Intel inside Mental outside

The "E.M.B.A." program that kicks off on a Sunday morning in the heart of Shanghai's financial district is much like any other curriculum designed to train the future business leaders of China. "We give students the tools they need to build up their confidence," says Vivian Liu, general manager of the popular two-year-old program, which has seen 1,500 participants pass through its doors. But the difference between Liu's course and others is this: when the demands of subjects like economics or communications get too taxing, her students might just respond by having a good cry and asking for their mommies. How so? They're children. The e in this E.M.B.A. program stands not for executive but early, and the oldest student in the class is age 6. Civil servant He Jiachen sends his 3-year-old, He Xingzhen, to the E.M.B.A. course while he and his wife pursue their own adult M.B.A.s. "My son is developing well," he says. "In class, he isn't afraid of giving speeches, and he likes to be a team leader in group activities."

source www.time.com

Dont know whether to laugh or cry. Seems like i have add a pretty chilled out pre-teens.

Do you know what "MMR" technology that the Allout people are talking about in their advertising campaign means - Mosquito mortality rate. How can this even qualify as a technology, isn't this supposed to be a parameter on which you judge how effective you technology is. Its like telling a new AIDS vaccine has a "HMR" technology - "Human Mortality Rate" and how absurd does that sound. ( and talking of allout - my friend who purchased one of them when they initially came to market, plugged in the machine and was anxiously waiting for a tongue to flap out and suck the mosquito that was sitting on his nose. He was soo disappointed that he actually came close to calling the customer care department. )

There are zillion technologies floating around for some zillion and odd products and most of them don't make any sense even to the most gullible customers like my friend. Shampoos and detergents are the worst, from nantechnology to iwillfightthedandruff technology every technology closely related to hair has been misused. To energy boosters in Boost to microganules in Rin ultra the con game is getting too much. Apparently these detergent people try to con people by colouring those so called micro granules in blue. I wonder how many of these companies really have a R&D department worth coming up with a better wrapping solutions for their product, leave alone ultraglistners. How many ads these days have people in white lab coats working in swanky research labs saying that national mental association endorses this particular brand of IQdropper with special action lunacy drivers as its official drug partner. If these companies really have a research labs why don't the advertisements actually take us there instead of the artificially created sets which junta know is a setup anyway.

And what is this mad craze to partner your company with any event that happens . First there was this official partner, then came the "nothing official about it" partner, then media partner and these days they have radio partners, mobile partners and all sorts of partners. I even heard "Shulab souchalaya" being the official toilet partner for National diarrhea day and Big Bubble being the official gum partner of the Indian Gum Farting squad to the recent ObnoxiousOlympics held in 2005.

Most of the ads these days are so depressing that just the name of the company on a black background will make a far better impact. The vernacular ads are totally give ups, they are an assassination on creativity ( try sitting through an add for bindhu applam and you will know the pain ). You don't need all that amount of money to create good ads, just some regular dose of good old creativity would do. The fevicol ads would have coasted same money as those of bindhu applam ads I guess. Its not that tough to create a decent ad either. Lets take bindhu applam( pappad ) as an example and try to come out with some decent ideas for an ad in the comments section, i bet we can come up with some decent stuff.

Hail Creativity !

I ndia - is it really shinning.
N atwar - sad reminder of stinking Indian beaurocracy
T sunami - how much time will it take for the scar to heal.
E merging Midleclass - they used to sweat but now they have started to spend.
L allu maharaj gets dethroned - evolution at last gives rational thinking to voting brains.

I mrana - Raped by the society and media.Uniform Civil Code Anybody ?
N arayana Moorthy asks Gowda to shove it up his @$$.
S ania Mirza plays hard ball. She is more into hitting media people these days.
I raq - the neo Imperialism continues.
D elhi bomb blasts - Fireworks, but not an happy one.
E arthquake in Kashmir, left out in the cold.

M angal Pandey - the fall of the rising.
E quity Markets - Foreign investors loved it,Communists hated it,end of it all everybody made money.
N ew Orleans - they say it used to be a nice place.
T endulkar - piles on more records and money.
A shes - discovery of a game in the nation it was invented.
L arry Page and Sergey Brin - u can hide from the law, but not from them.

O il - every society must struggle for oil, and in the long run, it will be gone.
U nder World - Abu Salem lands in India while Dawood roams the streets of Karachi
T igers - Skin show of a different kind.
S ourav Ganguly - talks more than he plays, exit board shown.
I Pod Nano and Video - Listening Opps! sorry watching music is never going to be the same.
D am on Narmada opens - gateway to hell for pilgrims who came searching for a place in heaven.
E Commerce - from e-bay to Amazon to i-tunes, the digital shop got bigger and brasher.

Good nite 2005 and Good luck 2006

A search on google on 'google search' returns around 20,700,000 hits.

Gone are those days when people used to start their essays or speeches or whatever with Webster defines blah blah blah, Webster has been replaced with google. It just stuck me how technology is seeping into every facet of human life. Primarily on the way we perceive information as such. Information is being absorbed, accumulated and dispersed faster every day and every day a new medium through which it can be dispersed is found. Each morning is becoming an information over load. If you think you are happy without all this garbage dump, then you would be forced to undergo the 'Joey effect' a lot of times.

Joey Effect: Described as an effect created on the human face when they don't know about a particular piece of fact or fiction ( in general called Information) during a conversation or discussion but is forced to cover up the ignorance with an all knowing smile. Derived from the facial expression given by Joey Tribianni in the hit sitcom F.R.I.E.N.D.S

Each day the transition of a particular event from being current to becoming history is happening faster. Today volker is hot, tomorrow he belongs to history. Can anybody tell me whats happened to Imrana now. Hello whom?. Major cause : Parasitic Journalism

Parasitic Journalism: A practice followed by current media where they cling on to a story when its new and just let it fade away after a few days( few weeks if the story is too hot). Interviews of any one related to the story or to the people who are involved in the story are recorded and made into a breaking news.
Breaking news
Natwar's sons' first cousins' baby daughter utters oil-coupon as her first word.
Natwar says no such utterance happened

PS: Hey got 78,100 hits for Parasitic Journalism

Look at the amount of personal information that we need to remember. Bank pass book number, account number, credit card number, ATM pin number, email logins and passwords etc etc etc. Organizing all these information is becoming a huge pain. I still don't know how many bank accounts I have, leave alone the account numbers. I got a rude shock that day when i got a lawyers notice regarding some dues I have to pay against a bank account which I dint even no existed.

The amount of information which we will be forced to absorb will keep becoming bigger and bigger, that at one point of time we mite want an individual google search for our personal information alone. Lets hope this doesn't happen in our lifetime and for people who believe in the concept of next birth, sorry fellas.

But we're still pretty confused by Celina Jaitley. Recently, the actress said she was on top of the world, in love and in a serious relationship.

She also claimed, in the same interview, that she wants to be known for her work, not the controversies surrounding her.

You can't have it both ways, Celina.

On the one hand, you say you want to be known for your work. On the other, you claim you are in love but don't reveal the name of the person, thereby fuelling gossip. What do we do? Should we write about how unfairly you missed an Oscar nomination after your work in Jaanasheen?

We've always wondered how you landed in the sea with a violin, half-naked, despite the fact that you played a partially blind girl in the film!

Finally years of reading rediff movie colums have paid off

29 th Oct 1999

Dear Diary,

As with everybody these days, we were discussing over the weekend about floating a company. Without further adieu it was decided that we start a software company. But it was decided that we would start a product company and not a services company. Now for the more difficult part - What product could we create that was not already done by Google and one that would have tremendous impact on the lives of people daily?. Many ideas were put forth. For example, a software package to maintain religious establishments was discussed and was thrown out because stuff like that already existed ( to my immense surprise I should say, religion is a big business these days but something about that fact was quite unsettling ). Ideas kept coming, absurd, impractical and down rite stupid and the routine started to get boring. Is it me or is it an empirical rule, my mind always wanders off to think about the boring MEGA-GIGA soaps aired on TV when I am bored. Then it all occurred to me like a flash, an idea so wonderful in its brilliance. Was it something about my face I don't know, every body was silent. The idea was conveyed and immediately we felt that we were on the verge of something big, very big. It was all decided - we were going to build a product that could help directors/production houses to make mega serials. We decided to call the company E-SOAP.

The product was soon completed and it was our first beta-release and the excitement in the air was quite palpable.

E-SOAP=> How may I help you?
Press N for new script.
Press A for alter new script.
Press F for adding needless time filling fillers into script.
Press S for composing song for the SOAP
Press Q to Quit

E-SOAP=>N
E-SOAP=>Type of script ( Drama, Family Drama, horror, religious ): Family Drama
E-SOAP=>Number of main Characters : 12-14
E-SOAP=> List of Characters
Grand-Father, Docile characterization. Dresses preferably Pajama and kurtha
Grand-Mother, Lot of crying involved . Big bindhi in forehead and fat.
Son 1, Henpecked and Loser in life
Daughter in Law 1, Evil shade, arrogant, and causes lot of trouble in family and trying to get conceived.
Son 2, Drunkard
Daughter in Law 2, Helpless with 2 Kids and comes from a poor family.
Daughter 1, Stays permanently in dad's house
Son In Law 1 No job, mercy of in laws
Son 3, Bachelor, epitome of manhood, good job, in love with
Son 3's Lover, Madly in love with son 3 ( name preferably should sound like Kusum ).

Saved the outline of the script to C:\Script.txt

E-SOAP=>Suggest Title
E-SOAP=>Should the title start with K?
E-SOAP=>Yes
E-SOAP=>Kuch Kuch Nahi hona Chahiye

Huge cry erupted, the first beta-test was a huge success. Language support for Hindhi,Tamil and Telugu were added in the subsequent releases. One of the most hailed feature of the product was the ability to provide fillers in between scenes.


E-SOAP=>Need Fillers
E-SOAP=>Does the house have a staircase?
E-SOAP=>Yes
E-SOAP=>Duration of filler
E-SOAP=>2mins
E-SOAP=>Character climbing down the staircase in slow motion. BGM required ( Preferably heavy percussions).
E-SOAP=>Do you want to add the filler to a template?
E-SOAP=>Yes
E-SOAP=>Name of template
E-SOAP=>Staircase
E-SOAP=>Template saved to C:\Kuch Kuch Nahi hona Chahiye\templates\Staircase.templ

Those were the most exciting days of my life. The feeling of having created a product which affected people on a daily basis, a product which made them cry, laugh and attack them at an emotional level. Then we decided to change the name of the company to Balaji TeleFilms in Hindhi and Radaan in Tamil. Rest as they say is history.

It rained like mad. The sheets of water, the cold wind, hot tomato soup, the cozy bean bag and your favorite movie and no office. It became my new barometer for an "Ideal Day". Just Perfect.