Which pill did he take?

Denis Darzacq has a feeling that he's the ONE.

[via]

Jammin' Like Crazy

Amit Chatwani, who is also known as the 'Borat of Wall Street', is the author of the blog Leveraged Sellout. The blog severely lampoons the lifestyles of the young, filthy rich, 20-something investment bankers & finance guys of Wall Street who spend their 18 hour workdays hunched over excel worksheets & spend their weekends in nightclubs & pubs in the upmarket, always on the move Financial District of Manhattan.

His profanity ridden, brash style of writing has generated a humongous readership & the blog at times receives 30,000 page views within 4 days of his posting a writeup.

First read this & then do NOT miss this.

He also has speed dating experience.

Don't we need a 'Borat of IT/BPO'? I guess I should just crank up some of that sarcasm in me & blow the whistle.

I'm thinking I'll call it 'Validated Sellout'.

How Dare You?

Seth Godin says:

"How can you sqaunder even one more day not taking the advantage of the greatest shifts of our generation?

How dare you settle for less when the world has made it so easy for you to be remarkable."

Motivation can be so simple sometimes.

Check out the book.

Us and Them

Them:

Us:

(Me and Jainzy)

(Graph)ic Humour

My blog find of the day.

Never before have I been so enamoured by graphs & venn diagrams before.

The Final Frontier

William Shatner a.k.a Capt. James T Kirk was inducted into the Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame in December '06. Star Trek will always remain one of my fondest TV series & even modern mind boggling special effects driven movies do not appeal to me as much as the hit TV show from the 60's. In India, it used to be aired in the late 90's after which it was pulled off.

The camaraderie between Kirk & Spock will always be memorable for any true blue trekkie. Not to mention the plots & sub plots that ventured into varied philosophies of science & human civilization, posing some insightful questions to the audience.

The cultural impact of Star Trek has been immense & has led to an entire subculture. For the first time in 25 years, the show is in a state where no star trek film or series is in production or development following the cancellation of Enterprise.

Boldly go here, where no man has gone before.

The web of politics

David Cameron, who's leading the Conservative Party in Britain has a blog. Cameron has apparently revived a certain emotion the Conservatives had lost: optimism.

Imagine if our politicos would also start blogging.. all members of the parliament straddling in with their Thinkpads & indulging in some live blogging during a parliament session.
System crash will have an entirely new meaning!

Lets be friends!

My blog find of the day..
This can be added to the numerous similar mail forwards floating over the web.

Indian Ocean in Concert

Went to IIM Bangalore's annual cul-fest 'UNMAAD'..Getting tickets was not a big problem.. contrary to what I had in mind. By the time we reached, we were starving & I had a strange urge to sit & eat at the same table with future business magnates & CEO's.. call me shallow!

After eating some bad bread-omelette & maggi with capsicum (yuckk!), we landed up at the open ground where the concert had already started.

The opening act was Indian Ocean. It was my first tryst with the band.. I had only heard 'Kandisa' & that too I had heard it..not listened. Rahul Ram, the bassist & one of the vocalists kept chatting up the crowd inbetween the songs & was funny at times ("..the lyrics were written by so-&-so.. dilli ka purana haraami hai!")

Wikipedia's entry about the band goes like this - "Indo-rock fusion with jazz-spiced rhythms that integrates shlokas, sufism, environmentalism, mythology and revolution."

It might seem that its just attaching too many labels but I gotta tell ya, these guys really play all the stuff mentioned above.. & more!

Susmit Sen, the bands guitarist whom I had met in Delhi at a party aeons ago has his own distinct style & is a self taught guy. The band as a whole seem to be inspired by too many genres & structure their sound in a way that it becomes difficult for the audience to label them into either Jazz/Rock/Sufi rock or any of the conventional genres..I would say Indian Ocean is a prime example of a quintessential 'fusion' band with each member of the band with different styles coming together harmoniously producing some some free music with fused minds.

Second act was Ali Azmat of Junoon.. the less said the better. We left after a couple of songs. Even 'Sayonee' was a pathetic effort. A lot like an average joe college band doing a Junoon cover. It seemed as if Mr Ali ran into his band members on the way to the IIM-B campus & begged them to play with him.

All in all, not a bad night... except for some whackos trying to jump the barricade that divided the Rs 299/- people from the Rs 99/- people..Its a class divide I tell you.

Changing the world.. one keystroke at a time!

Silicon valley has given us a lot of 'dorms to riches' tales of daring & enterprising young guns starting their own ventures & shunning promising careers..

What drives these people to go that extra mile taking huge risks & laughing at the face of unsurmountable difficulties? I guess the simple explanation is that these people knew that they had a million dollar idea that was innovative, had a viable business model & they couldn't wait to get down to it & get their hands dirty.

The Google duo started their super search machine while pursuing their PhD's in Stanford.

Super rich Bill & spaceman Paul had dropped out of Harvard to start their closed source empire.

Michael Dell started one of the biggest PC companies out of his dorm room.

There are hundreds of such examples floating in the media today but I gues it all starts with a vision. Most technology start ups do not have profit as the sole ambition although it becomes a side effect & the some of them go on to make millionaires out of its employees. The motivating factor for these techies is a chance to change the world so to speak..

The impact of Google, eBay, Amazon, Youtube, MySpace has been phenomenal & has brought about a sea change in consumer behaviour. They have radically altered business models of conventional media platforms like broadcast television & blockbuster film studios.

It really must feel great to become a CEO at 19.

Any idea what was the first item sold on eBay? Me neither.

Ambitions & crystallized double sulphates

When I was 12, most kids my age had pretty much the same kind of ambitions..All of us wanted to become fighter pilots ['Top Gun' had been released] or scientists [astronomer, in my case].

Of course nobody told us that becoming a scientist required years of intense study before any kind of fruitful work is produced or discoveries are made & eventually would make us socially dysfunctional + flat broke, & that staring too long at the night sky can give you quite a painful cramp in the neck.

But we were kids, all of us had our dream jobs & playing with electric motors & kitchen spices in moms kitchen made us feel as if we were born to do be the next Edison. We grew alum in a bowl for crying out loud! Couldn't cut any frogs though.

How I miss those joyful days..