Music that grows....

All of us wud have experienced at some point, the kind of music which when heard for the first time may not sound good, but it just grows on us as we keep listening to it. The music from the movie 'Life in a Metro' is one such good example. Here are the songs that I am talking about

• Alvida (the best song in the movie)
• Rishtey..
• Baatein kuch ankahee si...
• In dino..
• O meri jaan

The first time I heard these songs was when I watched the movie in the theater. I just found it to be very boring and all the songs seemed quite similarly composed. But I started listening to it about 2-3 weeks back and I've fallen in love with each and every song. It seems to create a magical effect on my mood everytime I listen to them, even today!

One unique thing is that the movie has "all male" singers. KK has done an awesome job again. The guitar work in "Alvida..." is superb... and I am falling short of words to appreciate the lyrics of this song apart from the lovely music..

Highly recommended, if u still haven't heard them... If u dont like them in the first shot, keep listening and u might start loving them, just like I did :)

DD Ads..

A couple of days back, me and my colleagues were discussing about how Ads/TV commercials aid in capturing the mind-space of the end users and also help in creating brand value. .. we talked about a lot of TV commercials that used to be featured on Doordarshan (that was the only TV channel at that time!) decades ago... but still they are so fresh in our memories... isn't it surprising to see how simple these Ads were (unlike the present ones where every other Ad has a celebrity to capture attention!) yet they have left a permanent mark in our minds!

Some of the Ads that we all could remember very vividly, along with the jingle/song :) A couple of them also send across a strong message in a subtle way...

Hamara Bajaj



Gold spot



Ek Anek (one of the cutest ad/commercial i have seen!)




Mile sur mera tumhara
(I have heard this a zillion times but yet I am not able to map all the lines to their corresponding languages!)

Etiquette(s)...

I just realized that my frequency of blogging has gone down drastically! When I used to be twice as busy at ISB, I could still find enough time to blog every other day and now it's just once a fortnight or so... unbelievable! I would say this is more of a lack of motivation than time... It's not that I am lazy, but most of the days I just dont have anything to write about. Life can get very monotonous once you start working.. It was different at ISB; there was something happening every day! Anyways, one of my colleagues sent this piece of msg yesterday and it got me thinking... very subtle and so true!

"In the absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia, until ultimately we become enslaved by it"

Coming to what I wanted to write today....

As we grow up all of us are taught some kind of personal etiquette or we just pick it up as we observe the people around us. We dont give this up once we become adults.. it remaines ingrained in us. Once we start working, we learn some professional etiquette too... Why am I saying all this? Well, I have been observing things at my work place for about 2 months now and I find a lot of it very weird and sometimes frustrating. First thing that surprises (and irritates) me is that people keep their cell phone ringers on full volume in office. With all the hi-fi phones these days, the ringtones are obviously some mp3 songs..and they keep ringing as if there is no end to it.. This is not it.. the phones are just left on the desk and people disappear.. so then u get to hear the whole damn song as long as the phone rings! many times the song just gets stuck in my head for 2-3 days! It's impossible for me to concentrate on something and I have to resort to wearing headphones.

Next comes the desk phones. There is no concept of going to a conference room to take meetings. People just switch on phones (speaker) on their desk for hours. So I get to hear the entire meeting's conversation (both sides) of which I am not a part of. If one person in the bay has a meeting then you can imagine the plight of the remaining 3 people! (disadvantage of not having personal cubicles). This is not it. Some people have their personal conversations on speaker phones!!!So I get to know who has a problem with his credit card bill, car servicing, water problems at home etc... ridiculous!!!! I just cant understand this.. why wud i want the whole world to know about my personal issues!!!!!!!

The story doesnt end here.. Even during meetings people dont put their phones on silent mode... irrespective of whether the manager, director or whosoever is present in the room. So every few mins u are bound to be distracted by different ringtones... and the worst part is that people dont cancel calls.. they pick it up and talk inside the meeting room.. without caring about stares that they get. Even the person running the meeting or giving the presentation answers a call.. so the rest of the people have to hold their train of thought till he finishes the conversation ...

I am sure we all see these problems everwhere..in movie theaters, plays, gatherings etc.. Even when specific instructions are given to "turn off the phone" people dont..I've really wondered Why?! for a long time and now I have just given up trying to find an answer to this.

I can go on and on about this. But the point is that no one can possibly do anything abt this when the company culture itself is the way it is. Someone like me who has been used to a different environmnet for 2-3 yrs may find it difficult and weird............ but I guess soon even I will get used to it!!!

What kind of intelligence do you have?

Came across this link somewhere ... It says my dominant intelligence is "Interpersonal".. Well, though a lot of what it says may not be true...it was fun to try this out :) Click on the link below to access the site...

Your Dominant Intelligence is Interpersonal Intelligence

You shine in your ability to realate to and understand others. Good at seeing others' points of view, you get how people think and feel. You have an uncanny ability to sense true feelings, intentions, and motivations. A natural born leader, you are great at teaching and mediating conflict. You would make a good counselor, salesperson, politician, or business person.

What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?

Does it make sense?!

I have been pondering over this for over a month now, since I joined this new organization. Like a lot of other organizations that I know of, even the company that I work for, restricts the use of internet at office. This means, we employees get to access only the "useful" websites such as google search, wikipedia and a few other news related sites. Even webmails like gmail, yahoo etc are restricted... need I say anything about orkut and instant messengers??!! Thats a definite NO NO! I cant even get to watch the stock market coz the site is blocked, theres no way I can do any tradings, I cant get to book movie tickets online, pay my bills or view a lot of photopages like flickr....and the list goes on. Downloads are restricted too... even attachments from emails are filtered to a great extent.......... If you need access to some websites for project reasons, you need PM's approval and you get access only for that duration of the project..... (???!!!!)

The first couple of days this really shocked me. I felt like I was pushed into a place where I lost contact with the world... I might be exaggerating here, but for a person like me, coming from Intel (where there was absolutely no restriction on surfing the net except for a few sites blocked due to security reasons and code of conduct), this was a big deal. When I enquired around, my colleagues said that surfing is restricted mainly to increase employee productivity.... coz this ensures that people dont spend most of their time chatting or surfing non-work-related-info!! .... Whaaaaat!!!!!!! that was my immediate reaction..... Does this mean people are not productive at Intel?!!

I wonder... Does this really work? Does it make ANY sense? I dont think so. I understand the blocking of sites which stream music, coz that can possibly eat on the bandwidth and reduce the speed.... but blocking every other site????? I dont get it! Anyways, rules are meant to be broken....I see every other person (including me) trying to figure out some proxy in order to get those websites working and login to gtalk/yahoo etc... and each time we figure out something, in a couple of weeks that will be blocked too.. so the search continues!! Well.... according to me, this is eating away more precious work-time of ours. If I had access to everything, I think I would have been more productive and not have wasted my time in all this nonsense!!!!!! People spend at least 8-10hrs a day at office and it's ridiculous to expect that everyone devotes all of this time only to work and nothing else... we need breaks.. we need some fun... some distractions... so that we can keep coming back to handle the stressful work! Most of us at office feel the same, but I just dont see a solution to it........ Why don't companies understand this... I really wonder.....