Most of the people I know are not happy with what they have. (Not talking about sizes here, my dear innocent fellow!) They inherently have a craving for better things. (which is a good thing)Not getting what you want when you want it evokes a standard set of emotions as a child. Tantrums! Wailing! Heart wrenching rebellion! But as we ‘mature’, we learn to bottle up these modes of expressing disappointment, or let it out in a very controlled manner.

Take the scenario of a couple breaking up. People react differently to this ‘frustrating’ of all situations. While some turn to self help books to maintain sanity, others take to drastic measures like alcoholism. There are some who cry their heart out, but in the privacy of their rooms, not letting the world know… There are others who are able to move on after just a couple of hours of good sleep… Different people… different reactions…

How about when you are passed over for promotion, AGAIN? Would you still keep that smile on your face and work as if nothing has happened? Would you threaten to quit if you are not recognized for ‘valuable contributions’ to the company? Would you have a straight talk with your manager? I have seen all three scenarios play out… to different effect…

The question is … How do you handle frustration?

Why are we afraid of ‘human touch’?

When in an elevator, we keep moving so we are at the farthest possible position from the people around us.

If you feel a hand on your shoulder in the “Tunnel of horror” at your local amusement park, you freak out!

Except for the occasional hug and handshake, are we now more comfortable with an ‘unphysical’ existence?

Seth announced recently the formation of “a tribe for marketers, for leaders, for those focused on building communities or creating products or spreading ideas”.

There are those who did not appreciate the idea of putting pre-ordering of his own book as a pre-requisite for membership to this invite-only forum. Putting in a minor roadblock on the way to membership to an “ideas” fight club is a good idea. However, I feel another hurdle which did not subtly market a new book would have held him in greater steed.

I justify the pre-order I made by remembering all his lectures on Youtube I have listened to for free. The online purchase of a book that is yet to be released is just my way of paying back. So in a way, I am paying for all the great Seth stuff I have been going through all this time by pre-ordering a book which is No. 36 on the Amazon.com best seller list! Quite a way to placate my conscience, isn’t it?

Now, about that best seller list! This tribe invite, on a blog which is viewed by thousands of people each day, has generated a lot of publicity for  the book in question. I would love to know how many books were sold on 30 and 31 July, post announcement, compared to the previous week.

Isn’t this what permission marketing is all about? Has he not managed in “turning strangers into friends, and friends into customers” by giving access to an exclusive club? Not only did Seth successfully create a buzz and induce a mad rush to join the tribe, he even managed to gather our mailing addresses. Another Hallmark July Christmas decorations sale in the making?

Now to answer some questions. Do I feel I have been used in a random social experiment by an acknowledged marketing expert? Not yet… Will I gain anything out of this? I sure hope so. Something ought to come out of interactions between like-minded people. At least, boring monologues. I am willing to take my chances on it. What has the Tribe been up to lately? No can do on that question. What happens in the Tribe stays in the Tribe…

Fight club anyone?

An excerpt from the sales pitch to the Lord of Hades on IT systems implementation “to ease transition of souls to the underworld”

RJ : Imagine this scenario, Mr.D…  You go online on Gtalk/AIM… find people whose time on earth is up and ping them… and BANG.!!! They fall lifeless…. No “Final Destination” drama… No gory blood spilling… Just plain shutdown of body organs… Matrix style… How cool would that be?

Mr. D : I have been in this business for a long long time, kiddo… Do you take me for a fool?? What if the guy is never online? Is that not the equivalent of the Sorcerer’s stone?

RJ : [Already sweating, given the searing temperature of hell fire] What about a facebook-like application then? U just add the guys you want dead as friends… We will even build a special app which will not require them to confirm you as a friend…

Mr. D: I need up-to-date information… How do you plan to do that?

RJ: For info on increasing population, we could consume web services from the birth-registers at hospitals… As for ‘The Ledger of deeds’, it will have to be migrated to the new system.

Mr. D: What about the element of fear? I thrive on fear…

RJ: [Pulling together the consultant's air] We will analyze the requirements and provide an optimal solution… It is too early for us to specify a particular implementation methodology…

[Uncomfortable silence...]

RJ: As a bonus, we will also add a ’suicide module’… Which would allow a select few, with problems,  to send you friend requests! To sweeten this deal… What says you, O lord of Hades?

Mr. D: You talk too much!

RJ: My friend tells me I am a cartoon at times…

The phrase refers to the idea that a butterfly’s wings might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that may ultimately alter the path of a tornado or delay, accelerate or even prevent the occurrence of a tornado in a certain location. The flapping wing represents a small change in the initial condition of the system, which causes a chain of events leading to large-scale alterations of events. Had the butterfly not flapped its wings, the trajectory of the system might have been vastly different. Of course the butterfly cannot literally cause a tornado…. The kinetic energy of a tornado is ultimately provided by the sun and the butterfly can only influence certain details of weather events in a chaotic manner.   

                                                                                  - Wikipedia 

Being my usual self, I could not help thinking about this little outcome of studies related to Chaos theory. Can we actually affect things around us so much?

Did the guy, whom I heard had cheated at the college exams, actually alter the course of history by depriving another Emil Adolf von Behring-to-be of the class rank he wanted to apply for that research position? Did that just, by happenstance, let the discovery of an AIDS vaccine get delayed by another decade? Did that let happen the deaths of AIDS infected people all over the world, who would otherwise had a cure? I will never know for sure.

I do, however, see people trying to affect their own lives and of those in their vicinity in some way. I see an amputee vying for the Beijing Olympics. I see  my friends stay awake that extra hour to make time for their families in the face of piling work. I see two girls sitting together on the park bench, one trying to console another because her long-time boyfriend had broken up with her!

I do not see people resigned to fate. I do not see many “Waiting for the world to change” (John Mayer).

May be, all of these small actions can cause a huge change in the unforeseeable future. I will keep flapping!

I adore spoofs. While most try to achieve a new ‘harmlessly humorous’ plane, some target a specific person or group. But whatever the motive, it takes some real creative muscle flexing to get it up.

I have put together just a sampling of videos that caught my attention.

Nickelback - Rock-star

This song embodies every youth’s dream. This favorite band of mine put what I dreamt of in college, while listening to Dream Theatre.

If Rock-stars have such a cool life, then what about pop-stars? Check the video to find out.

James Blunt - You are beautiful

This master-piece helped me through quite a few love-at-first-sight scenarios. The lyrics are brilliant and the song sticks to a heart-melting pace.

But listening to this spoof cleared my mind of any future plans of the falling-head-over-heels concept. Beauty can be skin deep at times.

Heroes:

I did not miss a single episode of season 1, when it was aired in India last year. Hours of such idiot-box patronage left a few questions unanswered. The video is an embodiment of all my doubts.

There you have it folks. A few of the videos which set my humor bone on fire and got me searching for more! Spoofs are all about creativity and spontaneity.

I hail thee, O creative immortals out there…

I have been tagged yet again… I am a guy who tries not to post on matters of a personal nature on this blog… But, this time, I will not complain… I turned the last page on a quarter century of good living last week and doing an eight things post would serve just the right portion of reality check I need at the moment.

So, Ladies and Gentlemen, I open up to you on a few topics.

Eight things I do everyday (Read: things I am passionate about):

1. Read blogs and/or books

2. Listen to music

3. Hit the gym

4. Practice guitar

5. Criticize my friends’ culinary skills

6. Read comic strips

7. Talk to my family in India

8. Read the bible

P.S.: Not a very exhaustive list. In case you are wondering, I do shower after the gym sessions.

Eight things I am glad I did:

1. Decide to work for two more years before furthering my formal education

2. Join Uni-Y while in college (made some great friends there…)

3. Move to Chennai after the 10th grade

4. Be responsible for my finances and start investing seriously

5. Learn to laugh at myself even more…

6. Try out Squash (Yes!!! the racquet game….)

7. Start blogging seriously

8.  Decide against buying a digital SLR camera. I put that money to better use.

Eight things I would like to do:

1. Start a not-for-profit cafe

2. Cut my own music album

3. Sky-dive

4. Learn to juggle at least  3 items at a time…. (I am not talking about career, family and friends here… )

5. Drive at 300 kmph … On road of course… I do not want to settle for a train driving lesson….

6. Attend a professional bar-tending course

7. Scuba-dive in The Great Coral Reefs of Australia

8. Do my MBA from a top college (Still trying to shortlist colleges that would find me as good a fit as I would them… )

N.B..: I am not going to wait till I retire to do these things

Eight time periods I wish I could relive:

1. The relaxed vacation at Thodupuzha (my hometown) I had so long ago

2. My days at Loyola School among great guys who had a sense of themselves

3. The TCS ILP days at Pune with awesome people from all over the country to keep you company

4. The last couple of years at the Trust hostel at college… Vaalis rock!!!

5. The pre-college days I spent at Qwiky’s Coffee, Chennai

6. Consummacy ‘04 - for all its drawbacks, I learnt a lot from this inter-collegiate fest I helped organize.

7. My trip to Milan and Venice. All thanks to Jincy and Deepak.

8. Every dinner I have ever had with my family -  Dollops of advice and humor, with some great food to accompany

Eight songs that struck a chord with my heart:

1. Oasis - Wonderwall

2. Metallica - Nothing else matters

3. CCR - Brown eyed Girl

4. Pink Floyd - Comfortably numb

5. Snow Patrol - Signal Fire

6. U2 - With or Without you 

7. James Blunt - You are beautiful

8. Coldplay - Fix you

Eight English movies I could watch over and over and over again:

1. You ve got mail

2. Braveheart

3. Gladiator

4. Fight Club

5. Notting Hill

6. Love actually

7. Swordfish

8. Pulp Fiction

———————————————————————————

There you have it folks!!! If there are any specific questions you would like me to answer, leave a comment. I promise to attend to them…

P..S: I will not pass on the tag to anyone specific this time around… But if you do feel like it, do this up… Quite an interesting activity this is.. Took me a while to compile this list!

A dear friend of mine is leaving for her studies at Tepper School,CMU…. One fine evening, I noticed that her GTalk status message read “I am tired of answering questions.” I enquired what that was all about. “A 100 people pinged me to ask me when I am leaving!!! I am tired of replying…”, she replied.

Well, my friend… Welcome to the Internet-enabled smaller world of the 21st century…

I remember the good old days… You had to read newspapers or magazine to know what was happening around the world… Else you did have to make it to your television for the 9 p.m. news… [Lazy people like moi used to just watch Pranoy Roy's 'The World this week' on Doordarshan 9 p.m. Fridays ]

You had an “analog” telephone which came in only one color - black. You either wrote down your friends’ numbers on a sheet stuck to the wall or in a nice leather bound directory. I used to remember a couple of my landline numbers (No mobiles yet) back then…

I used to visit a dingy ‘cyber cafe’ close to home to access the Internet… They had a 56.6 kbps connection. Later, to my elation, they upgraded to a 64 kbps line… That meant my only e-mail inbox opened up a minute earlier than before…

All this was before I hit college… Things have changed since then…Enough nostalgia already…

Now I use a 4 mbps line, which is just not enough for my second-life avatar… I never could become a ‘model’ in my real life, given my mirror-cracking looks… But then, hey, why not lead a virtual life??? This is straight out of the Sidney Sheldon novel “Tell me your dreams”… A manifestation of Multiple Personality Disorder?

From Copenhagen, I now make calls and chat with friends all over the world… Trivandrum, Mumbai, SF, NewCastle, Texas [Courtesy VOIP and Skype-Out]

4 different mail ids… An orkut account… A facebook account… LinkedIn… Google reader to address my RSS requirements… Twitter to keep the world updated about my boring life… A MyBlogLog account to collate all my various social networking accounts (which have become quite unmanageable, really!!!)… del.icio.us account to hold my bookmarks online… Last.fm subscription to listen to the latest music on demand… The list goes on… To top it all, a Second Life avatar to live a life different from the one I am enjoying right now…

Has information tech changed our lives? Hell, yeah!!! It has made the world I live in smaller… Do I like it? Now it’s all about time-management [Given the number of accounts I hold online] That’s the new challenge.

This is a forward I received from a dear friend of mine. She felt this mail strongly represented truth.

Men Are Just Happier People– What do you expect from such simple creatures? Your last name stays put. The garage is all yours. Wedding plans take care of themselves. Chocolate is just another snack. You can be President. You can never be pregnant. You can wear a white T-shirt to a water park. Car mechanics tell you the truth. Wedding dress $5000. Tux rental-$100.
Phone conversations are over in 30 seconds flat. A five-day vacation requires only one suitcase. You can open all your own jars. You get extra credit for the slightest act of thoughtfulness. If someone forgets to invite you, he or she can still be your friend.
You are unable to see wrinkles in your clothes. Everything on your face stays its original color. The same hairstyle lasts for years, maybe decades. You only have to shave your face and neck.
One wallet and one pair of shoes — one color for all seasons. You can wear shorts no matter how your legs look. You can ‘do’ your nails with a pocket knife. You have freedom of choice concerning growing a mustache.
You can do Christmas shopping for 25 relatives on December 24 in 25 minutes.
No wonder men are happier.

Now the Golden question? Are Men really the happier lot? Lets dissect the mail and award points to the miserable/affected party in each area.

< Your last name stays put. > I pass this one. Score: Women

<The garage is all yours. > Who gets to sleep on the bed after a fight? Score: Men

<Wedding plans take care of themselves. > We just have to get it there… Wooing the woman of your dreams is not such an easy thing… Especially on your wallet. Score: Men

<You can be President.>

María Estela (’Isabel’) Martínez de Perón: President of Argentina from 1 Jul 1974 to 24 Mar 1976.

Vigdís Finnbogadóttir President of Iceland from 1 Aug 1980 to 1 Aug 1996

Agatha Barbara President of Malta from 15 Feb 1982 to 15 Feb 1987

The list goes on… Where’s your GK, MiLady? Score: No one

<You can never be pregnant.> There’s nothing to say here. Really!!! Score : Women

<You can wear a white T-shirt to a water park> No one is stopping you. Score:Women though.

<Car mechanics tell you the truth> Dunno… Guess guys are hard-wired for stuff that works on gasoline… Score: Women

<You can do Christmas shopping for 25 relatives on December 24 in 25 minutes> Some call it efficiency… others call insensitiveness… But it does get done… Score: Women

< You only have to shave your face and neck. You can wear shorts no matter how your legs look. You have freedom of choice concerning growing a mustache. …..> No arguments here… Especially on facial hair… Score: Women

Alright,Alright!!! I give up…

Since women seems to racking up points already and I do not think (or want) to win this argument, I will agree that Men do seem to be the happier lot. My arguments just would not change anything.

If you want to make it to the moon but your glands do not pump enough adrenaline to help you become an astronaut, the deadline is approaching to at least send your name around Earth’s lonely God/Big-Bang - made satellite.

June 27 marks the last day to enter your information on the Web to send your name to the moon with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). Your name will be incorporated in a database and loaded onto a microchip built into the LRO spacecraft. The service is free and comes with a printable certificate assuring you that you are indeed a part of the LRO experience.

LRO is the first step in sending humans back to the moon, according to Cathy Peddie, deputy project manager for LRO at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. The orbiter will scope out landing sites and resources, and also study the effects of lunar radiation on humans. The orbiter is slated to launch no earlier than November and will orbit for at least a year.

And if all the people in the promo video for NASA are to be believed, this will be a popular trip. 

Send your name to the moon now.