Monday, October 22, 2007

BIG SORRY!

A BIG SORRY TO ALL MY READERS FOR NOT UPDATING THE BLOG

HAS BEEN A CRAZY WEEK AND A HALF:

  • I had my exams the whole of last week.
    [Blog About Papers and Preparation en-route!]


  • I went partying last night with Malvika,Reema,Neha,Priya and Co...
    [Blog and Pics Coming up!!!]

  • Kimi Raikonnen won the Formula One Driver's World Championship in a fantastic season finale at the Brazilian Interlagos Circuit, Sao Paolo, this Sunday. What a race!
    [Will Blog about this turbulent season!]

  • Happy Dussehra to all my readers, and Shubho Bijoyo to all the bengalis out there!

[Blog Updates are on their way as I type! :) Thanks for sticking around! Hugs!]

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

The Pre-Exam Party!

8th October - Mom makes plan to go to pune. Time : 8pm
8th October - I call up Malvika and Reema, say : A V to the A party tomoro! What say! Time: 8:05pm
8th October - Malvika & Reema: Ya ! BABY YA!!!! Time: 8:05pm and 30 secs!

That's how long it took to plan the pre-exam bash on the 9th of October.

Why party when exams are just around the bend?
  • To study with a renewed vigour.
  • To get a break from the din of books.
  • Just for fun. (No reason really)

I watched a Simpsons episode once:
When truth is obscured, and there is no black or white, but finer shades of grey, they is just one thing to do, HOUSE PARTY!!!!!

With us it wasnt the truth at stake, but our studies.. which by the way, are still to be completed.

First I will create a Freudian snip of what yesterday was:
wait,late,confused,secrecy,violent,insane,chemical,fluid,loud,laughter,spills,thrills,candid,smiles,dancing.



Now the explanation:
The party which was to begin at 11, began at 2.
Malvika: LATE (well fashionably dahling)
Reema: LATE (sleepyhead, internet addict)
Priya: LATE (quite a commonplace now!)

Surprise entrees (who added even more life to the party):
Tanima: works (office work!) at parties
Neha: refused to overdose on the tobasco!

What we did:
  • Well loads of V to the A!
  • Monopoly with modified rules!
  • A random game, whose name Priya knows.. she is officially, the GameMaster!
  • Danced like insane idiots (yes I did my usual ass shake, and crazy dancing, need to locate the videos and will put them up!)

Now the creme de la creme!
Malvika and Yours Truly, the bumfight of the century.
Weapons: Hands and Feet
Rules: None! (yes kicks and blows landing in every possible place! :P)



Highlights: I became a horsie, my hand got tangled in malvika's hair, snake dance to appease the evil one!
Consequences:
  • Sprained neck (almost)
  • Bruises on my arm which look like i got raped by wolves
  • Malvika bruised and maimed by a wooden horse.
  • Neha's foot crushed by Malvika.
  • Reema leg scratched.
  • Priya kicked on head by Reeema (hilarious!)
  • Broken glass

In a sense a total barbaric laugh riot! Definitely fun, and totally random and crazy, that's just how we are!

Hope you enjoyed the pictures and the video!

Looking forward to the next party on the 20th or 21st of this month! woozaaa!!!!

cheers

The Answer

I asked her,
do you really
love me?

She looked down at her hands,
those ,
delicate ,
graceful ,
fingers.

Lifting them up,
like the sunflower,
turns to face the sun,
she placed it on my hand.

Held my fingers,
played with them,
like a baby plays with the father’s.

I looked up at her face,
those,
deep,
sensitive,
eyes,
spoke
of care,
of a deep intense feeling.

Her beautiful lips,
quivered,
like the petals of a rose,
as they parted into a smile.

Her eyelids fluttered like
free butterflies,
in the morning sun.

She looked up at me,
I got my answer.

-------------------------------
I found it after ages here. Wrote this long back, when I was in this constant platonic stupor of a crazy love, where there was no age, and there was no protocol.
-------------------------------

Saturday, October 6, 2007

Death the Ultimate Mystery

"A moment there my buoyant heart hung slack,
And then the glad, barbaric blood came back
Singing a livelier tune; and in my pulse
Beat the great wave that surges and exults. . . .
Why I was there and whither I must go
I did not care. Enough for me to know
The same unresting struggle and the glowing
Beauty of spendthrift hours, bravely showing
Life, an adventure perilous and gay;
And Death, a long and vivid holiday."

~ extract from The Swimmers, Louis Untermeyer

According to some people, life is full of struggle and worries. Not a day passes when one has no cares about oneself, family and others. People say that in life one has to achieve much for self-actualization, or to prove to oneself that one can survive in the battlefield called ‘Life’.
It has been perceived by poets that death is an ‘everlasting holiday’, where man lives without a care or worry in the world.

If one observes, during life one always has the worry at the back of one’s mind as to what would be the consequences of one’s death on one’s environment i.e. family, friends etc. Therefore life which is full of worries becomes death, since one worries about one’s death and one’s life.

Now life need not really be like a battlefield, its how one perceives it that matters. Life is actually supposed to be a zone to improve and nurture oneself physically and mentally. Now also note that when we have a holiday, we tend to nurture our talents and skills. Since death has been defined as the ‘everlasting holiday’, then we have forever to improve on our skills and basically facilitate personality development. Therefore death becomes what life ideally should be.

Hence, life is equal to death and death is equal to life.

But

How do we really know what death really is like?
Can we truly rely on what people who have supposedly had near death experiences and gone into comas say?
These people may have been considered medically dead, but were they truly dead?

The ECG may depict a flat heartbeat graph, but only a visual graph cannot truly prove that a person is dead. A person can never truly be dead until his mind shuts down.

Now I know the debate here is that medical sciences have proved that the mind has shut down…but can we really prove that the mind is truly shut down, and what we see is not a defense mechanism of the mind. The mind could easily be portraying an image of inactivity but the mind could be very much active.

But who shuts down the mind? No it’s not the Supreme Creator, Jesus according to the bible any or other God. It’s us humans ourselves. When you close the door to your mind, you can be truly declared dead. But why do we do so? The reason is that, the fact that our physical body is useless is so shocking to us that we give up all hope and decide to switch off. But even if you don’t lose hope and come back to ‘conscious/physical’ living, your experience could not be termed as death.

Death is the ultimate, underrated mystery. We will probably never truly find out what death is, no matter how far science advances, because even if we were to map the brain and produce visual images in the future, we would only see what the mind has stereotyped death as, not death as itself. Also in death mind and body are both redundant.

But what we know, is the memories that death leaves us with, and time, the ultimate healer, at the end of the day what does it heal. A friend of mine, Janvi, sent me the following poem, and I think it speaks volume. The painful memories or the moments gone by, what is healed, I leave that to you, reader, to decide.

"Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountainside,
And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go - so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, “There is no memory of him here”
And so stand stricken, so remembering him."

~Edna St Vincent Millay

Thursday, October 4, 2007

Viral Videos- Get Infected!

Indian media, has not really been one that has been overtly open to using non-traditional forms of advertising.
They stick to the tried and tested mediums, be it television, radio or the grand daddy of them all, print.

But at the end of the day, in 2007, television costs are astronomical, and show no signs of abating, radio reaches out the masses,and is in a sense cost effective, but limited, as it's all about the sound, no visual.

And in this world of moving pictures, video iPods,Zune's and LCD's it's all about the visual baby!
Print, well it has the visual, powerful definitely, but it's static.

------------------
Image Courtesy: AdsOfTheWorld
-------------------

So how do you get a form of media, which is powerful,has good reach,and is visual... not to forget cost effective!

Here's where viral videos come in.

For */*FREE*/* hosting you have many providers:
YouTube
MetaCafe
Veoh
VideoEgg
et all.

Video Length : ranges from 10 mins... to well as long as you can tape it...

Reach: Every person, who logs in to the site. Which for major players like YouTube and Metacafe is in the millions...

For our advertising project recently we used a viral video to spread buzz about our product:



Indian media has been apprehensive about UGC
But today, I was pleasantly surprised...
I received this email in my inbox from agencyfaqs!
*******************
Hi,

How’s life? Hope all is cool. I was browsing through some random crap on Youtube when I found this message. I think it is the same guy who tried to hack into the TV station. Looks like they got him finally.

Check it out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L59UicFVKDY
********************
so i did...
the video is called 'Hacker's Last Message'



So well.. it was an ad, for NeoSports online portal.
Neosports is a sports channel in India launched by Nimbus Communications Ltd in 2006. Basically it's a cricket only channel, for all the cricket lovers in India. But for low visibility reasons, very few people know about it.

Based on what you saw in the video, and the fact that there is a synergy between traditional and new media, could we say, that Indian advertising is finally opening up?

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Dismantled iPod Mini

While you may have seen many videos on metacafe, about iPod mini's getting wrecked and dismantled, this is maybe one of that lot.

But in this one, i pre-dismantled it and then highlight the parts of the iPod.


Dismantled IPod Mini - More amazing videos are a click away

Hope you enjoy it as much as I did... cheers! :P

Also make sure to be back here in a week's time, because my friend, Reema and me are going to pour lighter fluid over the iPod and ignite it. That should be quite a spectacle. We might keep some fireworks near it as well. So watch out for that!

Monday, October 1, 2007

Photowalk At Marine Drive

Priya: Wanna go photowalking today?
Udit: Sure.
Priya: What place?
Udit:Dunno temme..
Priya: Marine Drive
Udit:Sound's great. 4:15 then.see you there.

That's all that was said, and I was on my way to my first official PHOTOWALK with Priya!

It was great fun...climbing down onto the breakers...tryin our hand at porfolios worthy of fashion magazines, and landscape shots, that might even find their way into the next travel magazine.

Marine Drive - a famous water front of Bombay(Mumbai)

Nariman Point - best place to watch the sunset, lover's spot(they're all over the place),point where the land meets the sea. Beautiful

4:30pm - and the photowalking started.. from random shadow shots, to actual shots incorporating the sea, the rocks and civilization. Lots of shots taken. A few of them are here.
check out this shot of priya.. i think it's uber(umber!:P) cool!






So that's that.

7pm -We grabbed some Thums Up, Coke, Dahi Vada @ Sahakari Bhandar.. i glugged mine in 10 secs i think... then took a cab and headed home.. updating ze blog...

Probably next week we go to Fort, which is sort of a historic district in Bombay.

Till then, cheers from the photowalkers!

Making a Zooomr Account

Usually when you make accounts on websites.. the sign in process is like sooo dull!

You just enter in your first name, last name and username,password etc.
Very one sided and dull!

Before i continue on about zooomr, let me introduce it.. basically it's a digital photo sharing website.. with unlimited hosting, and presently it's in beta stage... but anyone can sign in...

I just made my account on zooomr and this is what i saw..
really different and amusing i must say!



it actually challenged me to untick it and so i did..
and this was the response! :P



well so ya..that's my zooomr sign in procedure... quite fun...

the zooomr main page..called the ZipLine... reminds me of a twitter/pownce melange...and a wee bit of flickr!


if you wanna sign up for an account click here.

to check out my photos click here.