Today Spiceal

Menu board outside the NFC (NITK Food Court) a.k.a. NFC (Neha Food Court) a.k.a. SNP (Sri Nandeshwar Prasanna). Circa April 2008. Good times.

Ad One

I feel stagnant. This 'break' between finishing college and starting work gets on my nerves, specially when the period in question extends to over two months.
I am not a particularly vociferous fan of television. Four years of college life ensured that interaction with it was restricted, unless you wanted to watch regional (read gult) movies or football/cricket matches in the common room.
On the side, the LAN ensured that I watched the best content ever created, so I returned home with certain well defined thresholds of what could pass muster.
My TV season began with the IPL. More than the matches, what interested me were the ads. I guess the high price for the time slot ensured some kind of filter for quality.
The telecom companies seem to have come up with the best ones, the jingle and the pug in the Vodafone ad being the best. Airtel with its Madhavan and Vidya Balan series seems to have got it right too. Recently I saw a Reliance ad focused on voice clarity. Pretty good too. But there was one Airtel ad which riled me. Something about A.R. Rehman in between. Now that ad had a line, "Can we add some party mix ya?" mentioned coyly by what looked like a garishly made up teenager. I took a while to recover. That 'ya' sentence terminator is anything but creative.
The worst during that period was the Gaur Grandeur ad. It focused on a single line, "This is really hot", if I remember correctly. It reeked of the wannabe 'cool' spirit which seems to be in vogue nowadays.

Hyundai make a mess of ads. They had this Accent ad which seemed to say that performers rarely talk too much. Fair enough. But then the ad ends abruptly with ," I want to be like ". Someone seems to have pointed it out. They removed that section in later ads. Tata's CS ad looks vivid. I like the part where the chairman's face is superimposed over the chimney smoke, which seems to shoot out of his ears. Nice detail. But I think Logan targeted them in the 'style is not everything' ad. I actually like the Logan ad. It's got a nice dare to be different tone. No bling. No wannabe-ism.
But I think I saw the worst one right now. By Ford. It starts well with what seems to be a nice story of a woman waiting for her husband to take her back from a party. But then you see the car which seems to have the worst paintshop blue ever. And then there is this shot of guys looking amazed at the way this husband/driver makes a turn. I specifically remember a french-bearded short chubby fellow with mouth wide open. And the jingle.
'Your love is my life'?!
'Knight in shining armor'?!
That's a car ad? Yes it (the car) takes a good turn, albeit staged, and not so well. Notice that it goes in between two cars. And in a sec, no sound whatsoever, the car in front goes poof.

Then there is that 'pretty' ad with shots of a girl in three different settings. The music in the backdrop resembles the Garnier ad. But then it says some rubbish in French/Italian/Spanish. Joillere de vive, I think. I don't know if it is a cosmetic ad. Or a jewelery ad. And I can't figure out the language. Why would anyone buy something of this sort? More importantly where would you buy it?
Shock and recover. Axe. That guy looks like the biggest dud in town. The two girls around him seem least shocked. I guess the shock happens after the ad. I hope they recover.

But none of them beat the Dandi namak ad. It was always shown twice. And my my, what a visual journey on making salt. Pity they didn't do too well.

What's a good ad? Check this one I saw recently in Kolkata: adsoftheworld.com/media/ambient/calcutta_school_of_music_learn_to_appreciate?size=_original
No bling. No 'yo' ness. Plain and simple. Awesome. No wonder it won at Cannes this year.

Jagaran: Not a wayside musing

Hi
If you are reading this, most probably you are an NITKian who wants to make a difference to the world around you. More importantly, you are someone who believes that to get something done, you need to take the first step. Most importantly, you know that energy is precious. And Jagaran is all about spreading and implementing that message.
Let me give you an example.
Do you know how much our college spends on its electricity?
It spends Rs. 8 lakhs. Not annually. Per month. Thats what all our lights and fans and comps which remain running in our hostels, in our absence, add up to. Now imagine what would happen if you are able to cut off 1 % of this expenditure. We save almost a lakh in a year. What does that require of us? Nothing much. A little alertness. A little awareness. Switch off when not required. Thats it.
What do we gain?
Well for starters, we reduce the load on our power systems. We also save thousands of tonnes of coal. We reduce carbon emissions which emanate from thermal plants which provide the bulk of our power. We hinder global warming. We help create a healthier environment. We breathe easy. We live a better life.
And thats just about power conservation.
How do we go about it?
Well for starters, we look at the psychological level. Stickers on every door. Classrooms. Hostels. Admin blocks. With something like,'Did you save energy today?' or 'Did you turn off the lights?' .
Follow that up with a hyper link to an intra net site. Which specifically tells us what ails our power system. And what could be done about it. Before the start of each of our plethora of fests, get people to realize that having fun can be done without wasting energy. Shaking people out of lethargy is the only way Jagaran can be successful.
The word Jagaran, when loosely translated, means 'an awakening'. It also means an increasing awareness. I firmly believe that each one of us in the long run will end up being a mentor. If at that point of time we are still able to maintain energy awareness, Jagaran would have been successful. Because you would have sown the seeds for a greener earth. And thats the best thing you could have ever done.
We are looking for ideas. We look forward to your participation. Feel free to send your ideas to saurab.nair@gmail.com Whether small or big, any contribution that you make will be an addition to the overall effort. We are technocrats. And pretty much the smartest in the nation. At the end of the day, if we do not conserve energy, no one else will.

The Indian Spelling Juggernaut

There was a time when I thought only mallus took perverse delight in spelling a word phonetically.
Anyone who has been to kerala would have noticed the myriad sign boards proclaiming such nuggets like ceeyem stores. Or peepee enterprises. Or yemyem press.
But lately, I have noticed that this trend does not restrict itself to the south.
The extra K's for example. Ekta Kapoor and her Kkusum's+ daily load of soap operas. But that was forgivable. After all, those were words which were in Hindi. There could always be more than one correct English rendition.
What irks me is a transgression like Himesh Reshmiyaa's,(I hope i got the spelling right there, anyway, its the nasal sounding guy who permanently wears a cap), movie Aap Ka Suroor. It has an inane tag line which says 'The Moviee'. What exactly is that extra 'e' doing there? Spell check is screaming at me right now. Any kid going to watch this movie will of course be ieeenspired and will coin more of such nuggets. In ten years maybe we will have to run a page through a speech synthesizer to figure out what was meant.
Eyes wide shut. Ears wide open it will be then.

lizzy

The previous post was a sample test on what my posting would look like. It looks nice.
Here goes.

Lizzy is a tawny six inch long lizard. Stays with me. Pays no rent.
But what the heck. He has been staring at me for the past five minutes. From under the tubelight. I have already checked for insects on me twice. Wonder what he finds so interesting. Assuming its a he. He just lost interest. He has just seen a moth. There it goes. His dinner's done i guess.

Its so simple for Lizzy. He eats, sleeps and roams around. Period. And I sit opposite him doing complicated things which make my life even more complicated. Guess Lizzy can teach me something there.

I will go have dinner.

numero uno

First posting!
Yippee!!!
First things first.
The reason this posting exists is because:
1) There are still ten minutes for my mess to open for dinner.
2) I am jobless. Both literally and figuratively.
3) Its free.
4) "A blog is a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world."
That was courtesy the start tour in blogger. Its generality prevents the existence of a purist blogger i guess. Incidentally, are there certain people who call themselves that?