Sunday, March 27, 2011

Like Me, Please!

After 4+ years of existence, I have decided to engage myself in a bit of shameless marketing of this blog. Besides pestering all my close friends to go read my blog, I did the next obvious thing – listed myself on Facebook as a “blog”.

Marketing wasn’t my strong subject in MBA. I am good at criticizing other’s marketing efforts, but when it comes to my own, I suck miserably. So I spent yesterday afternoon figuring out how to setup a Facebook page for my blog. After numerous attempts and some funny results, I finally got it up and running. But well that was just the beginning. Now I figured, I gotta go and invite people to “Like” it.

Making people like my blog and publicize it is a different ball game altogether. After pestering and individually calling up my friends (yeah, that shameless I had to become!). I have reached a comfortable number of 4!

But I have decided not to give up. So I hereby ask all of you who regularly read my blog to “Like” me on Facebook so that I hereby enter the world of Web 2.0 and Social Networking.

(Link provided below)

And now begins the next embarrassing social experiment. Waiting for you to like me!

Monday, March 14, 2011

Magic Potion

I don't exactly qualify as a metrosexual male. My usual appearance sways between a caveman and a formally dressed gorilla based on the day of the week. The only grooming that I do is – I bathe (Thank God for it!). So when a friend of mine suggested that I start using a face-wash to counteract the ill effects of my age I went to do a research on the kinds of “washes” that you get off the counter. Not only is there a face-wash, but also there is a body-wash and a mouthwash. The fun part is trying to wash your face with a mouth-wash doesn’t exactly produce the desired effects.

Anyway, I went to a mall today to look for face-washes. And I realized that almost every men’s face-wash is a fairness cream as well. I mean every product of the shelf not only talks about how it clears your pores, makes you look younger, and refreshes your skin, but also it makes you look fairer! Naturally I decided to check out what the fairness creams do different!

The face-washes only claimed to make me fair, young, rich and intelligent, but the fairness creams did all that the face-washes did but also promised to make me handsome (that’s a tall order!). In the last 10 years that I have been seriously courting computers, science has made tremendous progress in fairness creams. Imagine applying the cream one night, and getting up the next morning as a fair and handsome knight in shining armour all with a shiny white horse waiting for you to board on. Then you go riding on it in Mumbai traffic (well, that would make for a different blog post altogether!).

Fair and Handsome

Anyway, like the gullible consumer I am, I have decided – what the heck – I might as well try to be a handsome caveman/ gorilla. So, I bought myself the “Make-me-handsome potion” (calling it a cream is just downplaying its miraculous powers!) and have decided to apply it everyday for the next 4 weeks (that's how long I have to apply the cream to become handsome!). So, for all of you who have never seen me, just wait for 4 more weeks, I will be a handsome young man (I pity my parents – I always blamed them for my mirror-cracking looks. How I wish I had known about this potion before!). Tomorrow, I go buy my knight armour and a horse. I might need a month to learn horse-riding.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Sports Blog

So the place where I work judiciously filters and blocks each and every website through websense. Probably the only domain that we are allowed to visit is Google and Wikipedia. My blog URL being on Blogspot before, was obviously blocked under “Blogs and Social Media” Filter category.

Since I bought my girishm.in domain, I was of the opinion that it must be no longer blocked. But I hardly ever got any time in office to go and check if it was really so. Today after lunch, while I was day dreaming, I decided to checkout my blog. Well, websense seems to have crawled to my new URL and has already started blocking girishm.in.

The funny part however is, my blog has been blocked under the category “Sports”. Classifying my blog as “Sports” is like calling an elephant a thin animal. My blog is as anti-sport as it can be. But what the heck, I am happy, at least someone in this world feels that I am into sports. Here is the screenshot captured to make me happy for eternity!

Websense-Capture

Absolute bliss!

Monday, March 7, 2011

Moonwalker

This time around when I bought a new pair of sports shoes, I promised myself that I will make sure that I buy a new pair within one year. Hidden deep inside this promise was the premise that I would use them soo much that they will wear out in a year and I would then have to buy a new pair. So why did I have this sudden craze for shoes?

Well, the last pair of sports shoes I had lasted me for 5 years. Even when I threw them away (donated to charity), they looked as good as new. And mind you, they were white. So to make them look new, I had to go through special efforts which included – never using them at all. I finally got bored of them, and decided to get a new pair (everybody needs change!). Which also meant that I felt guilty for wasting money on something that I didn’t actually need. That’s where the mental resolution to “use” them came in.

Now I have had this new pair for close to 6 months. I have (ahem!) hardly used them. I happened to find them today again and could see that they were shiny like new. Since exercising isn't my cup of tea, I decided I wear them and go for a walk (stroll!). After walking for a while, I however realized that I have been dragging my feet around a lot (as if I am moonwalking in the front!). Subconsciously my mind has been already busy trying to “wear” out my shoes! So much for my resolution! tch tch!

Michael Jackson Moonwalking