FastTrack gone offtrack with its advertising?

Radio One was recently airing some advertising for FastTrack’s new Army Collection. They were inviting women to send in jingles that go with a marching tune, and played a sample jingle on air. Here are the lyrics to that sample:

Get up and leave
if he tries to kiss your hand
He’s a one-girl man;
He ain’t a one-night stand

Corollary: if one comes across a girl wearing a Fast Track army watch, can one presume she is looking for a one-night-stand?

Jokes apart, why would FastTrack want to restrict their customer base to an ultra-liberal crowd instead of having mass appeal to the entire 18-25 age group, irrespective of how conservative/liberal they are, irrespective of what their preferences in relationships are? Does their advertising tactic make sense for a consumer products' company?

A thought on Friday, the 13th

Doesn't the 14th of Feb impose an unnecessary, unwarranted, and artificial deadline on a Work-In-Progress situation?

Work update

I've joined Adea Technologies (www.adea.com) more than a month back. Yeah, I used to work here earlier too. Familiar people, familiar work, let's see how this stint goes.

Ghajini: lost opportunity

Take a look at the ingredients: a weird case of short term memory loss, a dedicated actor who’s chiseled himself for this role, and pretty good direction – one would have expected so much more from Ghajini.

Of course I am biased by Memento, and I’m glad that Ghajini wasn’t a copy. But the story could’ve been made so much more complex and thrilling. Instead, they chose a fairly simple story line in which no serious complications arise out of Sanjay’s anterograde amnesia. He seems to have a system that works fairly well: except when his enemies ruin it for him. And then it follows the traditional good-guy-gets-rid-of-bad-guy.

Well, here’s the thing about Sanjay’s condition. He could have felt the rage of losing his girlfriend every 15 minutes, or whenever he saw himself in the mirror. But there’s only one scene which shows that, but it’s for the benefit of advancing the story – it doesn’t add much to Sanjay’s character. Why didn’t the director repeat that scene a few times, so that the character’s condition could be more ingrained in the viewer’s head?

Why doesn't the movie explore Sanjay's psyche, and have him narrate the thoughts that are running in his head? The man would be under such tremendous confusion trying to figure out what’s happening around him – why not unleash that confusion on to the audience?

Why does the story, instead of making it bigger with the endless possibilities of anterograde amnesia, choose to talk about the courtship between a millionaire and an aspiring model? Couldn’t all that material have been saved for a different yuppy movie?

I’m glad I watched Ghajini, and I did like the movie. But I guess I had my hopes up way too high.

Faith

Faithful : unfaithful : faithless :: love : hate : indifference

came up with this one when listening to Doolin Dalton

Quick retorts by single blokes

Married people, please move on. This post is not for you.

Single folk, especially those under immense pressure from their families to jump into something that you don’t want to contemplate right now, please stand by… we may be able to help each other out.

Given that I have had a lot of time on my hands (see previous post), I decided to call my parents over to Hyderabad. And since I knew I was going to be home pretty much all the time, I asked them to come over on an extended stay. Exactly five hours before my parents arrived, it hit me that I could have a repeat of all the conversations I have had with them about marriage and how I’m not particularly thrilled by the idea of arranged marriages.

My scared self wishes to put together a collection of well-reasoned retorts that are sure to terminate any such conversation around arranged marriages, in favour of the single bloke. If you can add on to this list that I’m putting together, you would be helping out more than one poor soul:

• Parents: We would like you to get married to someone all of us are comfortable with
  Single bloke: Are you thinking of my car?
• Parents: What’s wrong with an arranged marriage?
  Single bloke: You cannot arrange a marriage; you can only arrange a wedding. Ergo …
• Parents: We’ve found a lovely girl for you
  Single bloke: I’ve found a red apple for you
• Parents: Even your friend X was OK with an arranged marriage. Why was it OK with him?
  Single bloke: Information Asymmetry? -- raise your eyebrows as you say this
  
• Parents: Do you know how many good offers you have been getting?
  Single bloke: A good offer in a bad system still counts as a bad offer
• Parents: Don’t you want a wife who can cook?
  Single bloke: You know, I bought this microwave oven last month and I still haven’t figured out how it works…
  

Some career news

I’ve quit my job of over a year. Nothing went wrong, but nothing went seriously right either. As of now, I’m in the market looking for a job. Actually not just yet – I plan to take some time off to think about myself, life, and everything that comes with it. Perhaps in a few weeks I’ll freak out about unemployment, and get serious about the third draft of my resume. In the meantime, Chi has more time to dedicate to his blog :-)

I'm only human
I seek what I love
I chase what I seek
I may affront what I chase
'Tis a chance I have to take

Noble

There is the language that we read, and then there's language that we speak. The two are completely different animals: often, we come across words that we read but never use.

What if we could speak the way our favourite authors write? Would that show what our true character really is? If I used the word "noble" in a conversation, does that truly mean what I was describing was indeed noble?

Buy and sell your friends?

I've become quite used to the big variety of stories and feeds that keep popping up on facebook. But one story that I saw today made my eyes open really wide:

The app seems quite harmless in itself: all it seems to suggest is that you treat your friends as pets.
From the application's web page:

Buy and sell your friends as pets! You can make your pets poke, send gifts, or just show off for you. Make money as a shrewd pets investor or as a hot commodity! Friends for Sale is the bees knees!

But they might want to rethink their newsfeed stories

long time, no rant

So here's one.

Why is it that some people have to put up HP#7 spoilers on their google talk status message? Do they want to show off that they are speed readers, or that they had been reading spoilers all along, or they just want to ruin the read for people on their contacts' list for the fun of it?

I'd been ignoring the HP fan sites for months, just in case I read a spoiler; and no, I did not read TOI on Sunday, the 22nd either. But (and here's the big mistake) I logged into google talk this morning, and boom - now I know how the story will unfold.

Thanks for ruining my reading, mate.

Ladakh Snaps

Here are the Ladakh snaps!!
There are a few more snaps in this web-album.. and the story follows soon, after I move to biryani-land :-)

Snaps of the ISB Campus

A few more snaps in this web-album

Graduation Snaps

Here are some snaps from our convocation rehearsal, the class photo-session and the convocation ceremony.

More snaps here

the stage is set

shine on you...

crossing swords

with my parents

our class is too big for a single snap

walking in to the makeshift auditorium...

... and Mr Tee poses for the camera

Back to Term-2: A crash course in macroeconomics

Graduated!!

oops! I threw my hat too high!

hat throwing: take-2

waiting for the snaps to be burnt to CD... didn't anyone study Service Ops Management?

ISB's class of 2007: the final handshake

Placement Story

When watching TV last night, I hit upon CNN-IBN playing this news snippet:




To quote from the text version from CNN-IBN's site

Five students from the prestigious Indian School of Business have bagged international jobs worth Rs one crore annually with the highest clocking Rs 1.2 crore.

Five crorepatis? Well, sure 416 is a big class, but I didn't know it was big enough for me to miss meeting (or even knowing) these five classmates of mine.


Update [17 April 2007]
After intense speculation, some friends of mine & I did come up with five possibilities who could have hit the one-plus mark. So I (probably) do know these five classmates of mine.