I am a writer

As far as I can remember, I always wanted to be a writer. What lacks in talent, can be made up (to a certain extent) by hard work. I think I gave up trying . I have made a timeline of significant events which shaped my belief that I could be a successful scribe -just to remind myself what I once wished to be. If a certain desire still lives in your heart, and you wish to set fire to it, do it today. Because every day we walk towards our demise, and we are left with even less time to try our best at what we were born to become.


The rest of the post is more of personal significance:

Identifying quality

Yahoo! My laptop is back from ICU. Now I can post what I had promised to. About quality and its importance in our everyday life.
When we talk about several management principles to improve quality, we feel intimidated because we forget that we judge "quality" subconsciously most of the times, even in mundane day-to-day experiences. For example, recently I had to courier a few documents overseas. Though I had the tracking number to keep note of the progress of the shipment, I was pleasantly surprised to get a call from concerned courier service provider notifying me the receipt of the papers and the name of the person concerned who had received the same. It was just one way of customer retention. Keeping track of the shipments of even walk-in customers.

Another incident happened when my friend wanted to buy a sunscreen lotion for herself. The product knowledge of the guy at the store was astounding and she felt spoilt for choice. When she asked for my opinion I suggested she took something which suited her skin type in stead of anything that caught her fancy. In fact, that chap convinced me to get a sunscreen with matte effect, when I already had one with a cream base.

Now, one thing that goes a long way to improve quality is innovation.
Here’s something I’d like to share.

Since I love drawing parallelisms, I’d like to say we can bring quality in our lives with just a little effort everyday. They say dreams don't come true, goals do. And it is all manageable when you write it down. So here are a few from my list of goals. I have tried to make them as numerical as possible.
1. I want to be an MBA graduate in 3 years' time with course titles- Marketing Communications , Business to Business Marketing, Computer Assisted Market Analysis and Planning, and Internet Marketing
2. I want to script at least one more book before I am 30.
3. I want to have a start-up in the next 10-15 years.In fact I have started with my domain name and server space, I need a web developer.
4. I want to complete M-3 level of degree in German.
5. I want to weigh 58 kg and wear my hair another 15 cm longer.
Got crazier ideas, but these were the saner ones.
Till next time,
Keep dreaming.

It's a beautiful world

It was one of my favorite ads while I was at school, and till date it has remained one of the best I had ever watched.
For those who don't know yet, I have a secret fancy for advertisement.

From billboards to bumper stickers, from pages of a magazine to shopping bags and slogans on T-shirts, I absolutely drool over anything that convinces me that I'd have given my right arm to dream up something like that.

One of the most endearing commercials in Indian advertising is certainly the Hutch ad where the pug ( Chika) follows the boy (Jairam ) faithfully around...

Danny Pope ( the cinematographer) feels blessed to have been able to take natural shots. I believe it takes more than just "luck" to be able to make something like that ( I can confess I shifted my loyalty from Airtel to Hutch after that and it has been my service provider ever since)

I was recruited for an advertising agency last year -oh make a year before that now now :P( see 13th Sept,2005 entry, I had the interview at Gurgaon) but I couldn't join it immediately owing to some personal reasons. I regretted it.
The interviewer had told me one thing I'll always remember -
".. whether you are writing taglines to convince people to donate something as important as body organs like eyes or selling something as mundane as toothpicks- you have to have conviction, if you believe yourself what you are telling others, others will believe you."

There was a test I had taken and the taglines I had come up with were some of my best creative efforts. It was worth it, they wanted to take me...but as I said, joining immediately was out of question, and in the meantime I was offered a more comfortable (read:better pay), less challenging job within just a stone's throw from the place I reside in.. so it practically slipped out of my mind.

What with this new vigour of applying for the B-schools, or a disease that manifests in me and has an occasional outburst, I still stare at the Oglivy office in Okhla Industrial Estate :)

Thank God I have something to look forward to in life.

As I always say..

"It's the possibilty of a dream come true that makes life so interesting"