Mismatch Part I

I can’t figure out why most restaurants make their waiters wear a white shirt; some even get them to wear a black bow tie to go with the black trousers.  

Premium / upmarket restaurants manage to have their staff trained, well groomed and dresses, if their uniform gets slightly dirty they are asked to change, to keep up and in line with the restaurant’s premium image, but the mass market restaurants don’t & can’t afford to run like this, so why the hell do they insists their staff also dress in a similar manner?

Because white shirts get dirt easily, even the slightest of dirt shows faster on a white background, whites get stained easily and look awful if their NOT nice and WHITE.

 

It just brings the whole experience of eating out – at a mass market joint- down. People will start to question the quality or should I say hygiene of the food being served to them fs it’s served by a waiter who’s uniform looks old and dirty, I’m sorry but it does play on the mind, even if the whole restaurant is nice and clean, because it’s the person who’s serving it that makes the last impression.

 Well  all I can say is that it is a bloody let down, especially when the restaurant owners / managers spend so much time and money going over other fine details like décor, cutlery and  the actual menu !

Practise What You Preach – Believe In

When everything around you seems to be going wrong , and all you see is ’sad’ ; nothing makes sense, you tell your self things will get better soon, all you have to do is keep at it, well thats exactly what you’ve gotta do ; keep at it.

It’s a very sad day

I’ve read about it heard about it, but finally seen it.

 

A lay off at the place of my employment. 

 

I really don’t know what to do, how to help these people, because a couple of them are too junior to even get the pink slip.

 

It’s a weird situation, top management has taken a pay cut, but still come on , these are people being layed off that had no control or influence over the financial outcome of the business they worked on. These people are just  numbers for some bloke sitting in some country and analyzing an excel sheet!!

 

Management should have just docked everyone’s wages by a few % and kept these guys, yes some will argue they are not productive or effective.

 

Fuck that is what I say, because they didn’t have ANY INFLUENCE over the final profitability / outcome of the piece of business they worked on.

 

A job means someone’s livelihood, and it’s just been taken away, I feel helpless, and I don’t feel this way too often.

 

I’m just gonna go home and try and think of what i can do.

Ignorance will be downfall of EVIL

I use to think political parties knew the common man, because they had their ear to the ground and a pluse on the rural man, because however dumb our politicians may be , they have a strong constituency, especially in rural areas.

 

 Recently, Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Political party came out with it’s manifesto. To begin with His party is a regional party with a limited presence. It is strong in the state of U.P. For those of you who are ignorant about our country, U.P along with Bihar, M.P & Rajasthan account for roughly 40 % of the country’s total population. So you can imagine how many electoral votes and seats that means.

 

UP is large; it has the most number of Lok Sabha [parliament] constituencies. So winning in UP is important. UP has a HUGE number of poor, illiterate semi illiterate people. Obviously because the ruling parties have not wanted to do anything about that, in the past 60 years may I add.

 

In the past people like Mulayam were able to woo illiterate voters in the name of religion and quota based protectionism, and may continue to for a while. However this time he has gone too far. For I think he has misunderstood his target audience.

 

In his manifesto, he promises to banish English and computers. What a joke.

 

He needs to understand that his poor rural voter bends backward to get his child admitted to a English medium school, at times pleads, begs and works over time to make enough money to pay for tuitions so his child can ‘cope up’ in an English medium school.

 

The rural youth want to learn how to operate a computer because it means LIVELIHOOD for him and his  family and a visa to get outs of the darkness.

 

Most of the rural voters will be around the 35 years of age. I wonder whether his manifesto will cut ice.

 

I know this because I have been busy speaking to what I call the serving class – drivers, maids, daily laborers. I know this because I too originate from a dark corner which no one would bother to acknowledge, and I know what people back in my village are talking about right now.

 

All I’m wondering is that out of the total number of people living in the darkness, how many will bother to think about that stupid manifesto and spread the message.

 

I hope they do.

 

Because finally I see an end to evil.

Anything is possible – after all its adland – part II

Goafest never fails to surprise me!

What pisses me off this year is that the jury decided not to award a gold Abby in the film category.

No that does not mean that there were no worthy contenders, it means that the jury was so politically motivated that they though “if not me then not you”.

It is bloody sad, but that is the only logic I can see. You know what, most print and outdoor entries are scam, and most TV stuff is authentic; please discount the recent Y&R India stuff for Colgate.

Anyway, as I said It is Adland.

Sometimes its not nice to be part of a the popular group

When I was young I head a story which went like this –

 

A sage was travelling through the forest on his horse, and he saw another group of sages and stopped to meet them. Our sage was in for a great shock, as the people he stopped to meet were dacoits dressed as sages!

 

The dacoits robed the sage of everything he had. When the dacoits were leaving the sage requested the dacoits to not tell anyone what they had done. On hearing this the dacoits started to laugh, but the leader of the dacoits asked the sage why he had such an unusual request.

 

To this the sage replied “I don’t want people to lose faith in sages and be afraid of sages in general”.

 

Now you’re probably wondering why I’m narrating this story. Well its because of a very sad incident.

 

A few days ago I was getting in to the elevator, and it was rush hour, lots of people entered on the ground floor. When the elevator arrived it already had a few people, including 3 Americans, everyone just poured in and it got over crowded and was over weight!

 

No one was ready to get off, while everyone was waiting a few people made some silly juvenile remarks not directly aimed at the Americas but just very irritating remarks / gestures that made them feel unwelcome, and the three of them got off the elevator along with me. While getting off one of them said “we were here first”. While all this was going, some stupid people even ‘celebrated’ as the 3 Americans got off. These are people who work in MNCs , the sort who you would expect such stuff from.

 

I felt really bad about what had just happen, and just because of a handful of VERY STUPID juvenile people now the American tourists / visitors would think all Indians are like this – even think were extremely racist. I can’t even blame them, I opened my mouth to apologise/ explain but the lady asked me not too.  That’s when the above story came to my mind.

 

I was very pissed. All of us aren’t like this.

No will power at all

 

I was reading through the newspaper and saw an ad for new apartments, villas and condos coming up in the suburbs. Since it seemed interesting I logged on to the real estate developers site and began browsing through the project details when I noticed the ‘type’ of project this would be. It was called “gated housing community”.

 

For some reason this phrase stuck to my mind and I kept thinking about this sort of a neighbourhood. There are lots of upmarket “gated housing communities” in Gurgaon [Suburbs to of New Delhi].

 

Now about the people who live in these upmarket ‘gated communities’ – well they’re well off financially and like to think of themselves as more ‘up market’ in every sense. Well that was about the people.

 

Now about the place – one thing stands out – the security. You can’t just walk in. The question of trespassing doesn’t arise. There are proper private security personnel at the gates. And the beighbourhood has huge walla like a fortress + barbwire!! Now all that’s ok except that there are a HUGE number of security personnel inside the neighbourhood.

 

Who the hell do they monitor inside???

 

For every building they’ll have 3 -4 security personnel, and you know what these security guards are suppose to do ???????????????????? –

 

They police the residents inside they neighbourhood!!!

 

Yes you read correct, they police the residents, who pay their salaries.

 

They tell the residents that they can’t park in no parking zones, they tell the residents not to litter , they tell the residents not to walk on the grass J …. I find it stupid that people need to hire other people just so they can keep a check on themselves!!

 

Fuck, whats happening !!!.

 

Carry your own weight. Literally!

I meant to write this post last week, but the thought put me off! Well here it goes.

 

Well amongst the many things that I find stupid, is the following :

 

Sunday afternoon, shopping mall, high street……………….Young and perfectly healthy couple enjoying themselves, and next to them or behind, a maid [caretaker/ nanny] carrying their toddler. I think it is really stupid.

 

For fucks sake, these maids can never care for your child they way you would. They only stop to tell the child “don’t sit here, don’t touch that” when they notice its getting a little too much, that’s because they treat it like a job , and have better things to do on THEIR DAY OUT OF THE HOUSE!!!.

 

They will never tell the child why he / she should not touch something , not pick his nose, not try and stuff his mouth with …….. they won’t tell the child what to do in such cases.

 

Some times the maid herself is just 16 or 17, how the hell do you expect someone of that age to manage a toddler!!!

 

Why the hell do young parents need to employ someone to ‘carry’, ok more than that, well watch over their kids when they are around.

 

Its sad,  but what values are these people inculcating their kids with. Wonder if that’s how they were brought up! I doubt it.

 

All this makes me wonder where our society is heading, yeah yeah I know there are lots of social scientists out there trying to figure this out. But this tells me a lot about people.

 

[and yes , there are exceptions and some maids / nanny / cartakers that really do take amazing care of kids , while their parents shop, but they are few].

Smart ideas aren’t always good ideas ; They’re STUPID

 

 

I’ve been hearing this phrase a lot lately “drink more water”. Friends saying this while advising someone sick or a guest speaker on the radio that wants people to live a ‘healthy’ life. The worst is when you pay a doctor Rs 1000 consultancy fees and while leaving he / she says “nothing serious, just drink more water”

 

People don’t say “drink lots of water”. I would be ok if they said that, instead the phrase is “drink MORE water”, which means people already believe they are drinking less water compared to earlier times. Hmmmmmmmm.

 

Sad , something so basic , and that’s when lots of lifestyle illnesses are on the increase, ironical I would say – its in the country that gave the world yoga and Ayurveda! 

 

Well why would people be drinking less water is what started to bother me, are we drinking more Coke or Pepsi, well not really. I think most of us Indians know water is water not coke, well at least till now!

 

I though about it, and well its sad.

 

Most people drink water at work, since we spend half the day at work, earlier people drank water directly from the water filter / cooler, but now everyone seems to be drinking water from the water dispenser. So you’re wondering whats wrong in that?  We here it goes.

 

Coffee / tea / soup / water amount to huge over head costs for companies. Some smart ass admin managers noticed that people waste coffee and tea and well got the size of the plastic cups reduced.

 

And guess what a majority of us drink water from reduced plastic cups. That means only 1 ½ gulps of water compared to the normal 4 you would get from a tumbler.

 

This is fucking sad.

 

So next time one of you smart admin managers get a bright idea, keep it to yourself.

 

Are people loosing it ?

 

The other day I was walking in to my office building when the security guard at the entrance asked me to ‘sign myself in’ at the reception. The only question I had was WHY???? I work in this bloody building; I’m not even a visitor! I asked if this was because Independence Day is round the corner, but I was told it is a new policy !  

 

I thought it was stupid so refused to sign in and made sure everyone standing there heard me.

 

I am all for security measures etc etc etc, but don’t do lip service to security, I asked them what would happen after I ‘signed in’, the reply I got “ Nothing sir , it will be in our record” . I could give wrong details.  

 

Since I’m on the topic I’d like to add that I hate companies which treat people like a badge number! I hate organizations which mandate employees to wear an employee ID badge inside the office.

 

I guess this is one of the reasons why I can never come round to working in some of those huge organizations.

 

Anyway I’ll stop. This is just too dumb!

No wonder clients don’t take us seriously

Scam ads always do well and the industry accepts that but this juts makes us look stupid – Luxur, the grand prix winner isn’t even a Leo Burnett client!! It’s Lowe’s client.

 

No wonder clients think we are a bunch of jokers. We just go and do things like this which are blatantly against what we advise people to do!

 

At least make scam ads for your own clients!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

And after all this we want complete authority.

 

I’m not gonna say more. I just hate it that because of certain things all of us in ad land are thought of as a bunch a jokers just after one thing!

 

Anything is possible – after all its adland!!

 

  

Off to the Ad fest in Goa, obviously not for the creative awards crap, as most of them are scam and its pathetic, actually it sucks because scam ads are one thing, people have progressed – like fictitious clients / societies!! What next!!

Come to think of it, what the hell is everyone coming together to celebrate? The art of conning . ha ha !! I’ll stopb here

 .Anyway I’ll just enjoy the beach and catch up with friends. Ha !

Still can’t figure it out

 

Why do people insist on drinking water in front of the water dispenser, especially when they know it’s a public water dispenser? I think its very irritating to see someone bend down fill their tiny glass with water and then just stand their gulping it down then move aside!!!  

Someone is always waiting behind them for their turn to drink water. God, we’re considerate aren’t we.

  

It happens everywhere, not just my office. Is it another one of those cultural things, like how North Indians cant queue? Is it related to the ‘ration’ effect. I’ll write about the ‘ration’ effect some other day!! 

 Its’ Friday J , have a great weekend

Why we like Singapore

The ‘we’ refers to us Indians.  Lots of expats living in Singapore describe it as a ‘regime’ led by ‘control freaks’. Everything is so bloody organized, controlled and planned in this nice land. So is it bad? There is less chaos, well visibly less, I’m sure they have their problems, but they manage to keep it hush hush. To the visiting tourist this place seems so nice and peaceful.

Lots of Indian tourists prefer to head towards Singapore. Seriously Singapore flights are full with families looking for a ‘nice’ fun holiday.

So why is it that tons and tons of Indians love Singapore? Is ‘our definition of fun different? Is it because it’s got everything we haven’t but desperately want.

 Like -  

It’s safe

It’s clean

It’s small [tiny]

It’s organized [ok regulated]

Good public transport

The bus stops at the bus stop

Cars stop when the traffic lights turn red

People aren’t out to cheat or kill you

You can walk around in this city!! [So what if it’s humid]

Cabbies don’t go round and round before dropping you off in the same block!

You don’t get mugged or manhandled [at least that’s the perception]

People are more interested in white collar crimes

English isn’t their first and only language.

They grant us a visa in the first go!!!!! Ha ha ha 

This brings me back to our definition of fun. I think we are desperately seeking ‘certainty’ in our lives.  We want to be able to know that we won’t get left behind if we miss the 10.05 bus. We want to know that the missus can go out on her own, or with the men and no one will get drunk and try and act smart.

I think we’re desperately seeking security and certainty in our surroundings.

What if ……

I was traveling by train recently and the compartment I was seated in was occupied by an Indian couple and a Japanese family3. [Parents and a young girl of say around 10]. The Indian’s smiled and made nice friendly gestures and so did the Japanese  

What I noticed was that the young Japanese girl was wrestles and wanted to ask the Indians questions. So she started off in Japanese and the Indian lady in English, both looked puzzled for a while and I really don’t know what happen but they started using sign language, visuals and well gestures and got their messages across.  

After traveling for 6 hours they parted with each others address and telephone number. I was really amazed at what I had witnessed. Like in most cases people would juts smile and go there separate ways [not talk at all]. Here the Japanese family let their kid change seats and constantly ask the Indian lady what certain things were [ by pointing at them ].  

In short I like what I saw.  

It left me wondering what would happen if all of us spoke the same language.

Think about it !! Just think