A wow weekend evening

Hey folks,

As promised earlier, here’s the post on last Sunday’s meetup.

The original plan was to meetup with Srinath (mainly to catch up with him) but also to cheer up the dude. He’s slogging his ass off at work and we (me and Vinay) couldn’t just leave him at that.

So, Yours Skeptically, just thought he’d plan a surprise party on the beach with a lot of common people and cheer up Srinath in a big way. But, as randomness would have it, Yours Skeptically, screwed up in his own unique way! Also, people like Teal, LVS and a few others opted out at the last minute, due to who-knows-what reasons!

So, the plan came down to me and Vinay meeting Srinath on the beach. Vinay suggested that the local Twitter user group was meeting nearby to celebrate Benedict’s and Nadhiya’s birthdays. Being the shy type, I initially hesitated. But, Vinay ‘compelled’, ‘persistently insisted’ and ‘literally dragged’ me there. Srinath had no issues with coming there, from the beginning.

Again, being the busy dude, Srinath said he would ‘confirm’ the plan by 4 PM. He promptly did so. Yours Skeptically was sleeping when he sent the confirmation SMS. So, had to get up, grab some grub and rush to the ’spot’!

I reached the Spencer’s Daily outlet in Besant Nagar and found Srinath waiting there for me promptly. We walked to the beach talking usual crap

It was nice talking to the fellow in person after a loooooooong time. We caught up on some old times. A few leg pullings et al.

Being the busier dude, Vinay turned up at 6 30 for a meeting scheduled at 5 30 PM. Payan periya aal aaittaan. Navin Iyer ku laam website design pannaraan! paah!

Srinath posing perfectly. Me looking at the scenery. Trick photography!

Then, we had a photo-shoot on the beach. Vinay is still uploading his pics from that session, one pic for every 3-4 days! Sustainable content delivery paradigm aamaa. Mokkai naai!

As we were pulling each others’ legs, Saranyan called up and asked where we were. I had informed him that I’ll be in his area in the evening and invited him sincerely for the Chennai Tweetup. To my luck, he agreed.

Srinath and I walked towards the Murugan Idli Shop on Bessie Beach Road, to meet Saranyan and go down to the Tweetup. Vinay, meanwhile, sped past us on his bike (scootie pep plus pink colour)!

He stopped by for Srinath to hitch a ride upto Mast Kalandhar, where the meetup was taking place. Meanwhile, me and Saranyan were talking about all kinds of stuff ranging from the French Revolution to Robin Williams’ stand-up comedy!

The generous dude, Vinay, dropped Srinath off at Mast Kalandhar and came back to pick up me and Saranyan. And, Saranyan, being the oh-so-accomodative guy, opted to walk. We had to use a few choicest swear words to ‘persuade’ him into getting onto the bike. So, three people on a bike driven by someone like Vinay. Need I say more?!

We landed at Mast Kalandhar about a minute later. Srinath was there with the camera and we took ‘The Motorcycle Diaries’ style pics on Vinay’s bike!

Vinay and Saranyan posing perfectly. Me staring at scenery(?!)

Prakash stepped out of the restaurant and greeted us. Nice dude, I must say. Very gentle mannered. Works for Symantec, btw. So, now you know whom to kick if your Norton Antivirus doesn’t work well!

We then walked into the restaurant and spotted 2 tables worth of people (~ 10-12), all pepped up to smash the cake on Benedict’s and Nadhiya’s face! We then introduced ourselves to Aravind Kumar, Raja (I knew him already), Shiv Ranjan, Ratz, Magesh, Benedict and the rest of the gang.

Then, orey the cake cuttings, cake hittings, cake eatings only!

Srinath had to leave early and Vinay went to drop him. Meanwhile, me, Saranyan, Raja and Magesh mixed up our orders and ended up drinking each others’ drinks!

Saranyan and I were waiting for Raja to be done with his drink. Once he was done, we bye’d the gang and left the place. Stomach was making strange sounds. Then, I realised the drink I had was an apetizer! WTF mode.

Came down and spotted Vinay waiting for me and Saranyan across the road. Rushed, got onto his bike and went to AAB for a more economical, more filling dinner. Had a lot of ROTFL moments there, expecially at the billing counter and then while eating.

Once we were done eating, I had to leave with Vinay. We bye’d Saranyan and sped away towards the ‘heart of the city’!

Vinay then took an amazingly complicated route and dropped me in T Nagar. I got hold of a Share Auto from there. Sandhya kept me occupied on the phone during the lonesome Share Auto ride. Pretty surprising to find a Share Auto go empty for a long time around 9 PM in the night on a Sunday THIS close to Diwali. Folks at home were wow. Why? Because I had returned home much earlier than what I had informed prior to leaving. Maybe I should give them more of those wow moments!

Rest later.

Yours Skeptically,

P.S. A totally amazing time we had that day, as may be evident from the tone of the post above.

The brighter side of life

Hey folks,

I had written a post yesterday night(or today early morning), after a long time. But, it was too serious and I felt kinda bad. So, here’s a post with all the nice things.

Class is getting less rigorous and more funny now-a-days. Many thanks to Saranyan, Sandhya, Arun, Virus, Poorna, Anand et al for keeping me cheerfully occupied on campus.

I kinda initiated a small process to change the content on my institute’s website. The content was/is pretty old, dry and boring. So, I volunteered and wrote fresh content for the website with a lot more contemporary language. It was a nice process of learning, collaborating with the management and arriving at trade-offs on what words to use where without affecting the freshness of the content. I kinda learnt the difference in thought process between our generation and the previous one. It is VERY visible, mind you!

I also showed them how there was no original ‘controllable’ content with respect to my institute, on Google’s first SERP. I myself felt the approach was a bit rude but it was the best one I could use to convince them to have a strong Social Media presence. I gave the management a plan that was approved provisionally. Haven’t begun work on it yet. Will do, after the mini-vacation. The plan is pretty strong and clear. I’m trying to document the plan into a 6-7 post series for the Electrosocial Blog. Let’s see. Should be done soon.

The first trimester exams came and went. With a lot of fanfare, I must admit. Let’s stop talking about it now, shall we?!

Had a lot of fun meeting Saranyan, Vinay and Srinath over a relaxed Sunday breeze at Bessie Beach. Separate post coming up on that!

Woke up to a wild idea one fine morning and ended up thinking on it all week. It’s grown well into a fine, neat plan now. Roped in LVS and Vinay. We’re now trying to see if we can make it a startup company, our first in life (together and individually). Again, let’s see. Should happen mostly.

TEDxChennai is shaping up VERY well. I’m kinda proud to be one of the active organisers! IIT Madras and RTBI have agreed to co-host the event. So, it’s slated to happen at the IC&SR Auditorium inside IIT Madras on November 29th, 2009. We are now looking into the nitty-gritties of the event. Hopefully, things should fall into place soon. Made some nice friends as a result of this commitment! Raja, Jo, Balajee, Benny and the big man himself, Kiruba!

There was initially a plan to work on a research paper on (a topic in) Branding. I had bootstrapped the idea but had to let go of it temporarily, for reasons best left untold here. During the mini vacation, I had the chance to speak to Milind about it and managed to get a lot of gyaan. Roped in Saranyan, the thalaivar. Will begin preliminary work on it soon. Doesn’t look like it’ll get done in anytime within a year. So, this is one of my longer commitments. But the kind of work involved is really wow. Should keep me motivated to work.

Heard of the NASSCOM Product Conclave 2009 and checked out the details. Sounded wow. Roped in Saranyan and registered sincerely, as Students. Macho discounts, I tell you! And, amazing value. Can’t wait to catch Guy Kawasaki! So, will be out of town on October 27th and 28th 2009. Bengaluru, here we come!

Found some amazing people to connect with, on Twitter. Mostly as a result of me attending the Chennai Tweetup on 11th October at Mast Kalandhar. A few more people from LinkedIn and Facebook.

Raja (the total thalaivar) sent me an invite to Google Wave, a deed for which I’d prolly waive the treat he owes me!

Will write more in another post.

Yours Skeptically,

P.S. Separate posts on (second) college life, Google Wave, nice people I’ve met in the last 3 months, Social Media addiction, the Bessie Beach meetup et al would come up in the next few days!

The Chronicles of Insomnia

Hey folks,

This is my first blog post from college. I’m kinda having fun here. Not started studying, as may be evident from the long gtalk sessions!

It’s been a nice month, this one. I’ve realised that I was more observant than I had ever imagined. I had managed to notice a lot of things that others seemingly missed. Things that relate to most people’s lives for that matter.

Other than that, there has been a lot of progress on the work front. A social media internship for a company called Electrosocial has been the most happening thing for the last 2-3 weeks. I’m kinda liking it a lot. The content is delivered twice a week and packs a lot of insight with relevant links for further reading. I was even asked to post once on their blog and contrary to my guest-post record, the post has come out very well!

You can find it here. About a month of the internship is left and I think it’s only going to be more interesting!

I also got my hands dirty with a small-time market research project for the college involving life insurance. Learnt a lot of things about professionalism and how it doesn’t come with age and 2 years IT work experience for certain people. A lot of networking with some CXOs from the insurance industry as well. Not that I knew enough about insurance to engage them in conversations!

Other than that, I’ve kinda dusted my old stuff a bit and have started working on a small idea I had in the past. I’ve luckily found people to work on it with, this time. So, you can expect a post on that in the future on this blog. It would involve research, more research and even more research. But not the typical geek nerd research! This is more of logical analysis relating to life.

Me and 2 other people here have kinda developed a business idea and would be working on polishing it soon. Hope that works out as well. It’s a nice thing and fits the current market well. There is a funny thingie here! We had actually spent serious time researching for some business ideas and we thought of this one while randomly chit-chatting in class!

I’m going to be involved in organising an event in Chennai in November. Though this is still in the preliminary stages, I’m sure it would pick up momentum in the coming weeks and would be an amazingly fun experience for me.

A couple of conferences, some contests, (hopefully) one research paper, a video for Sit and some work for Mozilla are other stuff in the pipeline.

This post also serves as a reminder for me. I tend to get a little too forgetful and irresponsible if I don’t have my commitments listed in a single place!

As for the post title, I’m kinda experiencing early signs of insomnia. It’s a state I’ve forced onto myself, in a way. I’m hoping to take a week off sometime in end August. Let’s see if that works out!

Yours Skeptically,

P.S. Most of the content on this post was completed in college but the computer guy got mad and drove me off the lab. Apparently, I hear he hates working. Understandable. India still has a lot of scope for change!

Protocol, My Foot!

Hey folks,

I had the opportunity to talk to a self-made entrepreneur who tried his hand at politics during the recent elections, from Chennai. Contrary to public perception, this guy is accessible just on paper. His contact details have been put up in the public domain, yes. But little do people realise that there is a whale of difference between approachability and accessibility!

He is often portrayed as the man who rose to fame from a very humble background. I have no heart to deny that. That is a success story that needs to be documented for future entrepreneurs to read, no doubt. But many people have two sides no?

Behind that ‘next door guy’ image, this man has a far darker side. He is someone who expects to be given paramount importance wherever he goes. He expects limelight, fame, popularity, attention and the ‘wow’ factor wherever he goes!

The man can’t even talk proper English but goes around flaunting his educational background! I am tempted to think that every educational institution, however great it might be, has some amount of error in choosing candidates, about 5 misfit people out of every 100 or so. I guess this guy got into those places because of such an error factor.

A standing example of the fact that appearances are deceptive, this man actually contested in elections and won nearly 16000 votes. I can understand if illiterate folks have no etiquette and a lot of ego, because they ain’t educated, dammit! Srinath (Boss) used to keep telling me years ago that a good proportion of the fellows passing out of the country’s topmost educational institutions add no value to the country but have a very high ego. I realise that now, thoroughly!

I am even prompted to believe that illiterate (or lesser literate) folks would do a better job managing the country’s government than well educated fellows like this entrepreneur!

Of course, I wasn’t supporting him at all during the elections. I even argued with one of my juniors, who was supporting this guy during elections, saying this guy can’t make one hell of a difference. The man has no track record doing any proper societal service, either physical or intellectual! Yet, he shamefully claims that he is going to save the country from greedy politicians! Dude, have you ever done some self-introspection at all in life? Have you atleast heard of the word ‘Self Introspection’ ?

Learning: Never ever ever buy the face value that people depict! Such a value is almost never the real one! Watch out for the real sides of people!

Yours Skeptically,

P.S. It’s such a coincidence that I’ve known a couple more people who passed out from the same institutions as this guy, very well for a long time. They’re such nice people that I’m guessing the error-rate theory I’ve come up with has to be true, indeed!

Sit, Chennai!

Hey folks,

‘Sit‘, the little informal knowledge forum that I helped start, has almost completed 14 months of existence. As an initiative towards taking the next step, we would be organizing a two-session discussion-based event on the 31st of May, the upcoming Sunday. The information document is available in the page linked above. It is an invitational event and therefore is not open to the general public, as such. Let me not sound very discouraging. If you’d like an invitation, try emailing us. We’d love to consider a few people on a case-to-case basis.

Many thanks to Baidik, Paddy, Dr Annamalai, Vinay Raghu, Ashraf, Milind and Raja M for helping us out in their own ways towards making this event happen. Folks, your commitment towards Sit and towards this unconference has only motivated us to put in more efforts!

Apart from this unconference, there is something bigger brewing in the back. It’s a mind-blowing idea that we’ve come up with and I’m hoping to write on it here very soon. If all things go well, Chennai is going to see a different kind of societal service very very soon.

Yours Skeptically,

P.S. I’ll post pictures and videos of the event, same time next week!

P.P.S. I’ve started linking to peoples’ LinkedIn profiles a lot more than to their blogs/websites. LinkedIn addiction at an all-time high now-a-days! Aaaaargh!

Whattey sale!

I was told by my dad that there was another bargain book sale in Dass Community Center on Cathedral Road. He insisted that it was good unlike the usual bargain book sales!

So, we rushed down to Dass Community Center and were surprised to find the whole place stacked with books, toys, stationery, CDs, DVDs, clocks, watches and other gift items. Literally stacked from ground to ceiling and from wall to wall (with occasional gaps for people to walk into the heaps of stuff).

My dad went to the books section and I went to the CD/DVD section. I was surprised to find a lot of popular movies for throwaway prices! Popular English movie retail VCDs for 50 bucks! DVDs for 100 and 150 bucks! I couldn’t resist the temptation to pick up a lot of movies.

There were all kinds of movies. Rambo series, Broken arrow, Die Hard series, Rocky series, MI series, Twister, The Village, The Signs, Predator, Terminator series, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Derailed, Desperados, The Hills Have Eyes, Walking Tall, Doctor Dolittle series and many many more!

I managed to buy Crash, Phonebooth, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, National Treasure, MI 3 and Daredevil. I will go there on Saturday and buy more if I can. I’m looking to buy Derailed, Ice Age 2, The Sixth Sense, MI 2, X Men series, The Talented Mr Ripley, Top Gun, Face Off, Titanic, Munich, Transformers, Minority Report, Amistad and a few more.

The sale is on till 17th June. Go as early as possible because the movies are gonna run out soon.

Yours Sincerely,

uleadin

P.S. Tomorrow is the day! Dasavathaaram’s release! I can’t wait for 10 45 AM IST June 13th to happen!