The Y-AXIS LIVE!

While Tata Tea campaigns for voter enlistment, Starbucks has an unambiguous offer - vote on Nov 4 and get free coffee. If someone needs to have a similar campaign in India, she needs to have a region specific differentiated strategy:

• * Bihar - Free khaini for those who prefer. Chai in a chukkad for others.[Khaini = powdered tobacco]

• * UP - Free paan, make it Banarasi patti

• * Gujarat - Gutkha unlimited [Gutkha = flavoured masala, eaten raw]

• * TN - Filter coffee in tumbler. You must not replace this tumbler with a cup.

• * Rajasthan - Butter milk in a BIG glass

• * Haryana - Butter milk in a still bigger glass, preferably made of brass

• * Punjab - Washing machine made lassi

• * J&K - Warm Kahwa

• * MP- Pohe with jalebi, wrapped in a dona

• * West Bengal: Just another place to talk. Maybe an adda. 

The list can go on. As you can see, a common strategy does not work across regions in India. That perhaps explains why we have a coalition powered by several parties!

Take it easy, this is humour. At least attempted humour.

So many things are happening around banks these days.

The Placement In-charge of Jhumritiliya School of Management Education has reportedly gone to the press saying that in the light of the Lehman collapse, chances of all students getting placed could not be expected to reach cent per cent. No one has bothered to ask him if they ever managed to get few companies over.

Even the banks of the Kosi river broke four weeks before the banks in US went broke.

A leading politician of one of India’s eastern states famous for strikes has reportedly issued a statement that this collapse is due to the rigid and unfriendly stand of the state government. She and her followers have gone to her latest fast unto death. The state government has instead stated that this is American conspiracy against the people of the state. And no matter what, they would continue to maintain their people friendly policies for the ongoing growth of the state.

Dictators of Africa have already thanked their grandfathers for giving them the good sense of stashing their wealth in Swiss Banks. 

Dictators of South Asia, present and past, are already having hush-hush conferences, saying one should never bank on Americans. And they are kicking themselves for this - wishing they had realized before being thrown out of power.

Patrons of the blood bank are curiously trying to understand the meaning of the headline on the billboard outside the stock exchange that said Tokyo to New York,  there’s Bloodbath on the banks.

Zimbabwe’s Reserve Bank got further worked up and issued a kilo-trillion currency note in anger.

The health minister of a foreign country is understood to have decreed that the sperm bank would not be called so, but now be known as Sperm Depository. Obviously, the minister does not want the citizens of the country to feel there is any shortage.

PJ of the day :Shopping Malls have renamed boards saying Elevator Bank to Elevator Station to make the patrons comfortable. Trigger: An old couple deciding to walk out of an elevator after seeing a made in USA sign. They had read somewhere that American banks are collapsing.

Before you begin reading, dispel the notion that anything social in 2008 need to be online.
I am sitting in the Tidel Park Conference room here in Chennai waiting for the CII Connect 2008 Unconference to begin. Though several biggies are expected here, including Ms Kanimozhi, Member of Parliament and several corporate honchos, the atmosphere here would devastate a conformist. The tables are arranged in U-shape, but instead of the central space being used for a speaker to stand, there are folks sitting with laptops. The audience is a mix of youth and experience, and truly, a flat format conference is about to begin.

The debate about to begin is on Technology for the Common Man

Hello, it is 5.30 PM and the event is on. The ‘VIPs’ are all there, but no Kingsize chairs, no elevated platforms.

For a change, it is the audience that is speaking and the guests are waiting for their turn. The mike does not come automatically to them, but only when they ask for it, and even then the time allotted to them is the same , which is one minute
Siddharth has an interesting Flickr stream here

I ventured onto Wordpress on June 28. Too months onto this platform(and URL), I observe the following:

1. This site has started to get interesting traffic via search. In fact, on a good day it compares significantly with the Blogger blog.Yeh Dil Maange More. 
2. Looks do matter: Comments per post have increased, this could possibly not be attributed to any sudden enhancement in my content abilities.
3. ‘Setup and forget it’ does not work with WP. WP keeps releasing better versions.Compulsive delivery syndrome? Code Diarrhea ? I think I can bear it.

Some reflections on my past posts on Blogger.

1. My posts on Subroto Bagchi and  Mahesh Murthy continue to get  fairly good number of visitors everyday. But overall winner by a great margin is Dr Abdul Kalam, about him I have written five posts, including one on an imaginary conversation between Dr Kalam and (former) President Musharraf which for some reason is my favourite.
2. My moment of real blogging happiness was when Shel Israel left a comment on a post I made on his (and Rob Scoble’s) book.

Net net I remain quite delighted  with WP and the flexibility. I continue to mentally debate if I should move all content to this platform and ditch the old site completely. Any suggestions?