Karma, Coffee, CTAs, CTRs n then some more

Anita on Anita

2008-05-29T06:42:00.000-07:00

This by a very dear friend and cousin... named anita varma as well :)

the second becomes the third

2008-05-27T00:44:00.000-07:00

i am luurving it

and this is Ash's first ...

and richard's last one.. no more...

Our 9 year old bundle of joy ( pardon the melodrama)

2008-03-23T00:21:00.000-07:00

Dear Team DDW,

How many times i've told you to stay back and finish this one job off... how many times i've lost my temper on you...how many times i've cancelled your leave for a campaign that finally got postponed anyways... how many times i've said "its code red urgent... Need this ASAP" how many times i've hated myself for calling you in on Sundays.... each time you've humbled me, encouraged me with your smile and a simple" ho jayega" ..so many times you've made me stand with my head held high for a job well done and delivered on time. So many times, you've made me feel part of the DDW family when it's really my duty to do so.

Last year swhished past us... the Murud outing seems like yesterday... since then theres been so many changes, some good, some fantastic, some very very painful. New accounts have come in. New guys have joined in..Some of you had to leave...our first branch offices started off...
but the last few months haven't been easy on any of us...some of the toughest months we've seen.. how did we pull through? Simple. Trust. Faith. Confidence. Not mine. Not Rickys. Not Ash. Not Mel. Yours. You see, when we see you, we see your rock solid faith in DDW., there's no ways we could let you down.. it makes us try harder and harder... The times we falter, you put us straight back on track.

So as we turn 9 today... I thank you . Thank you for DDW. Thank you for letting us enjoy our moments in the spotlight whilst you guys slog backstage. Hats off.

On a more practical note, as promised our usual picnic that happens around 23rd will happen in April... and since you've all been such good kids, vikrams taking you all to GOA :D

For the first time, Ricky, Ash and me didn't raise a toast to our baby at midnight... (all of us working in 3 diff locations on a super urgent project) But hell guys.. lgfad once its done!

ARV

Main bhi Thirty

2008-02-27T20:22:00.000-08:00

And it finally happened...my friends were looking forward to this day more than I was... The day when I would have to stop pulling their leg about being over the hill..err.. over 30 ... I turned 30 ! My friends breathe a little easily now (thats till they cross 40 ;) lol... )

So half my life has like whooshed by( im hoping to kick the bucket at 60) and am happy that not all of it was a complete waste of oxygen. I've been blessed twice over with great families ..was born into a great one...and married into another rocking one.. i've been fortunate to have excellent companions all through my life...I've had a good life so far and looking forward to the rest

Had a wonderfully peaceful "bringing in" of my birthday (now thats a sure shot sign of getting older ) a quiet evening of banter with my dearest friend, Ricky. As the day dawned it promised to be one of the usually busy chaotic days and true enough it was. Juggling meetings, deadlines, calls, pings,e mails, creatives and so on..till I walked in to DDW at noon.

My cabin was COMPLETELY jazzed.. streamers, posters, flowers, gifts, more flowers and my favourite...white roses! Girls thanks for coming in at 9 to do this...(try getting them in at 9 for a job lol ) Speaking of favourites...it seemed as if it were "these are a few of Anita's favourite things" day in DDW

I got loads of white roses.. flowers by the dozens! Every 15 min to be precise. Almost EVERYONE was wearing black :) which well..I kinda obsess over ..Since I love undhiyo, the girls actually arranged for undhiyo for lunch!!! The cake was my favourite flavour... Got cake on my face.. threatened everyone with 4 working weekends if I got cake in my hair..hahahahahah... it does pay to be boss sometimes... I got books for gifts.. and chocolates too...

Sighhh...you guys have scored enough brownie points to last you a year! umm..lets make that a month.. :D

Missed Ivan, Naresh, Mel & Saurabh.. but you guys can always make up later :))

Thanks a million guys! It's sure nice to feel loved ;)

customer service? customer harassment?

2007-05-14T05:23:00.000-07:00

How much crap can you take?

At the restaurant, when the waiter botches up an order.
At the ticket counter, when they shut down the counter for "lunch" half an hour before lunch time.
When the new branded shirt you bought, last week, shrinks
When the new DVD player you bought, comes without a remote.
When you paid for 2 burgers and realised theres only one when you get back home.

When was the last time you were cheesed of with a (usually very well established) company, for lousy service? This is after they spend millions of monies in advertising trying to lure you and ( get you to emotionally aspire to use their brand.. right!!!) you'd think they would want to make sure you stay happy and satisfied.. But oh no...

Many of these companies are so bad (mobile phone companies top this list) that at one point you really start wondering if its better to do without whaterver it is that u wanted from them in the first palce

One company in particular offers an experience absolutely contrary to its brand name. Forget "relying" on them, its a wonder if you can get the right information out of their help desk the first few times you call them. Their office staff says one thing, the call centre another..the technician yet another.. Pheww..

But to be fair to them...they are polite...lost yes...but well mannered.

Nothing beats this incident which happened to a close friend of mine.
........................................................................

Airtel delhi offered a scheme by which you get a return air ticket to a destination of your choice, on the purchase of a sim card. Since my friend required to fly down to mumbai often, she decided to go in for this over the other operators.

After she subscribed, on enquiring about the air tickets, she was told that she would have to show 3 months of bills for them to release the tickets. Though she wan't informed about it at the time of purchase, she realised it was a fair argument as you would have guys signing up for a connection and then disconnecting after gettng the tickets. So alls fair..

3 months up, bills in hand, she contacts the offices , is directed to another branch..from there to the branch she got the sim from..then to the head office.. (and you thought government offices were bad, think again)..to no avail!

now what we are talking about here are Air tickets.. so eventually..though very pissed at a promise not delivered, my friend did what most of us do.. she gave up for a bit.. a month down the line..she again called up.. she was informed that the scheme was closed! When she told them that shes been following up, she was told " Sorry for the trouble you've gone through ma'm but theres nothing i can do"

think that's bad ..read on.
One month down the line, she had to relocate to Bombay. Still pissed at airtel, she moved without disconnecting the line.

Once she reached bombay, she begain getting calls from airtel on the charges she has to pay as she didnt disconnect the line. She informed them that, she would definitely pay up, but only after someone has addressed the issue of the airtickets or replied to her queries in writing. She also reminded them that she has never defaulted before, always paid her usually huge bills, well before the due date.
She also mailed the same to the airtel management.

The calls didnt stop. They increased. And worse, they started coming from the recovery agents. These uncouth guys actually started harassing her, abusing her in filthy language!!! Be***ot etc... Bloody unacceptable.

When she stopped taking those calls, they then go one step further. They actually place calls to her friends ( information from the bills am sure) posing as guys from ICICI bank delhi etc.. saying that theres an important piece of information to be given to her, pls give us her mumbai no.

So now, she starts getting calls on her mumbai no. They have kinda stopped after she filed a case against them.. but the point is how bloody disgusting can you get?

How much crap can you take, really?

When technology revolts..

2007-05-08T08:28:00.000-07:00

Its a fine monday morning ( as much as monday mornings can be) My usually reliable hand phone, an xda atom, suddenly goes into a coma.. so gave it the usual dose of charging , thinking that i probably hadnt charged it properly. An hour passes... two.. but looks like the little baby is really in some deep slumber. So begins a day , nay, a week,of chaos.

Later that day, we lose electricity in our office for half hour...and out goes the internet connection as well.. so i whip out my trustworthy Reliance Net-connect card and... hola Mr. Murphy. It's a no-go!

Lights come back..not the internet. Slowly, the panic begins to set in. mail needs to
go... banner has to go live.. client is screaming.. thinks i am bluffing (all clients do nai?) What saved that day was ..MTNL dial up... we all go back to the basics na?

Net comes back. And as usual many of my mails dont reach my client. So its a case of resending and resending and confirming whether they got da mails.. ( Clients still think im bluffing)

I reach home hoping to finish off some work...get down to it ... realize i need a file from the office...Then the panic really hits. I cant call as i dont have a phone..(we dont have a landline) I cant ping anyone as i cant connect.

So am technologically stranded on an island.

The panic continues into tuesday where i am desperately trying to get things right... but hey we are talking bt Murphy here, right..

And for my net connect card ...getting thru to reliance customer care is a horror story in itself... those blokes there really have no clue on what products their company offers. Its always the same story..After countless calls by ruthi, finally the usb net connect card finds it way to the service centre.. where am told, it will take 15 days to check it out. 15 #&*%ing DAYS!!!!

By the end of thursday that im actually beginning to enjoy life without a cellphone.

And then ofcourse, Richard to the rescue .. gets me a "temp' Sony ericsson to use for now.. Sigh...time to start limping back into the connected world.

Purple no more?

2007-05-05T01:50:00.000-07:00

Friday:
Microsoft wants Yahoo! so that it can try and squash google. No one wants to comment. Goog says its not going to affect the way people search so we arent giving a damn. Market says yaaayy oh wow and Y! stock prices soar.
read the real thing here http://www.ciol.com/content/news/mgas/2007/107050501.asp

Sat:
oh no.. nothing of that sort is happening... the courtship is off... what happens to Y! stock.. we'll see
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2003694286_microsoft05.html

ho hum.. but i am kinda glad.. you see.. I bleed purple. Really.

A love affair that started the day i logged on to the big bad world of internet through VSNL ( remember that one?. The first site i went to was of course, Hotmail...u know.. sabeer bhatia et al...With all the excitement of a newbie netizen..i did what everyone else was doing.. i went to yahoo! The funky red logo with the cure graphics on its masthead... the oh so adorable emoticons on the Y! msgr.. i was hooked and how..

Years n years later, imagine my reaction when I get a call asking whether I would be interested in doing JUST ONE ad for...Yahoo! India... Interested? YES YES YES a MILLION TIMES YES... Next call was to Ash, who was out gallavanting somewhere during office hours .. told him to come back to office..we had two days to work out some ads for a new client.. After the usual copy writer-ish response : why do all clients wake up on the weekend... 2 days is too less.. not fair.. blah blah blah.. (hes going to kill me for this) he calmed down enough to ask me, 'so who's this new client anyways'
and then when i told him... there was a 3 min long silence at the other end of the phone. PRICELESS.

Since then we've been living, breathing and sleeping Yahoo!... its products... the guidelines... the people...There's nothing more inspiring than clients who are crazily in love with their brand.

Its been over 4 years to that day...the industry has turned around... people have moved.. things have changed...

But whatever (.....) happens,i think i will always remain a little purple.

Text me, mail me, call me, ping me, buzz me, tag me, scrap me, digg me...

2007-05-02T02:19:00.000-07:00

So a random-friend-of-yore sends you an invitation...Click here NOW and join or else he will think you ignored him :( boo hoo bawl.. so where does one start or more importantly where does one stop ? You tell yourself, no more sonesi (social networking sites, yaar ) you ignore the first mail... and the second.. by the 9th one you are seriously contemplating whether to sign up or not... looks like the entire world is there ( with all those emails in ur inbox) i mean, imagine being left out on all that wonderful bonding and fun ALL the rest of your friends are having together on that site ...and all that gossip ( ok networking...for u boyz..) then you spend a coupla days adding and sending crappy invitations to other poor sods... you log on every other day, adding friends, sending pings, messages, diggs, scraps...then by the end of a month or two...just as the fatigue sets in ...voila...here comes an invite to yet another sonesi!!!!

Not that i hate them. I absolutely LOVE them. They are dynamic, interactive and form an absolutely crucial part of the rapidly evolving online landscape.
They are adequately equipped to cater to the demands of gen now...
No more long mails.. a one liner ( read : 3 words) scrap on orkut once a month is todays definition of "stayin in touch" ( Yaaaayyy... no more guilt trips) no more mindless IMing.. no more pretending to be offline with pesky relatives even when you are online...

But what makes a sonesi "sticky" ? Is it how it helps the community to reach another more tangible benefit. Like for eg.. getting a job bcoz of the sonesi (linkd in) or that movie clip that you were looking for(youtube).. or yes getting that right solution to a problem(a la Yahoo! answers)..or is it still .. ahh... the good old.. making and meeting new friends( girls, more girls)

Unfortunately/ fortunately every other site worth its byte is attaching the ubiquitous "social networking/community" angle to itself. Unfortunately bcoz some of them are so evidently force fitted its a joke. Nevertheless, its an extremely captivating and interesting phenomenon .. we are all going to get swept along as it elvolves...

After sunsilk gang of girls, the next one up is iblush or some such...then of course theres the big adda ... (will help to have a community of sorts when reliance eventually takes over the country)

All said n done like the recent digg episode proved it..
User is king. Content rules. Community (mob?) rocks.

PS: Amma still complains that i dont call her often.. hey! am trying to be social here :D

I would like to thank...

2007-03-30T08:51:00.000-07:00

Take 25 overworked & overstressed guys, bundle them into a bus, fill em up with booze, take them for 3 days to a remote place...no communication with the outside world...no work..enough..burp...food...more booze.. repeat. That's what our 8th anniversary was..

With enough of stories, incidents, episodes, photos and videos, that will regale us and future ddw-ites for years (really they deserve to be sold to a reality TV show)..the ddw anniversary picnic is unforgettable.. Every single member of TeamDDW made this offsite worthwhile and i would like to thank those who made it what it was.

Thanks, Ragz n Ivan, for making us popular in Amboli. Your idea of gunny hopping to the bus, in middle of the road, made us the cynosure of ALL eyes, the gaalis from the traffic that we held up for half an hour notwithstanding. To my delight, ever so often these days, while walking up to the office, i cross paths with someone who looks at me and nods sagely..(shes the one-who-almost-fell-on her-face)

And not just amboli, thanks to them, we also have a fan following amongst the locals in murud.. after all, free entertainment is always appreciated.. their brainwave of a treasure hunt, had everyone, (wearing DDW tshirts no less) climb water tanks & trees...running,jumping, cycling, riding, jogging, walking, screaming like possessed lunatics all over murud , asking tangawalas, perfect strangers in fish markets and hotels for clues... fortunately no arrests for disturbing the peace...

But what i most thankful for (im serious) is the "I have a dream" idea... The most valuable thing 1 got out of this offsite...
Ragz, Ivan.. you guys rocked the picnic :)

Jags, thanks, for starting the ride with an impromptu dig on everyone.. :) that really set the mood for the next couple of days

Anisha... a million namaskarams and a trillion thanks to your mom. It's no mean task to feed a hungry batallion like ours. And those ultra-delicious, seemingly never-ending sandwiches just kept us going all the way to murud!!! She is officially a part of the DDW family now :)

Ruthi madam... hats off to the FANTASTIC organizing...everything went off the way it was supposed to .. no hurdles.. no problems... evry single paisa spent accoutned for.. kudos! (how the hell do u do it?) Your toothpick and polo game helped some of us (especially Melvin n Richie) discover sides to our personalities that we never knew existed... see pics on in.photos.yahoo.com/ddw.share to know more

richard...umm..no..let me save the best for last..

mel...great sport... your proficiency in bharatanatyam is amazing!

And doyel... if we ever start DDWD.. no not DDW direct ..DDW DANCING..we know whom to contact.. Ladies n gentlemen, Doyel Twinkle Toes has the most amazing database of dance moves and "steps" ever ...she swings a mean bat in cricket as well.. ask the guy whose skull she almost cracked.. not to mention her antakshari skillsets...fantastic.

Vikas...wine is so NOT for you :) but an AMAZING sport...not everyone who gets woken up with a jug of cold water has good things to say...cheers!

Amol, DDW's Tendulkar no less... we should have some of your witty one liners more often in office ..

VeeJay... dude.. you were the most active, the MOST sporting guy there... Your impromptu commentary on the way back with jags n amol.. too bloody cool...and congrats on the ROCKSTAR :) oh and rock on videos boss..

Sandeep...hats off to your enthusiasm.. this guy was the first to hop into a gunny bag( when the rest of us were going..umm..no yaar..not me) and hip hop all the way to and into the bus!

Santy... when this guy loosens up..he is a riot.. god bless you..

Shrini... the happy-appy musuem is going to be a global case study ... I salute ur passion ..you are not called the big mac for nothing... your passion for cards is commendable too... especially since it helped fatten hitesh and vikas' wallets a lot :)

Sachin.. wish u didnt have to leave early ..you missed the best parts!!! :)

Hitesh... i thought you were a silent-strong types :) it was great seeing you shake a leg and exercise those vocal chords here

Anil...thank you making me look like an emotional mumbling fool during the dreams bit :)

naresh... chota boyz ..you like always were our Gibraltar.. now you are our rockstar too :) he was with us till the last minute ...unloading stuff off the bus...loading them up to the office (with a lot of help from VJ & Vikas)... thanks!

ash... you are a miserable cricket player ( LOL) , a fantastic sportsman ... and the most lovable of the DDW directors... stay. remain. dont change. Espceially that goofy grin you had most of the time ...no actually that comes only when you are high... oh yeah..right..that WAS most of the time..

ricky... thanks for letting us all have a BLAST.. at a time when finances were tight.. you still agreed to go all out and make this truly memorable.. thanks...( hell guys...this is the side of the bread where the butter needs to be piled on real high :D)

richard... dear richard.. where does one start? words fail me ... will let the videos do the talking ...hehehehehehehehehehehe (devilsh laughter)

Watch this space for "The Antics of Dr. Lo on the sands of Murud"

PS: DDW has always had a soft corner for the environment. And as a small gesture towards the SMML (Save Murud Marine Life) movement, we hereby declare that Richard Lopez will not be allowed anywhere near the Murud waters henceforth.

a lot of firsts....

2007-02-24T06:55:00.000-08:00

so finally ... heres my first blog... on my first APPLE!!!

after a lot of should I - shouldn't I s, I FINALLY own an Apple... a macbook pro to be precise. And whilst that may not improve my writing skills ( as the unfortunate few who are reading this will soon discover ) it sure does wonder for a) my ego b) hopefully my design skills ...in THAT order

hell... its sheer, sexy, subtle, absolutely edible, every little groove and arrow seems to be so very well thought of...the mouse; the cables; the adapter... all a part of the legendary JOBSian legacy... the MacBook Pro is to die for. It's the look I always wanted ( and I mean the jealous envious looks on my co workers faces when they see my new baby)

But seriously, having worked for the last few years (loved ever single minute of it)on a VAIO, I am going to be the last one to offer a buy-the-mac, junk-the-pc argument. The VAIO is a robust machine, gr8 in looks and output. No doubt about that. But a few points do really stand out. Apart from the design of both the hardware and the OS, the stability, ease of operations, sexy user experience, trueness of colours, graphic quality does veer me strongly to a mac...

What does surprise me however is the no. of converts to the Macintosh family. Till a very short while ago, a Mac could be found in all its glory chez le printer, the prepress shops,at the photographers, in the hands of a few graphical designers etc. Today, not only is the design fraternity more open to the Mac but also the non-arty, corporate types. More a change of perception rather than a change in the product. The old arguments of rigidity, software and compatibility issues just doesn't hold ground anymore. Infact the Apple softwares are so good that its just a matter of time that users are going to complain that they are not available on windows.. Don't take my word for it..check it out!

What's more the new intel core duo processor helps u run both the mac and the windows OS on the same machine. that's like.. just in case.. i mean which self respecting maccie would want to be caught on the WIN platform on a Macbook pro? get a life dude.. Snob? well... dont blame me ..blame the mac :)