Posts 41 to 50 of 107

Lynnisms
stray thoughts about stray subjects
Trivia [ edit ]
September 06 2006 (06:26:00) ( 2 views )

1. It's official. Mumbai received 30% more rainfall this year and the last, and this year was even more than the last year, despite 26/7. So the weathermen need to revise their indices upwards.

2. Steve Irwin went as he was meant to go - by the hand (or tail) of nature. Earlier in this blog, I posted about never knowing when the maker will call us home. Steve may not have known but he must have certainly been prepared. At least he and his "Crikey's" have been immortalised in film, and having singlehandedly done more to build respect for reptilia than any human alive, he deserves all the peace he can get now.

3. Lord Ganesh is going home too today. What a horribly commercial fiasco it has been this year. With contests and prizes, all in the name of God. The Times of India will truly stop at nothing for a few rupees more.

4. The last five contestants for Rock Star Supernova rock. Attitude, energy, toned bodies, great looks, great voices - this is definitely the best in the series so far, and a thousand times better than the lukewarm American Idol, where judge Simon tries his best to add some staged spice to the proceedings. These guys on the other hand are crazy but real. I love them. Toby should win - if I searched on google, I would know the answer, but let's wait for the next five weeks anyway.

Comments

I'm so sad.They had no reason ousting Storm last night from Rockstar Supernova. Probably intimidated them & everyone else. Waise, am all for Toby too. Now I don't have a second preference with Storm gone.
Posted by svety on 09/08/2006 07:11:31 AM
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Oh, Calcutta! [ edit ]
September 02 2006 (14:05:00) ( 2 views )

As always, a few hours in Kolkatta is like a few weeks - I pack in so much. The flight in was filled with the 'ad crowd' heading east for various industry meets. Ravi Kiran and I reminisced about the five days and nights we spent along with Jairaj at the Lintas guest house nine years ago, working on an ITC pitch - and the gentle cook who kept our minds and bodies alive with delicious tomato and other soups 24 by7.

The IBF dinner that night gave me a chance to spend time with my wonderfully successful team, with several senior industry men, and with important clients. I stayed up till midnight which was remarked upon by all, and woke up within four hours to catch the return flight. On arriving back in Mumbai yesterday, I hopped into bed for a ten minute nap and stayed put for ten hours. This unexpected return to exhaustion was disheartening and disquieting.

I choose therefore to dwell on the strength of our minds - of which I am in absolutely no doubt. Whatever we achieve, whatever we are capable of, whether physical or emotional, we owe to our mental strength. In order to stay productive, contributive, helpful and intelligent, we must always do all we can to keep our minds in the best of health. The body may give up occasionally, but when push comes to shove, the mind never fails - unless it falls ill too.

Fortunately, a remarkable book gifted to me by Ravindra Kumar, the MD and Editor of Statesman, called Write it Right - their style book - helped keep the mental stimuli going for the rest of yesterday. After a delicious but late dhansak lunch at 4pm, he had briefly shown me around the late CR Irani's flat, with all its colonial history, and I experienced the indescribable feeling of sitting on the 120 year old magnificent carved editor's chair beneath a framed letter from Lord Mountbatten.

This morning we took Pixie to the vet as well to get her toe nails cut. Gemma's elbow is a lot better, the dressings will stay for another month though, hopefully these infected hematomas will not repeat. Sanjiv found a small abcess on Pixie's foot and bandaged her too - so she is feeling rather happy, since she didn't particularly care for Gemma getting all the attention with her bandaged elbow. My little jealous girl ...can't believe she will be fourteen on the 20th. As I said, it's all due to her mind, her mischievous spunky pugnacious mind.
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YouTubing [ edit ]
August 29 2006 (08:29:00) ( 2 views )

The best time to start something new is when you have a cold.

My nose is blocked, my eyes are running, my throat hurts, and I can't tell salt from sweet. So after gulping down today's unhealthy Lincafe menu of egg curry rice, I decided to get me a YouTube account.

Why? Because a few weeks ago, I made a fool of myself in the Brand Equity Pop Quiz, by getting only 6 out 15 questions correct. One of the questions I didn't answer correctly was "what is Youtube?", and I have been kicking myself for missing that one.

I stopped at the 'pets and animals' section today. Which is not a very adventurous thing to do...but then I have a cold, so that's allowed. Some good videos, especially the Animal Planet one of the cat feeding pups. Reminded me of a street dog we once fed who adopted a kitten. Wish we had handy video recorders back then.

For now, I am going to be a voyeur - a voyeur who leaves behind lots of comments, but soon I will start video blogging too..as soon as I learn the technology...or get the next cold. Whichever comes first.

Comments

i'm gonna be a copy cat right now, all pun intended...
Posted by svety on 08/29/2006 09:21:19 AM
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Plutonic enquiry [ edit ]
August 25 2006 (06:55:00) ( 2 views )

Now that Pluto has been demoted from planetdom to 'dwarf planetdom', and will probably have its name changed to Gimli, what happens to all of us Scorpios? What becomes our ruling planet? Questions, questions....
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CALLING FOR A PITCH! [ edit ]
August 25 2006 (06:01:00) ( 2 views )

(published in Hindustan Times Billboard in Delhi and Mumbai on August 26, 2006)

This should be a familiar phrase to all those in the advertising and media community, having participated in no less than ten thousand pitches in this century. This pitch call is not however for an advertising or media account but for something which has much more at stake, since thousands of crores of rupees are on the table.

The present television audience measurement system almost universally observed as the currency to buy and sell advertising and programming, has been around for the past six years. It is used as the sole industry standard on which we trade Rs 4500 crores for 8950 billion advertising impressions, and another Rs 1000 crores for 17.5 lakh hours worth of programming.

Almost everyone in the industry – advertisers, media agencies, broadcasters – agree that television viewing has changed by leaps and bounds in these past six years. In quantity and quality, depth and width. In order to keep pace with this change as well as predict trends, the viewership measurement system needs to deliver information much faster in order to be actionable, be more representative of more sections of Indian consumers, and cost much less. These three basic requirements must be met, besides all the other technical specifications.

In its present form, TAM does not meet with all of these. And at the ground level, neither does its recent competitor, aMap. However, given sufficient concentrated and coordinated industry pressure, we can hope that, sooner rather than later, a measurement system that does meet all these requirements will emerge.

Advertisers do not tolerate non-delivery of performance, or inexplicably and non-transparently high costs from their agencies. When counseling, admonition and negotiation does not produce the desired result, they call for the inevitable pitch. There are many therefore who question why TAM should be allowed the leeway of being an unaccountable monopoly for over six years. TAM has provided a high quality service during these years no doubt, but its users have seen little by way of real investments in improving and developing measurement technology suited to India. Its costs and profits are internally managed, and there is no industry wide body that presently audits or approves of the same. I am aware of measurement agencies that would produce the current type of service at half the cost with slightly better technology, and I am sure there are many more influential people in our business who are also similarly aware.

It is definitely time to call for a comprehensive representative industry review of TAM’s performance, and invite pitches to a common brief from any measurement agency that believes it can service a true industry contract. It is also time to set up an independent technical committee that will draw up a visionary brief , and subsequently evaluate the proposals for the final appointment.

Advertisers always claim to call for pitches in order to help augment service levels – and in the past one year, there is enough evidence to show that they mean this even from their existing advertising agencies, given a healthy trend in favour of the incumbent. TAM has therefore no need to be unduly concerned, if it has truly been giving the industry value for money all these years. And if intends to do so for the future.




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My sweet Mumbai [ edit ]
August 20 2006 (10:48:00) ( 2 views )

I have a theory. That when things have been particularly bad for a while, human nature will try very hard to find good in just about anything.

So after the floods and the bomb blasts, a normal occurrence of rain and spring water mixed sea water, that naturally tastes less salty especially at low tide, becomes a midnight miracle with throngs of well dressed women and children doing something they would never otherwise have been caught dead doing. The waters of the Mahim creek are among the foulest and smelliest in the world, yet even little boys have been sipping from it before tv cameras, filling up plastic bottles, while the BMC, already beset by monsoon and terrorism woes, now finds itself setting up emergency procedures in hospitals to tackle the inevitable outbreak of waterborne diseases among thousands who believe the water to be sweet, blessed, and therefore harmless.

Meanwhile, the news channels have also declared today that Mumbai has been placed on high alert with even more security tightening in the run up to Ganesh Chaturthi. As if it could get any tighter? What will the best security in the world do against faith? In one part of the world, people are not being allowed to carry liquid items aboard planes. Here in my everloving contrary city, people are drinking highly toxic polluted water totally unconcerned about their lives.

While Maneka Gandhi has just gone for the jugular, as only she can, on Times Now Franky Speaking. Here's a link for some extracts from the interview - http://timesnow.tv/articleshow/1902668.cms.

We live in interesting times, indeed.

Comments

why haven't u been writing?
Posted by svety on 08/25/2006 02:17:21 AM
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Lata Mangeshkar and friends [ edit ]
August 18 2006 (08:57:00) ( 2 views )

We named the female Asian koel Lata Mangeshkar. And her mate is Lou Bega. Because they both sing really well and wake us up every morning at 5.30 am with their crystal clear cuckoo songs. They are very large and jet black, and a little scared of the crows. Unlike the other smaller brownish red cuckoo couple.

My mother now feeds about twenty birds every morning. It started when the monsoons turned really heavy and the birds were unable to find food. Starting with just Specky and Fluffy and the share of Pixie's boiled egg that I used to give them, it has now turned into a full blown feast that she lays out every morning, with bread, boiled egg and shells neatly broken up and spread out on her balcony ledge.

Besides Lata Mangeshkar and Lou Bega and ofcourse Specky and Fluffy, Plucky (the cuckoo brought up by the crow couple that I have written about earlier in this blog, now almost as big as Lata) is a regular with his parents and some ten other crows. The pigeons get fed by the Jains and the Jain temple at the back. So all in all, our birds are doing ok.

For a few weeks, Lata Mangeshkar suffered from severe feather rot around the back of her neck. But the rain water and the calcium from the egg shells have helped and she is back in full plumage.

Specky now sits all day perched up against my window rails, close to the spot where Pixie sleeps. She talks to herself all day long, especially when I am at home. Sometimes she clucks to herself, sometimes she imitates me talking to Gemma in soft carressing tones that embarrass the hell out of me, sometimes she barks cheekily at Pixie. Often she jumps inside and sits on my great grandfather's rosewood writing desk, leaving behind scratches, but it's hard to shoo her away if it's raining outside. At night, Fluffy joins her.

The rains will ease in a couple of days, and both of them will go back to their home on the chinar tree in front of the building. Till then I am enjoying her company. And so, I hope, is Pixie!
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Happy Birthday, Govinda [ edit ]
August 16 2006 (06:24:00) ( 2 views )

As expected, the Janmashtami dahi handi breaking celebrations in the city will be more muted. The dahi handi mandals have all decided to maintain a two minute silence at every handi site in honour of the bomb blast victims, and all the money collected from the breakings will be donated to the Chief Minister's Fund for the families of these victims.

Lord Krishna would be very pleased.

Happy Birthday also to Kartik Iyer. Sharing a birthday with the mischievous God must be rather auspicious in itself.
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Safe as houses [ edit ]
August 15 2006 (11:39:00) ( 2 views )

A few months ago at a conference in London, I met an Australian who worked with an animal NGO in Israel. She and her husband had made their home in Tel Aviv, and she was looking forward to a visit from her parents. I asked her whether it felt safe living in a war ravaged country, since she also did work in the Galilee area. Her answer was firm - she would much rather live in an otherwise orderly place like Tel Aviv than in a city like Los Angeles, 'where drive-by shootings like they show in The Sopranos happen all the time'.

So that's how impressions are formed. Largely from what the media plays out, rather than from letters and accounts given by people who actually live and work in those places.

Nearer home, there is a definite sense of fear in the air. Additional security measures at airports and naka bandis should assure one, instead they tend to add to the tension. People talk loosely about the minority community, and I am afraid they will not find it easy to get jobs, which will only make them all the more frustrated. Tomorrow's gokul ashtami celebrations will be peppered with both police and private protection, which is bound to to take away some of the fun from the formations of human pyramids and the handi breaking. Usually trucks filled with gaily dressed 'teams' sponsored by local companies and communities pass by the streets amid much revelry. We may lose some of that this time.

As for the Ganapati celebrations a few weeks from now, as important to the Mumbaikar as the Pujas are to the Kolkattans, who knows what to expect? Many decades ago, Lokmanya Tilak use the Ganapati processions and pandals as a part of his own version of the satyagrah movement, to spread nationalism and an anti-British sentiment. It is eminently possible that history may slowly repeat itself, only this time the patriots and the protestors will wear different guises.

The news channels don't help. I just received an sms from India TV about a breaking news terrorist story now showing. What poor sensitivity, that too on Independence Day. Will they do anything for ratings, that too so poorly captured?

Best to stay indoors. It's safe as houses in here. Sorry Jesus, I am going to miss the Feast of the Assumption day of obligation mass - but I will say my prayers at home, and I know you and Our Lady will understand.

Comments

What an amazing life you lead. Fascinating. As for the painting, we have received the blessing of the gentleman who commissioned it. As a matter of fact, he said "I have no problem with this at all. It actually sounds very cool. I like the idea that my dogs are getting some global exposure." So there you go. I'd love to see pictures once you get around to putting the prints up. Thanks again, Michele
Posted by sommersend on 08/16/2006 03:21:54 AM
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KANK-ed out [ edit ]
August 13 2006 (12:01:00) ( 2 views )

Without the Big B and the little boy, it would have been hard to sit through an unnecessarily long Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna. Am pinching myself for wasting four hours on an ok-ok movie, when we should have done Pirates or Omkara instead - next weekend maybe.

Meanwhile the elderly NRI on the third floor has taken a flight back to New York last night. Brave man. Or maybe now is the best time to fly with security at its most vigilant.

Put your money into the news channels, guys. If only for the next couple of weeks.

Comments

I'd been trying to see KANK all day, so I'm kind of relieved that its not great. However I'd see anything with SRK in it, so at some point I'll have to watch it. More interested in seeing Omkara actually .. othello is one of my all time favourites - just how destructive an emotion can jealousy be? (though difficult sometimes not to succumb to the green eyed monster). H
Posted by Bombay Brit on 08/13/2006 02:13:18 PM

Well I'm unfamiliar with the movie you saw, but I did so love Pirates. Hope you get to see it soon. Thank you for your interest in Dogs Playing Poker! I of course am flattered that you would want to print it and put it up on the walls, so I'm fine with it. That being said, please use it judiciously, as it was a commissioned piece and I wouldn't want to upset the owner. Though being in India, I can't imagine it would find it's way into the public eye... Thanks again for asking, and I hope it brings a smile to someone's eye.
Posted by sommersend on 08/14/2006 02:49:28 PM
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