J(ourne)Y

Just a few days left (2 to be precise) to flag off the train that will take me on a journey around Incredible India – the really incredible India , rather. Yes! I am all set to go on the Jagriti Yatra which is an ambitious train journey of discovery and transformation that takes hundreds of India’s highly motivated youth (read ‘Gracy’ ) on an 15 day national odyssey. The aim is to awaken the spirit of entrepreneurship.The vision of Jagriti is to inspire young Indians living in the middle of the Indian demographic diamond (Rs 40 – Rs 120 per day) to lead development by taking to enterprise. The message of the Yatra is expressed through Jagriti Geet – ‘Yaaron Chalo, Badalne Ki Rut hai’ a message is of a positive change through enterprise. Instead of bemoaning what is wrong with the country, our participants and the Jagriti fraternity takes action by enterprise led development to make India better. Whether I will become one , only time will tell.. but for now here’s a little heads-up from my end : “ I am meeting my Pardner for a venture I shall soon start, at the JY , after those many months of ideations and development via Google’s IM client. (Yeah! Google is the platinum sponsor of JY 2011.)  

As clichéd as it may sound, It only seems like yesterday when I was jumping in joy on my selection for the (then) Tata Jagriti Yatra, executing those acts of persuasion to let the family allow me to embark on what some call a “life changing journey. Imma go to places I’ve never been before, meet an awesome bunch of people who are most likely to  shape future India , learn the learning of a lifetime. That said, I am asked to come with an open mind and zero expectations, which I think I will try and do. It *is* a little difficult to do that when you’ve been interacting with ex-yatris on FB groups, readings blogs of those who had been on the JY before and speaking to these guys! 

A few snippets from what I was talking about:  
"The yatra was like a blank canvas on which we could paint afresh. There was a lot of creative energy and openness amongst the yatris which contributed to lively and animated discussions. The diversity amongst the 400 odd yatris was overwhelming and the friendships forged will be everlasting." Sidhartha Jatar, Yatri 2009

"Yatra: adherence & friction, varieties & commonness, urban to rural…one common goal! this is exactly how I want my generation to be like…my India to be in our hands. Inspiration, perspiration & fun. Yatra gave me the vision how my nation is going to be." Manu Gupta, Yatri

1 Train | 12 Destinations | 15 Role Models
15 Days | 450 Youths | 9000 kms

A Journey of discovery and transformation…

The feeling, now? Nervous excitement!  With less than 4 hours to my Mumbai flight, I think I’m having the jitters!    “Where will my feet take me today Nobody knows for sure! One step at a time who could suppose what together we’ll find?” –> #SongStuckInMyHead Used to sing this during the times I was a regular Nickelodeon’!

I shall meet my first yatri friend, Deepti Bhat at the airport and I’m meeting my best friend from school after nearly a decade ( I guess)– PK who’ll take us on a one-day trip of Mumbai on the 23rd. And on the 24th – induction at IIT B,  where I shall meet you all ,my fellow yatris!!

Let’s have the time of our lives now , shall we?  

 

ps: Rest of my good friends, I shall blog my experience on a daily basis (hopefully) from the train’s blogging facility. Tweeting will also happen ( @g33f)

Stay tuned.

Peace

What is up?

Me: Hey, I’m know I haven’t…..

Me: Save it.  We don’t even want to know it.

Me: Alright, I accept.. I am lazy,like all the time.  

Me: Haaah! Like we didn’t know that

Me:  Please…May I?

Me: Yes, you may now draft that “biannual” blog post of yours.

Me: Thanks! And, You are sooo gonna be proved wrong. You’ll see…*hmmph*

Hey there, imaginary reader,

I’m doing great as always! Good news from my end: By the grace of the Almighty , I have got my dream job during the placement week at my insti!  

You know how different people call life different things –

“life is a climb” – Miley Cyrus  (One of her very few brilliant compositions)

“ Life is a road I wanna keep going”  – Anastasia (The awesomest Disney movie)

“Life is a highway” – Rascal Flatts ( Another awesome animated movie The Cars’ OST)

“Life is a pigsty” – Morrissey

I was wondering what life means to me & probably If I were to write a song what would I call it. I didn’t have to think much , I’d definitely call life a jigsaw puzzle. I ‘ ve felt mine was like one big jugsaw puzzle that’s slowly unveiling the bigger picture and its soooo cool how God works on it beautifully. And like a jigsaw puzzle, when one part is done, another undone part(read problem ) takes the lime light.

Well anyway,this was just a warm-up post. Believe me I’m gonna publish all those drafts this week. So, gear up for some irrelevant and outdated stuff I had to say!  

One more thing that I’m looking forward to this holiday season is the JagritiYatra I’m embarking! Ergo, this blog shall become my travelogue. Hope you’ll enjoy it!

Season’s greetings!

Oh Shit! Not Again–Book Review

Why did I pick a book from an obscure author?

Front cover – The name attraction… and the ‘National Best seller’ tag.

Back Cover – Awesome summary of contents. –>

Have you ever experienced what happens when a porn movie is mistakenly played in front of your grandma and the CD player refuses to stop?
OR
Have you ever experienced what happens when a mixture of vodka and soft drink is server to hundreds of people gathered for a party?
OR
Have you ever experienced what happens when you are conspired into a murder that you had merely witnessed?

Wish I’d listened to the smartasses who said ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’.

I would like to tell ya that the book is more of a male ego trip of the author himself…juggling between 3 girls and his libido, but NO it does NOT deserve a proper review.

Why would an author wanna impart a traumatic experience to the poor reader? Maybe he’d thought he could be the next Chetan Bhagat with a movie to his credit? Now we all know who to blame.

Anywho, bottomline : Never buy an Indian author’s work if it has a great blurb, awesome title and even if it’s on a 3 for 2 offer at Landmark.

This book is a strict must NOT read (and I’m not doing negative promotions). In the end you’ll only say this : “Oh shit, NEVER AGAIN!” Also, the book’s done full justice to its name.

There you go, my book review.

Ciao~

PS: You owe me 150 bucks, Mandar Kokate !

Summer of 11

Remember that Bryan Adams tune that squeals about the best days of his life.. This one’s  all about the best “productive” days of my life – the summer of 2011.

TOO much productivity happened!  Please to remove your nerd detector spectacles and read on..

1)Participated in the Google Online Marketing Challenge for the first time.The hands-on online marketing experience was uber cool indeed!! The joy one feels on seeing ads written by her pop up on page 1 of searches – only second to seeing your ads flash on national television.So , yeah! \m/

I shall have a separate post dedicated to the GOMC event so that the future n00bs get the nitty-gritties from a ex-n00b.

2)Ennovent : As NSEF Author of Change, I was one of the chosen few to help author change in one of the social enterprises, Ennovent. That was really lucky because it was one of the very few ‘work from home’ option. I tried to help them in their social media marketing venture. One big learning from this experience was how some companies prefer organic growth as opposed to quickly growing in numbers in a short while in an unorganized way. A big #notetoself there.

3)Also, one secret project.   Will tell ya once it goes live.

4)Oh and how could I forget Project Naluvurameens! An awesome online music band. Check us out here.  Time to buck up cos  OMG we have competition – Times of India, Madurai Launch song.

5)Apart from these, the major chunk of my time was dedicated to the Summer Internship as part of my course – My first real management trainee job and boy was it fun! Learnt so much about the organisation and people and life in general, while visiting almost a thousand odd institutions. No kidding!

6)Also you’re at the end of a kickass kickboxer’s blogpost now. Learnt that in my gym class this summer.

You now know what I did last summer. Now tata, till next time!

My BSR Initiative.

Rang De is something I heard of even before I read about it on Blogadda. How? Remember this movie called Peepli Live? Yeah, the Amir Khan one!! We wanted tickets to go to the show and didn’t quite get any. Then came this young lady (at the GLobal F4 event) at Subway, the food joint, after finding out that we were students and invited us to the premier of this same movie for tickets worth Rs.200, which did seem overpriced back then. As we spoke, she said that this was part of Rang De and the entire amount went to farmers as loan to buy seeds etc.,. (microcredit) and that we’d get the entire amount back after an year or so. One is thus helping some poor farmer AND getting free movie tickets! The prospect was very inviting indeed, and definitely noble.

I wish them all the very best in this noble venture!

Activity: Rang De is a pioneering web-based social initiative with a mission to provide cost-effective microcredit to low income households in India. Through an online platform (www.RangDe.Org), Rang De enables people to participate in microcredit by lending as little as Rs. 100.
Rang De has reached out to over 5900 entrepreneurs across 12 states by lending Rs. 31mn. Rang De currently funds business, education, and artisan loans. Rang De is a registered non-profit trust.

Details: You might want to read through our FAQs for a comprehensive understanding of Rang De – http://rangde.org/faq.htm

Support: Microcredit, Peer-to-peer lending, individual social responsibility, online lending, philanthropy

Note: - More Corporates to participate in our corporate connects program (one time donation which will be rotated as social investments).
- More people to blog about Rang De and on the Rang De blog also.
- Social media advisors to help us on how to take our social media strategy forward
- Java/JSP Developers who are interested in working for Rang De full time for at least a year.
- Funding for our operations.

This post is a part of BlogAdda’s Bloggers Social Responsibility (BSR) initiative. I am exercising my BSR. You can too with three simple steps. Visit http://adda.at/BSRRBSand support the NGO’s.

World Pees

Last night I came across this LOL-worthy status on Aditya’s Wall (not the wall people pee on) and pasted it on my twitter page and Zzzzz’ed! This morning I woke up at my non-regular time, 6:00 AM & do the first thing like I always do (which fyi, is not a pee routine) : check my mobile for messages and calls… &  ._O 20 + messages from those retweets of this pees of tweet. (since my mobile no is linked to my twitter account) And, surprisingly one person had congratulated me for being on the top tweets (On the home page of twitter the top tweets are listed from all over the world) Wow, super cool! After a early morning walk (which was awesome but for the fact I had to walk by walls where NevaMind ) , here  I am checking out the no of retweets on twitter web:A 100+ !! Wow! Well enough yappa yappa, here’s the one that marks a FIRST on twitter for me :

LinkedIn = I pee well.

Twitter = I need to pee.

Facebook = I peed!

Foursquare = I’m peeing here.

Quora = Why am I peeing? (Via EffBee)

Fellow tweeps & I had a few more to add to that list:

MySpace = listen to me pee.

StumbleUpon = I just found a great place to pee

Flickr = look at my pee through the years.

YouTube = Tell people their pee is fake.

Orkut : Can we have fraandship over pee?

And Wow, Somebody has translated that to Spanish / German (I’m not sure what)

That’s brings us to the end of what this is. But,  “Will there ever be World Peace?” read on.

Here’s the funny thing about this question: nearly everybody has an opinion, either “yes” or “no” or  “Whatever” or “Not until Rajin Kanth/ Chuck Norris takes over the world”,  But where do all those opinions come from? I say they come from the past. They’re projections of our past war-torn world.

Yes, it’s wise to let the past inform us, but it’s crippling to let the past constrain the possibilities for the future.

The future HAS NOT HAPPENED YET. .. it’s undefined, undetermined, uncharted. It’s virgin snow, there are no tracks there for us to follow, unless we mistake the past for the future.
So I don’t know if we’ll have world peace ever or not. But I know that as long as we keep taking the past and laying it out into the future, and just following those same old tired tracks again, we’ll keep getting more of the same: war.

“When the power of love overcomes the love for power, the world will know peace.” quoting my good friend Jimi Hendrix there!
YES! I think eventually somewhere someday there will be world peace.

FunFact # 3411926 : If the Russian word “mir” means both “world” & “peace”, one would be wondering “How in the world do they say ‘world peace’?” “mir mir”? I hope not, one might be confused and translated it as “world world” or “peace peace”.

The reason I was pushed to write this post is not the fact I got a 100+ RTs but the realization, that it IS possible. Twitter,you made my day (Well not totally, an hour possibly)

 

PeACE,

g33f

Dedication  : WeWantWorldPeace.com