The image of a typical Indian around the world is increasingly changing to that of a singing, dancing, romancing and festival loving person. Thanks to Bollywood movies, India is perceived through its celluloid dreams, just like once we conceived the West through Hollywood. Perhaps as a testament to that, the following cheeky poster campaign by Kingfisher is being increasingly spotted in Central London. There are others in similar lines, which reminds you of the bright traditional Indian ads.
Last week, I came to know that the smart phone I was planning for all along Sendo X2 might never get released at all. Due to administration problems, the company has been taken over by Motorola. Sendo X2 which was expected this month seems to have been shelved indefinitely. Not that I’m dying for a smart phone (which I feel is quite inadequate given today’s technology). But I definitely miss a jazzy looking music player ;-)
This weekend, I was humbled in more ways than one. First while
visiting the London Science Museum, when one gets to see a spell
binding display of the relentless scientific pursuits of Man. Despite
spending a good 2 hours inside, we barely managed to cover the ground
floor of this five storied treasure house of knowledge. And second,
when I realised that, whenever one feels financially complacent; pay a
visit to Harrods and you’ll swear never to use the expression
“over-priced” in your life.
Harrods is the world’s most recognised department store spread over
five acres right in the heart of London. Here you can see heaps of
well earned money frittered over the most trivial or sometimes futile
purchases. Like for e.g. in a “Sale” a pen for £250 (twice the price
of a mid-range digital cameras) or a coffee table with a chess board
print (not even carved) for £10,000. However, what would probably
surprise you is - simply, the crowd. Yes, hundreds of rooms filled
with buyers busy filling up their umpteenth green ‘Harrods’ shopping
bag. If you hadn’t noticed the price tags, this would have passed for
an ordinary departmental store.
Few minutes later, you look around. Your fears get confirmed. You are
indeed the only person who is not shopping. So, I decide; while I’m
here, I better observe the ways and manners of the elite. Most
disappointingly, they look exactly like the ordinary London
milieu. Most of them in casuals like sneakers (horror!) and jeans. Yes
my friends you have to look out for subtle giveaways like designer
labels or rolex watches to spot the real cash puppies. Hints that
never escape the sharp eyes of the shop assistants. So, if you are the
right crowd, you’ll perhaps be treated like a prince (most probably
you are already one;) ). But I’m far from one, so…
The next planned destination - Hyde park, was sealed due to the
Live8 concert. Though a major event here, the whole idea seemed
shallow and pointless to me. In fact, it was not even a fund raising
event like ‘Live Aid’. People seemed to have watched the whole 12 hour
show and stayed up most of the night. In fact, I did stay up too, but
for my game project :D Was fighting some Ogre-Blender related issues,
but I got my issues solved thanks to the excellent Ogre3d
support. Yet another day is saved, thanks to the excellent support of
open-source projects :).
PS: From now on we can have beautiful category icons designed by Jimmac
When you click on the RSS icon in the status bar of Firefox, it
automatically “discovers” some feeds for you. Would you like to see
every category of your blog appear as a seperate feed in Firefox? If
so activate this plugin. And yes, this is my first Wordpress plugin.
Download livemarks-0.5.zip. There are no additional required libraries
Copy the livemarks.php file to your plugins folder at \wp-content\plugins
Go to the plugins admin page and activate it
There is no step 4! ;)
Full Description
Users of the Firefox and Opera browsers would familiar with live
bookmarks or livemarks. This is a browser’s in built mechanism to keep
track of any site’s RSS feeds. For eg: in firefox, an RSS icon appears
in the status bar, clicking on which will display a menu of feeds
automatically “discovered” by it. Wordpress blogs will automatically
have two feeds (varies with the template) - an Atom feed and an RSS
feed. This plugin tries to add the following to your list of of
“discovered” feeds -
Every category of your blog appear as a seperate feed in Firefox if
you are at your blog’s home page
The relevant category of a post will appear if you are visiting a
particular post
I made-up this PJ*, when I found out that I belong to a category of
consumers called the Generation Y or Gen Yers. In short if you
are born between 1979 and 1994 (exact dates are debatable), you are a
Gen Yer. In America, Gen Yers are more than three times the size
of Generation X or “Baby Boomers”. It is found that Gen Yers tend
to be more conservative (old-fashioned?), multiculturetolerant and less rebellious that Gen Xers. It is said that
they prefer humour, irony, and the (apparently) unvarnished
truth. This explains why the Sprite tagline ‘Image is nothing. Obey
your thirst’ has become such a hit.
It is true that we (I mean Gen Yers) have a different outlook on life
and our career. We have been driven to achieve success in
everything we do. Many of us might not desire overnight success but
success nevertheless. This makes us extremely competitive and
cautious. As a result, we demand such high starting paychecks and
perks that Gen Xers find it so ridiculous to accept. I’m sure many of
us know that our bosses find this hard to accept. How can a rookie
Gen Yer be better than that experienced Gen Xer?
Of course, the Gen Xers would quitely accept that they have to work
twice as hard these days because they try to catch up with the
feverent pace of the Gen Yers. They will of course always attribute
this to the faster pace of life, without even bothering to explain
why is life too fast anyways. It is, they would irritatingly say,
because of technology, of course. But duh isn’t technology supposed to
make your life easier? Um… well.. no… this would be followed by
some baseless anecdotes to prove you wrong.
The fact remains that mankind continues to evolve stride after stride
with technology. We squeeze in more to our lives. An invisible force
prompts the economy to shift gears. This force is the fresh blood or
the emerging generation. They might be Gen Yers or even Gen Zers (post
September 11?). But surely they have evolved. They work better in the
current environment because they grew up in it.
I know this sounds like alarm bells for the Gen Xer reading this
post. Didn’t mean to, but weren’t you extinct?!
*PJ - A slang popular among the Hinglish speaking
community that stands for ‘Poor Joke’. Often used when the joke sounds
very contrived esp for the purpose of making a joke.
