Spirit of Mumbai !

This Sunday, it would be my 5th year at the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon - 2011 . And,  like last four years , this year too I along with my colleagues would be led by some amazingly spirited kids from The Victoria Memorial School for the Blind , Mumbai . We all would be participating in the Dream Run. 

Yes, these kids would walk / run the whole six kilometers with us. 

These are some of the pics I clicked , while running / walking with them in 2010. 

These pics are clicked by me , feel free to copy paste. Btw , if you feel like making some donations to the Victoria Memorial School for the Blind , Mumbai , contact them http://www.vmsb.org/ or let me know. 

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LinkedIn – The Blunder years !

As of 1 January 2011, LinkedIn had more than 90 million registered users, spanning more than 200 countries. You can be proud that You , Your neighbor , and the society watchman, all are one in 90 million.

 

Let’s get started .

 

Profile

It’s first and the easiest step , all you need to write is your education( if any) , Past and Current ( no no not girl friends ) Employments , and it’s ready . It also allows you to give a brief summary , that’s where many of us try to be creative.

 

Sample Summary of Vencut Sobbo

“I am a vibrant , creative and hardworking young professional with a sharp focus on quality tasks. Other than BAU am also good at multi tasking and have accomplished a robust culture in current organisation. My goal in life is to scale new heights and take my organisation to even higher height. If given a chance , I would prove an ASSet to your esteemed organisation , together we can achieve even newer heights – you can see that I am not scared of heights"

 

This will ensure that your summary appears in every possible search , by any damn consultant , MBA or a wanna be MBA cum Consultant.

 

Sending Invites

First and foremost , use LinkedIn special feature to send auto invites to all your gmail, rediffmail and yahoo mail contacts , this will ensure that your invite reaches atleast 749 people. Now it’s time for sending some personalised invites.

 

Sample personalised invites :

First , to that pretty HR lady who hired you.

“Dear SunderLuxmi , I would like to invite you to my LinkedIn because I like the way you helped me in filling all the 19 Joining Forms including my hobbies , I still remember the way you smiled listening that Orkutting is my hobby”

 

Second , to the Head Marketing , whom you met in the LOO.

“Dear Sunderassan Sir, I am working with despatch department , as a junior vice executive – outgoing emails , please accept my invite. In case you don’t remember , we met at the place where all bodily fluids meet , and I liked your tattoo”

 

Making Recommendations

Now , it’s time to make some recommendations. By now , you would have received at least 19 messages asking for your recommendations.

 

The typical message would look something like - "I'm sending this to ask you for a brief recommendation of my work that I can include in my LinkedIn profile. If you have any questions, let me know. Thanks in advance for helping me out"

 

Now seeing this , don’t waste your time in remembering who’s this guy. All you need is to dust off your old “wren n martin “ , see what is an adjective – pick any one at random and make a sentence and Bingo .

 

Sample Recommendation for an Ex

“Nymphia and I go a long way , I still remember her first day in our office , also when we met at the “Annual Forward Looking Strategy and Looking Back Meeting”. She is very well dressed and has an eye for detail , she quickly spotted the mole and some hairs on my left ear lobe”

 

That’s it for this time , keep licking linking.

 

Disclaimer: Names have been changed on requests, If still it’s your name you better change it. 

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If Bollywood was on LinkedIn ?

First thing, it would no more be called LinkedIn , it would be LinkedUp – and you know why !

Now let’s explore some popular features of LinkedIn.

Profile :

That’s the first step for any LinkedIn user, and knowing Bollywood they would hire script writers for it. Chetan Bhagat would be the busiest person on earth and the first one to approach him would be one film wonder Sonakshi Sinha and no film no wonder Shazahn Padamsee.

Shazahn Padamsee : Current – Doing nothing , Past – Did nothing except a blink and you miss kinda role in Rocket Singh.

Shazahn Padamsee through Chetan Bhagat’s pen.

"Shazahn Padamsee, a theatre artist , a successful model turned actress is the daughter of renowned ad guru / theatre personality Alyque Padamsee and prominent pop singer Sharon Prabhakar.  She made her feature film debut in 2009 in the Hindi film Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year opposite Ranbir Kapoor, which opened to critically acclaimed reviews ( by both Alyque and Sharon), and now she is working with critically acclaimed , national award winner , eminent director – Madhur Bhandarkar."

Add Connections :

Now as you know , typical LinkedIn user connects with people he/ she has worked with or studied with. But, Bollywood and studies hardly go together except Tusshar Kapoor who has graduated with a BBA from the Ross School of Business ( Now you know why Bollywood doesn’t pursue education).

So LinkedIn would come up with a new tab , “People you have partied with”, and Kishen Mulchandani would be the most connected man. Bombay Times and HT Cafe would sponsor this section , and would provide data and photographic proofs. So, the people you partied yesterday night , would automatically appear today in “People you may know”.

By the way, unlike tattoos , connections are not permanenet . So Deepika can always block Ranbir and reconnect with Sid.

Who’s viewed your profile:

This feature tells that “Your profile has been viewed by 14 people in last 15 days” and it further tells that who all viewed your profile. Now this would be most used feature , as it would tell that Deepika and Sonam have viewed each other’s profile 19 times and Shakti Kapoor has viewed both of their profiles 190 times. Surprisingly , Katrina has never viewed Salman’s profile.

Recommendations:

Well , this has got nothing to do with casting couch , and I repeat there’s no casting couch in this industry. So Aditya Panchssholi would self-lessly recommend Kangna but Kangna would never display that recommendation on her profile. Karan Johar would recommend every damn person except Ram Gopal Verma . Uday Chopra and Harman Baweja would love to recommend people , but LinkedIn won’t allow them to recommend.

Morani Brothers and Wizcraft would start “Paid Recommendations” where for a measly sum of INR 2 crores , you can get recommendations from Shahrukh Khan , Salman Khan or Akshay Kumar.

Aamir Khan won’t recommend any one except Kiran Rao or Imrran Khan .

Some day , I’ll also talk about premium features of LinkedIn. 

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Dieting or Die Eating?

Why weight loss shouldn't be your New Year Resolution 2011. 

1. To begin with, let's avoid anything to do with this extremely negative word 'Loss' - Robin Sharma is right , let's talk about “Gain” not “Loss”.


2. If you think losing weight is sexy and girls like it , you're wrong. Shane Warne weighs 85 kg and poor Arun Nayar is at least 10kg lighter. I won’t post Liz’s pics here , please google.

3. Some say , if you lose weight, you'll live longer – Even if it’s true , what's the fun in living a long life when you spent half of your life worrying and thinking about losing something. Even Rujuta Diwekar says that most of us "Lose mind to Lose weight" then why try.

4. Why don't you get in shape? If this bothers you perhaps you didn't study physics, maths, whatever carefully. 'Round' is a shape, and an awesome shape.

5. Are you scared of your height? No na , then why get scared of your width. Love every “dimension” of your life.

6. Rooney says, “The biggest seller is cookbooks and the second is diet books – how not to eat what you’ve just learned how to cook.”.

7. For those who are little scientific in their approach , let me bust this myth. You may have heard of something called Body Mass Index or BMI.

                   Weight in kilograms
     BMI =      ——————————
                   Height in meters²

Now tell me , how can this be correct , when we all know we can't increase our height, so all we are left with weight. It's an absolutely one sided formula, better ignored.

8. Think about millions of people employed directly or indirectly by KFC and McDonalds. Now if all of a sudden, you stop buying French Fries , who'll feed thousands of farmers and their kids who grow potatos.

9. You really think that Dieting is good for health , when the word itself begins with Die. It's suicidal and attempting suicide is a crime in many countries. Still if you want to Die , why not Die Eating.

10. To lose weight, they say "Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper" , This is ridiculous , when you get a chance to Be a King , three times a day , why be a pauper at all.

Last, and the most, Look at this. Period.

Disclaimer : Views expressed here are those of the author, and he may have "dressed it up" to suit certain "Waisted Interests".Tweet

New Year Resolution 2011

Some of you may wonder that it's really early to think about New Year 2011 resolutions in the first week of  December 2010 , but you see “I'm different”. So this year , I'll be planning in advance. Let me give you some popular and repeated New Year Resolutions.

So , while you may pick one of these , I won't because “I'm different”.

So here I go with my 2011 New Year resolutions.

1. I'll stop reading movie reviews by Rajeev Masand, Taran Adarsh or for that matter any one , not only because they are biased but also because of huge inconsistency . Reviews of Khele Hum Jee Jan Se varied from Half a Star to Four Stars. I demand Govt. nationalise this whole movie rating business.

2. I won't Hashtag any scam next year in my tweets, frequently Hashtagging 2G, CWG, Adarsh, Radia etc has taken a heavy toll on 'Q' key on my Blackberry which shares the '#' symbol. 

3. I'll continue reading columns by Celeb Journo ( you know whom I am talking about) , but only when I am in mood to read fiction and not able to find my book "1001 Political Jokes".

4. Number Portability is certainly not for me, not because that I Love my service provider, but I don't want to make Govt. job easy to tap my phone.

5. I'll follow Chetan Bhagat , no- no not because I love him but through him I can easily know what Shejan Padamsee, Celina Jaitly and other Bollywood damsels are saying.

6. I'll go for fast unto death ( yet to decide whose death) OR drive from Borivali to Nariman Point during peak hours, to bring Arnab Goswami on Twitter. Yes, I Love Him, while you all were making fun of Kalmadi , he relentlessly interviewed him without even letting him speak.

7. You guessed it right, Fitness or Dieting won't be my New Year resolution . McDonalds and KFC employ almost 2 million people worldwide, Think about it.

8. I’ll go by I&B Ministry's advice and let them decide what my kids should watch. Have sent them all the tapes of Hannah Montana , Ninja Hattori, Power Rangers to check if It's appropriate for my 6 and 8 year old kids.

9. I'll watch every movie of Uday Chopra because Mom says "No gain without some pain".

10. Oh, I just found my 2007 New Year resolutions, I think I’ll go by them in order to save paper. Remember , Recycle, Reuse & Reduce.

Happy New Year.

Why weight loss shouldn't be your New Year Resolution 2011. 

1. To begin with, let's avoid anything to do with this extremely negative word 'Loss' - Robin Sharma is right , let's talk about “Gain” not “Loss”.

2. If you think losing weight is sexy and girls like it , you're wrong. Shane Warne weighs 85 kg and poor Arun Nayar is at least 10kg lighter. I won’t post Liz’s pics here , please google.

3. Some say , if you lose weight, you'll live longer – Even if it’s true , what's the fun in living a long life when you spent half of your life worrying and thinking about losing something. Even Rujuta Diwekar says that most of us "Lose mind to Lose weight" then why try.

4. Why don't you get in shape? If this bothers you perhaps you didn't study physics, maths, whatever carefully. 'Round' is a shape, and an awesome shape.

5. Are you scared of your height? No na , then why get scared of your width. Love every “dimension” of your life.

6. Rooney says, “The biggest seller is cookbooks and the second is diet books – how not to eat what you’ve just learned how to cook.”.

7. For those who are little scientific in their approach , let me bust this myth. You may have heard of something called Body Mass Index or BMI.

                   Weight in kilograms

     BMI =      ——————————

                   Height in meters²

Now tell me , how can this be correct , when we all know we can't increase our height, so all we are left with weight. It's an absolutely one sided formula, better ignored.

8. Think about millions of people employed directly or indirectly by KFC and McDonalds. Now if all of a sudden, you stop buying French Fries , who'll feed thousands of farmers and their kids who grow potatos.

9. You really think that Dieting is good for health , when the word itself begins with Die. It's suicidal and attempting suicide is a crime in many countries. Still if you want to Die , why not Die Eating.

10. To lose weight, they say "Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper" , This is ridiculous , when you get a chance to Be a King , three times a day , why be a pauper at all.

Last, and the most, Look at this. Period.

Disclaimer : Views expressed here are those of the author, and he may have "dressed it up" to suit certain "Waisted Interests".

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