What's a good ad?

After a long time.... thanks to Pramod!

What's up?

The Hindu, normally dead puritanical, has started featuring bimbos, honchos and stuff in kinda advertorials...
Their story a couple of days ago started off with this picture and began, "The last time that a tablet was so much in the news, it was blue in colour and diamond-shaped. The latest tablet enjoying the spotlight and one that has set the wires on fire, isn’t used to treat any dysfunction, but has sparked off a similar buying frenzy."

Now I am an iPhone addict and feel disoriented with a BB Bold. But I tried the iPad in a couple of places and honestly, I am unable to rave about it, except for the touch response of the screen. It is large, and kind of heavy for one hand. Its angle is not right for two hand touch typing unless you have a special prop.

HOWEVER.  I am not a nerd focussed on the wrong things in life. I am totally clued into the more important question in THIS story.

1. What is this poor girl with no clothes and only a giant iPad doing next to Manasarovar lake?
2. Is she an extra from Chandnichowk to China movie who jumped out of the helicopter?
3. Is she an ex significant other of Steve whose only settlement was a prototype iPad?
4. Is she an ex KGB scientist trying to grow food out of a stump, water and an iPad?
5. Is she an alien sent to smuggle out man's greatest invention to Mars?
6. Is she the daughter of Ra trying to communicate across 10000 years and some light years?
7. Is she a clueless witless bimbo who doesn't know how to buy shoes for a trek?
8. Is she an Olympic surfer trying out the iPad for a skate board?
9. Is she a Dalai Lama spy abandoned by the Red Establishment?
10. Is she a Shangri La goddess come down to check out some new tech gadget?
11. Is she the latest Bond gal waiting for her man with the gun, holding on to his gadget?
12. Is she thinking the iPad is solar powered?
13. Does she think it is a giant model mirror?
14. Is she trying to locate the Kailash Cosmic Lingam using the iPad GPS app?
15. Or is she just a waif-like holographic app on the iPad?

Questions. Questions. Stupid. If I were there, there would be no questions. I would just focus on the impotant bit.
Make off with the tablet. Thank You.

What's all the noise about!?

Hear the Vuvuzela!

Vuvuzela facts:

1. Vuvuzela is an African word for a horn.
2. China makes nearly 90% of all Vuvuzelas sold.
3. Jiying Plastic Products Factory had sold more than 1 million horns since April.
4. Vuvuzelas range from 7.3 cm to 67 cm in length. 
5. They are exported at prices ranging from 0.6 yuan to 2.5 yuan.
6. However, they are sold for between 18 yuan (about $ 2) and 53 yuan in South Africa.
7. One vuvuzela is reportedly sold in Britain every two seconds for two euros apiece.
8. Amazon.com has reported a 1,000-per cent sales increase of its horns, which sell for $ 9.99.
9. Ebay.com had more than 400 bids for vuvuzelas, with one already reaching $ 17.64.
10. Fans have said vuvuzela enrich their World Cup experiences by creating a sense of participation.
11. “I can’t go to South Africa, but blowing vuvuzela while watching the games makes me feel as if I’m among the fans in the stadium,” said Cheng Qing, a 25-year-old Shanghai International Studies University postgraduate student.
12. As a part of efforts to boost primary education -I understand- Govt. of India is planning to import and distribute 250 million Vuvuzelas among all school children. This will be a bilateral trade pact and India will export 2 billion mosquitos for bioresearch to China. But one cynic in Kolkata is said to have remarked that with all the corruption, CPM, Congress and BJP politicians will corner all the vuvuzelas for future election duty.

Dilbert takes on Steve, PHB and everyone else

Drilling for greed

I once saw one of the icons of Indian IT industry, a proud son of Mysore who started off with leftist ideals but later inspired tomes for the way he had created millionaire employees through stock options. That evening, he was, like me, looking ever bit as jet-lagged and travel-weary as the other two hundred plus international arrivals struggling to collect their luggage in the pathetic HAL airport arrival area of Bangalore. Mercifully, a couple of years later we started using the new, large and fancy BIAL airport.

And recently I landed at the Beijing Capital International Airport. Immediately, I texted my friend who works at BIAL, "Landed in BCIA. It is 50 times larger than BIAL!"

China boasts a Great Wall built before the Christian era. This is the only man-made object visible to the naked eye from even a satellite. That same nation has built an economy that makes everything from apples to Apples. Also melamine-tainted milk to toxic toys.

The BCIA airport is a million square metres in size, and handles 55 million passengers a year. It also connects everyone to a bustling Beijing city with a ring road 207 km long. The city is teeming with economic activity, but has a major haze problem and smells a lot like a petrol station.

Oil wealth. The one thing China lacks, but makes up by making everything else. And as America looks on with approval at the burgeoning capitalism there, man's greed drives the engine called growth. And that makes some people near the Gulf of Mexico drill 4 km below the sea, and install a pipe 5 km tall to suck out earth's black gold. But short cuts and short-sightedness cause a spill more black than gold. And that triggers a whole chain of crisis stories. What a life! Reminds me of Bhasmaasura!

Read this story about BP in the Economist.