The Korean Tourism Commercial

 If you are an advertiser showing videos on YouTube in the 6-10 seconds before the actual video starts, your life is tough. First of all, you are interrupting someone's binge watching and that someone is more interested in looking at the countdown to "skip" your advertisement, than looking at it. If you are able to attract attention when the odds are against you, then I really think you are awesome at your game. I came across this random video about Korean tourism while binge watching YouTube and for some reason, I find it so addictive that I never skipped the commercial.

The ultimate compliment though is that, I actively searched for the commercial and also the song, the artist, the lyrics etc. etc. Now before I proceed, I want you to experience the commercial:

Now that the commercial is out of the way, I did some research on the song it is called "Tiger is coming". It is sung by this Korean band called "Leenalchi". The lyrics translated by a YouTube comment go like this:

A tiger is coming down, a tiger is coming
A beast is coming down
through the deep valley in the pine woods

His body is freckled,
His tail is stuffed
which is longer than a grown man's fathom.

Making the high hills shiver,
his front leg is like a quiver,
his hind paw is like a jar,
Both ears are ripped ajar.

Brandishing his sickle claws,
'Charrrr!'

He splashes grass roots and pebbles.
Opening his crimson jaws,
'Worirung!' he rumbles.

Like the sky falls and
the ground settles down,
The turtle hides his head and
on the ground bows down. 

Of-course I am no Korean, and I have not "verified" this from any Korean. It's just a random YouTube comment by this person.

If you wish to see their live performance of the same song, you should check this video out:

The dance is performed by this group called "Ambiguous Dance Company". You can see a lot of their videos on YouTube. Finally to top it off, I find another commercial by the same group quite nice and catchy as well:

Anyway, hats-off to the complete campaign! Everything is amazingly choreographed (literally and figuratively).

How to get rid of your dandruff in a week?

 If this sounds like a click bait article, I am sorry. I thought I share something I found out a couple of years ago and it seems to have worked for me till today.

Now before you proceed, here are some disclaimers:

• I am not a doctor or a dermatologist or even remotely associated with the medical profession
• People on the internet can write anything they want, and you should not trust them
• This is my personal experience, and everyone's experience can be totally different
• I am not being paid to write this blog post (or any other) so this just my honest opinion

Okay, with that list out of the way - let me tell you my story. As a school going kid, and subsequently through out my life, besides my weight and my looks the other thing I was always embarrassed about was my dandruff problem. I have had dandruff in my hair for as far back as I recall. I tried a lot of remedies - medical, Ayurvedic or advertised. Nothing really ever worked for me. Anti-dandruff shampoo was always a part of my grooming arsenal, and it just managed to sometimes reduce it, but I never really got rid of it. I tried crazy remedies like egg, beer, yogurt, shampoos with ZPTO on my head and other than the awkward smell, it didn't impact much.

 

A few years ago, someone advised me to use the Selsun 2.5% suspension shampoo to wash my hair everyday for a week and then subsequently alternate days for a month. The shampoo contains Selenium Sulfide. And it is apparently not available over the counter in USA. However, I can get it in a pharmacy in Singapore without a prescription.

My dandruff has completely disappeared ever since. I switched to using their Selsun Blue version once a week subsequently, and it dandruff has not recurred again. I am not "absolutely" sure if its really the shampoo or my diet, or my horoscope, or climate change, or just the fact that I am dangerously close to my 4th decade on this planet, and apparently dandruff is not an old person problem.

So all the best!

From Bed to Desk (and back)

 It has been more than 4.5 months since I started working from home. Initially what was a novelty has now become mundane. This means the excitement of the false sense of "more time" (because of no travel and no commuting) is now gone. What was perceived to be more time initially for the first few weeks has been now quickly taken over by "more work" and procrastination. Now to be fair, in the initial few weeks of the pandemic, I did get a daily routine going on exercise, mental enrichment and education. However, now that's all gone.

My days now start with work right off the bed and working all the way to the wee hours of the night when I get exhausted and drop back into the bed. Many a times lunch and dinner is hurriedly gobbled while taking a work call.

I hope and pray that this is not the case for you, and I wish that things change for the better for me fast! Late to bed and early to rise makes Girish unhealthy, irritable and annoyed.

Philanthropy and the wisdom of Bill Gates

Growing up (especially during my Engineering days and the early part of my career), I was a big believer in the Open Source Software philosophy. In the late 90s and early 2000s the biggest perceived enemy of Open Source was Microsoft and by association Bill Gates. I was not very fond of him as a starry eyed under-graduate student.

Post my MBA, I wanted to work for an Open Source software company and change the world. Given the circumstances, that never happened and I went into (or rather continued) in commercial closed-source software.

Anyway, over the last decade, I have been passively following (online), listening and reading about Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation and my opinion about him has changed leaps and bounds. I have come to respect and admire him for the work he is doing globally on things that most Governments and Corporations are turning a blind eye towards. I feel like, he stepped away from the corporate world at the right time, and decided to change the world.

He has shot to prominence in this pandemic. One of the reasons being - his ominous TED talk in April 2015 where he spoke about such a pandemic coming in our lifetime and the deadly consequences of it.

Flash forward to 2020, with all the negativity and uncertainty around us it's refreshing to hear Bill Gates' views on the potentially positive outcomes we might have "after" this pandemic, on the world order.

If we stop being so toxic with each other on social media and so divisive about all our ideas (us vs. them thinking) we can sit back and look at the last 100 years of human progress and see that humanity has stepped up to any challenge always and worked to solve it together. For e.g. we have not had a catastrophic world war after 1945, we managed to not annihilate the planet through a nuclear war, we almost eradicated a lot of common diseases and infant mortality has been all time low. Now, if we put all our creative brains together and work towards solving problems of today - climate change, COVID-19 etc. we can leave this world a better place for future generations.