I have confessed many times over to being a hardcore fan of creative pursuits.

Taking something that has been around for some time and making something new out of it is art in itself. I could not help but share these gems with you.

Snow Patrol vs. The Police (Partyben mash-up)

Oasis - Greenday mash-up

Most of you Johnny Bravos out there would know how difficult it is to conjure up a relationship out of thin air… especially with the ‘mythical’ blonde, blue-eyed malayalee girl*  standing next to you at the local pub….

Fear not! Don Draper has come to the rescue… I hear his no-nonsense advice on getting on your groove is right on the spot.

I can’t wait to try these out…

P.S.: The author will not be responsible for any advice in a comedy programme aired on National TV. If you are put out of misery, hard luck, I did say…

*A corruption of the blonde, blue-eyed brahmin girl fantasy by Mahesh R

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?

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!

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.

Now that summer is on, every one is out to get their share of the sun. But not the typical Indian. It has nothing to do with Heliophobia. It has more to do with us being conditioned to stay away from the ‘harsh tropical’ celestial body. This training kicks in whenever we get out into the open. While you will find Europeans crowded out in the sunny outdoors, Indians would feel comfortable staying in the shade.

But what if it is not summer? What other rule of thumb would come to the rescue of the Indian-seekers?

Ladies and gentlemen, let me present to you the Leather Jacket. Any Indian male would consider a good leather jacket a possession worth a passing down a couple of generations. All those biker movies never helped one bit. Me and my friends can swear to seeing many of these on my Indian fellow-men here in Europe. I also confess to owning one.

Disclaimer: What I have stated above is not hard and fast, and should not be held against me in a court of law.