I remember driving home in 1989 and thinking I had a flat tire because the car went all wobbly. I pulled over and discovered that my tires were fine; the earth was moving. It was the Loma Prieta Earthquake, and I soon discovered my apartment in shambles. But a funny thing happened.

All of my neighbors were outside, stunned. We talked. We shared stories. We bonded. It was a strangely good time. And I felt connected to people at a deeper level than ever before. Shared disaster does that.

A shared disaster brings people out in the open, out of their comfort zones, gets them talking, and makes them know a bit more about each other that they did not discover before.

Happened with us on campus too. Mashed by force and by situation, we were business school students who had lots of time with each other; but still most of us were huddled in our own rooms with Gtalk / MSN / Yahoo / whatever chat program we used and we continued to hang on to whatever few friends we had for dear life.

It took the ‘Russian salad’ incident (food poisoning), the summer placements and INDEX preparations to get us out in the open, and these shared experiences are some of the best memories of L that I carry. br /br /Also one of the reasons why I love the selling line of Smirnoff: “Life is calling, where are you?”. Our generations needs some more face to face interaction. We sometimes forget how much fun that can be.

HN [6:22 PM]:

am chatting with a friend

HN [6:22 PM]:

and just realised

HN [6:22 PM]:

in midst conversation

HN [6:23 PM]:

ppl keep saying bhais ke aage
been mat bajao

NN [6:23 PM]:

what what…

HN [6:23 PM]:

bt thts wht lord krishna used to
do

HN [6:23 PM]:

day in day out

NN [6:23 PM]:

hahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

NN [6:23 PM]:

 ROTFLMAO

HN [6:24 PM]:

interesting lifestyle i must say

NN [6:24
PM]:

hehe

NN [6:24
PM]:

ur cute

HN [6:24 PM]:

dude

HN [6:24 PM]:

lord krishna‘s cute

NN [6:24 PM]:

hehe…that tooo

HN [6:24 PM]:

defying convention and
proverbial wisdom right when he was a child

HN [6:25 PM]:

some old hag mustve told him, ‘never try to lift mountains with ur little finger‘

NN [6:25 PM]:

hehe….stupid
png‘er …dont make nice joke
technical

HN [6:25 PM]:

and he was like, screw u

NN [6:25 PM]:

hahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

NN [6:25 PM]:

oh fuck ! i just
actually laughed out so loud !!

NN [6:25 PM]:

ppl starin at me

HN [6:25 PM]:

 

NN [6:25 PM]:

plz plz put this
on your blog !

Niki, here it is :)

Song is called ‘Holi Hai!’ and talks about how life is too colorful to waste brooding about the past’s shadows; and how the colors in front of our eyes are the remedy to the monochrome of routine.

ek raah mein chal rahe
ek hum-raah chod gaye

ek raat, kai karvate
ek faiz, kai hasratein

kaale parchaiyon se ladte
lakhon rang kyon bhool gaye

katon ke pathjhad mein soye
ankiyon ke hasi kyon kho gaye

rang hai, holi hai, yeh zindagi tumhari humjoli hai
rang hai, holi hai, yeh zindagi tumhari humjoli hai

Holi hai, Holi hai.. (x2)

There we go.

Came across the man with the golden voice when I was browsing standup videos on Youtube and saw a comedian (Pablo Francisco) do a spoof of this legendary voice-over artist.

So the next time you hear the familiar “In the city, one man, one mission…”, you know whose voice it is :)

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Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten…

‘Unwritten’ by Natasha Bedingfield. Read the rest of the song here.

I receive on an average 25 emails a day (on a normal day) that goes up to 50 or more; Make that 600 emails a month, and important data, files are bound to get lost in the chaos. I had a tough time finding mails and files I needed (I still do), but now there’s at least a little help.

Xobni. Nice plugin to Outlook. Organizes mail, searches in a jiffy, lists all the files I have shared with my contacts, makes conversations out of my mails. See the demo video below to understand more.

[This useful discovery thanks to Rahul]

Post photos on Flickr of a concert you found on last.fm, take both information and post it on blog. Now you have a gig you attended, with photos tagged, date noted, tracks, albums and CD covers attached to it. That’s Gig Taggr for you. (This app is not quite there yet, but getting there).

Someone will soon add Google Maps, Youtube, Amazon and Facebook integration to this. So with one click you have added music, location, video, photos, reviews, CDs, reviews, books to this.

Just imagine.

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“…possibly the best radio station in Singapore.”

“…probably the best Indian curry that you could ever have!”

A new clan of pseudo-claims.

What are claims? (Not the insurance types, and definitely not the legal ones). For the non-branding junta, claims are what the word means. Marketers make claims for their brands based on the product performance, efficacy, credentialing by third party, external certification, internal R&D etc. Look around you and you’ll see claims everywhere (”Toothpaste most used by dentists themselves“, “Reduces dandruff by up to 100% and prevents hair fall“, “Best satisfaction guaranteed or your money back“, “Certified by American Health Association“, “Fights 7 signs of aging” and so on and so forth). I will not call out the brands and their associated claims, but you get the idea.

What is catching my attention is the slow movement of claim history towards more and more murky claims and pseudo-claims. ‘No product is better than X‘ translates to ‘X is as good as any other’. ‘Possibly the best‘ and ‘Definitely superior performance‘ always crack me up. Possibly? Superior? Superior to what? Your own performance 2 months ago, possibly.

And the opening claim is absolutely hilarious. ‘Almost certainly‘!!! How certain are we? Almost? But then, can’t blame the brands nowadays. Especially Web brands have their positions and superiority challenged on a daily basis. So no point wasting time, energy and resources to go for the superiority claim (one has to research into the details, do massive surveys and involves agencies to say that one is the best product / brand / service in the industry). So one would rather use a murky claim that supports and emphasizes the goodwill that Web brand has.

Like I used to say before; such great insights one gets only on my blog. Possibly the best branding blog you’ve never read.

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From the time of the famous Jackson 5, who were the biggest names in Motown in their early teens, Michael was something special. I remember the first time I saw his video when he was about 8 years old: in complete control of the stage, and more importantly, of his voice, and the crowd as well. Such energy, and the voice too powerful to ignore. A voice that overpowers the wonderful accompanying instruments and voices of his brothers. He was the star, clearly.

Quincy Jones and ‘Off the Wall’ happened, followed by ‘Thriller‘. My oh my. What an album. Multi-platinum, multi million selling, multi-Grammy winning and whatnot. Every song is a fricking lesson in song arrangement, voice modulation, instrumentation, bass lines and clarity. And then the ‘Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever‘ TV special happened where he first performed his Moonwalk. And the rest was not just history; it was Michael fever everywhere. And then, to follow it up with Bad, Dangerous and HIStory. How much great music one has to have within himself to come up with albums like that.

I have a lot of personal favorites: Lyrics arrangement and Van Halen’s guitar in Beat it; the rhythm pattern in Jam (the first English song I ever heard); powerful chorus in the live version of The Way You Make Me Feel; beatboxing in Stranger in Moscow; Liberian Girl, Invincible, Bad, Billie Jean, Earth Song, They don’t really care about us; and I’m not even talking about any of the videos. Just the bleddy songs. Unbelieveable!

Almost all his songs are genius material; hence no point listing all of them. He is a true legend, in the sense that he has been the material of public paranoia many times over; has been inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (twice); 13 Grammy awards, 13 number one singles, 750 million albums sold worldwide; the Moonwalk, the Crotch Grab all becoming parts of the repertoire of many budding dancers world over.

Sheer Musical Genius.

But there’s one thing I would like to say to Michael.

Stop whatever the fuck you are doing. Sleeping with children, dangling your baby from your balcony, painting your face, drafting skin from your ass onto your chin; Stop all that for fuck’s sake.

And get back to making your music. That’s your only emancipation. That’ll save you from yourself.

[Pic courtesy: Yahoo.]