful in a manner so unique to itself. If Open quizzing is honourable , opus and pub quizzing is beautiful. That too helps. It keeps you in shape in a manner that you don't realise.

2008 has been better.Have managed some more qualifications. The near misses are still becoming nearer. I am still improving. The lack of adequate college reading has left me with major flaws in my technique. Opus is becoming more intense.But the beauty is still there.The desire is still on. Think my record for Grass Courts is now is at 2/6 , which is a major improvement on 3/15. And i am still counting only qualifications. Podium is hopefully a couple of years/seasons away.But the clay court season got off to a good start. Brand equity was a narrow miss and Tata Crucible was a win.

May the rub of the green continue.

How I saved My life and My Pasta

Zealous marketers in their evangelical quest to provide people with green giant peas in summers and juicy pulpy mangoes in summers worked very hard. Napoleonic inventors invented tin canning. Rising costs forced the swedes into developing tetra packs. Small Indian stomachs and smaller wallets forced them into developing sachets. Food items underwent a hell lot of value additions.

Wheat was made into many nice shapes. Farfalle , Fusili , Elbow , spaghetti , you name a scrabble heavy word word and they had it. Then they were packed into nice yellow boxes and passed to people.

I too caught one.

Pasta. Cream. Cheese. Milk. Chicken. Mushrooms. Broccoli. Capsicum. Tomatoes. Mint. You name it and i put it in the melting pot of the calorie heavy diet ( isn't heavy diet an oxymoron)

Cooked it well the first two times.But it took ages. What the hell , i was on my way to become the metro sexual male, the man who knew his kitchen.

But then came the third time. Discovered that my pasta box had a small word of caution " Best before January 2008 ". It meant that i couldn't have it as my new year treat. And i realised this at 11 pm , December 31 , 2007.

In the event though we made it it time. The last of the pasta was devoured by 11. 45 pm. A comfortable victory. I had saved my life and my pasta too.

It was a bit like having my cake and eating it too.

Now i realised that while Bedouin's ate dates , Casanova's thrived on them , why salesmen are scared of them . Never ask a cig salesman what happens to them after 3 months.

Nothing absolutely Nothing.

From Kolkata to Bangalore : Etchings of a beautiful Life

One great year at Kolkata.

Ate a whole lot of food, gained no weight, made friends, gained no enemies,created newer hobbies,lost interest in none of the old ones.

But it wasn't permanent. lasted all of 13 months.

2 hours later, life had to begin all over again.

The 2hours too were a lifetime. Some who chose to wait watched the red tailed fuselage of the Kingfisher from their terrace, some who chose not to wait watched the in flight entertainment with the author.

What a symbolic flight.

And so now , yet another wheel of time begins.


The 2BHK is now a One BHK , but being tastefully furnished by me.Boy it is so much fun.

The traffic noise in my apartment replaced by the railway tracks running behind my house.But the trains run at a far less frequency.

The Maid still comes in the Morning.Suits me fine.

The Long walk and the short Metro ride to the office is now an obstacle race over a construction site.

The BPCL In and Out is now a FoodWorld.

The Grass in Basket Ball courts is now the glass in Squash Courts and the small 5 a side football ground is now a huge barren cricket ground.

The front desk with the bored woman , who broke her leg in a basketball match is now a guard who speaks my native language.

There are interesting characters in the office , some becoming good friends , like the Only Jew in my company , or the passionate bass guitarist with 15 minutes of fame behind him.Have left behind the nervous Tamil lawyer , and the scrooge MC Duckish army of accountants back in Cal.


Food is still a passion.Chelo Kebabs have become sizzlers. The cardboard lunchboxes are now trips to the food court.

Life is getting recreated, but i still miss , the walks to the pantry for soups and cold drinks, cribbing about failed projects, crying over signatures and approvals, the Saturday all nighters at Siddhashree, the Sunday quiz huddles at pix,the Monday morning blues at Virginia House, the Tuesday walks to Mirza Ghalib street, the Wednesday treat of Shwarmas, the Thursday night at SPE, the Friday movies at Menoka and Priya.......

Another year later , i hope to have another set of memories like last year.Last year was good in more ways then one.

Hoping for the same , for everyone who enriched my life back there in Cal.