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Flight Cabin View

Well, the above said points did happen in that order. And that too at the exact moment when I kept fantasizing about my first trip on a plane!

All my problems started from political morons calling All Kerala Hartal due to someone not doing something…. and some such paraphenilia. Hence myself, Ajin and Bibin had to reach the Cochin Airport  in advance, in order to avoid the madness of the hartal’ists. 12 hours in advance that is!

Suffering through Twilight inspired mosquitoes, untimely rains, chilling cold steel chairs and the sirens of some minister’s car, we survived the night. Only to wake up to have a Rs 35 ka coffee which tasted as bland as orange-less orange juice and a Masala Dosa with lesser masala than a Diet Coke. Well, all three of us work in startups, and hence difficulty is our middle name. So it wasn’t exactly like it was a stress situation, but it sure wasn’t a million dollar deal either!

Security check, baggage check, claiming the boarding pass and everything else happened very quickly. Nothing eventful happened in the whole procedure, except when I was going through the security check and my phone rang – Bhaag bhaag DK Bose, DK Bose….

I didn’t dare put my phone on loud profile until 6 hours later.

We boarded the flight, fastened our seatbelts and watched the flight roar into the clouds. I for one, loved the take-off! My first flight ever and the power that surged through the whole aircraft while take-off just gave me a miniscule idea about the power it stored within. Speechless!

So there we were at 39000ft with nothing but clouds around us. I had already checked-in to the flight on foursquare the moment I boarded it. My next urge was to register a check-in at 39000ft, the highest our plane would go. Even networks promising 99% coverage do not have range above the clouds, and its another thing we are asked not to switch on our mobiles. So that was that.

As we were landing down at Hyderabad, I got 2 rods of signal on my network and my net connection was restored. 39000 or not, I just checked into the flight again and myself declared I was at 39000ft. Well, you can’t call it lying exactly. Just delayed truth 😀

Flight Cabin View

And just so you know, all these hulabaloo series of comedy of errors is in fact all cos of a simple decision of planning to go for #R10SGW 😛

Coming to the climax, though this whole blog post seems pointless and feels like it is written because I had this sudden urge to write and wanted to do so before I fell asleep, this is just half of the things that happened today. Not to mention the secret smile I thought the air hostess gave me, the asking of “Free Coke hain kya?”, the fight for lower fare with first the taxi driver and then auto driver, brunch from McD with friend’s mom’s credit card…… amongst others.

There were so many things happening today, I just didn’t want my blog to feel left out. And with the IEEE R10 SGW Congress starting tomorrow, I sure do hope the conference is worth all the trouble we made.

Ciao!!

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“Yes Ma, am sure about what am doing.”

“No! I haven’t lost my head and no am not doing it out of lack of money.”

“Arrey hell with what Menon Uncle will think. He ain’t the one who pays me at the end of the month!”

………………….

Welcome to the 23rd of September 2012, a day in my life. No, I am not going to join Al Qaeda or any such God forsaken organization. Its just a conversation between me and my mom moments after I declared I am going to buy a bike.

No. Not the one with a motor and a 150cc Engine and the one that draws a hole in the purse every two days. Am talking about a bicycle.

The hue and cry started days back. And it wasn’t just my parents, relatives, neighbours, friends, siblings, distant-relatives, cousins, cousin’s friends or people I have never even met over Facebook. It was almost everyone. “Almost”, because truth be said there were exceptions.

The moment I declared am going to buy a cycle, the first question everyone asked me was – “You are 22. Why don’t you buy a bike? That’s what everyone your age does.”
Arrey, everyone my age (read as almost everyone my age), has a job with a 5 figure salary, a girlfriend, a Samsung Galaxy Tab/ iPhone 5 and has dinner at KFC almost everyday! Does that mean I do the same?
P.S. Just for the record, I have only one of the above.

I don’t know about the rest of India but atleast where I live in, if you are a male above 20 years of age and still ride a bicycle other than something that costs 40-50k, then automatically you are considered either too immature to be trusted with a bike or just plain poor. Am neither.

I bought a cycle, for the love of it. I bought a cycle, for my love of nature. I bought a cycle, for the love of my health. For goodness sake, I bought a cycle because its my money and not something I stole from the Coal-gate Scam!! Why is it so very difficult to understand that.
(This paragraph is dedicated to all the uncle and aunties in my neighbourhood who still wonder why I bought a cycle 😐 ).

So now let me make things crystal clear. I decided to go ahead with the idea of buying a cycle, along with my friend Manu, for the most obvious reasons.

  1. We really wanted to cut down on the cost of petrol that was being spent over my Activa.
  2. Both of us have been trying to project our respective firms – IZE Creative and Day Scholars Innovations as an Eco-Friendly organization. We try our best to do all correspondence via mails and avoid printing.
  3. Sitting in and around our office the whole day, we really needed some exercise in our life. I for one, seriously don’t want to be a regular visitor to the Orthopedic Surgeon 15-20 years from now.
  4. We are entrepreneurs. We always think different.
  5. We love cycling.

I would have loved to explain each and every point I mentioned here, but then I want this to be a blog post. Not a 15 mark answer.

So then, if you out there have serious plans of buying a cycle, don’t give a darn to what that bald headed uncle next door or his 24 year old motorcycle-riding-petrol-drinking-purse-tearing son is going to think. Just go ahead. It’s the best gift you could give to yourself and to the nature.

P.S. Here’s a pic of my cycle 🙂

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Prologue:
If I had a Android Smartphone since 2008, am pretty sure I would have been the Foursquare Mayor for Kannur-Ernakulam Intercity Express. It’s the usual train by which I used to travel back home from college on weekends. And now, after passing out, still come back in it after the odd visits to college.

And just like clockwork, I “always” take a bus to Vytilla Junction and walk the exact 1Km home, accompanied by a pack of Kurkure. With my usual speed of eating and my regular speed of walk, I almost always finish off the packet by the time I reach the turn home. A distance of about 900m.

Present:
This dates back to…… last week. As usual I bought a packet of Kurkure and started on my way home. Walking on the wrong side of NH-47 with music blazing into my ear drums and lips smacking the spiciness of the snack has been a 4 year old tradition for me.

Snacks, I always eat with the same pace – gobble ‘em up! This day was no different. Just as Switchfoot started to sing “Learning to Breathe”, I started munching on my packet of shapeless delights. As time went by, Switchfoot was replaced by Coldplay and A R Rahman, and my hands got busier searching the depths of the packet. And…….. WHAT??!! Its over??!!

Horror of horrors, the packet was empty! Finished! Blank! Zero! Nothing!!

I looked around. No, it wasn’t the turn home. In fact it was way back. Somewhere right after The Nyle Plaza Hotel. WTF!!
Did I eat too fast? Definitely Not!
Did the packet have a hole? Uh Huh. No. (I checked)
Did I share it with anyone on the way? HELL NO!

So…. All the troubleshooting of the hypothesis led me to the single possible inference – Kurkure’s packet had lesser quantity than before!

I was heartbroken! Whenever I used to watch anyone with a packet of Lays, with enough air in it to fill up an Oxygen Cylinder, I used to feel proud of my pack of snack. But at that particular moment, all those things seemed as a distant past. History.

My companion, that helped me cover about 900m of my 1 Km back home, this time hardly stayed with me for about 700m. My maths ain’t great but am sure these numbers sure demoted it from Distinction to Second Class. <sniff>

Alone, with nothing but the spicy taste lingering in my lips, I continued the rest of my journey back home. All the while, music blaring in my ears – “Its already Over…..”.

Kurkure!!! Why this Kolaveri Di?

P.S. After a couple of days, again the same thing happened. This time it lasted for the same 700m itself. 🙁

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The morning started off with the front page of the newspaper shouting out loud that it was a hartal (some politician had been murdered brutally). Bad news to begin the day with. So I moved on to the sports page when my mobile scheduler beeped – 1330 hrs: Attend Workshop on Intellectual Property Strategies at Startup Village!

Darn! I had almost forgotten.

So, after a client meeting scheduled in the morning that dragged on till noon, I, along with my friend Manu, reached the Kinfra campus of Startup Village at about 1430 hrs. An hour late! Luckily, we were let in to attend the session. (Thanks guys!).

The first session was handled by Mr Dilip Kumar, Founder at Inolyst. He spoke about the differences between patent, trademark and copyright and the pros and cons of each. Shortly thereafter, the audience gathered was honored by the arrival of Mr P. H Kurian, IAS, Principal Secretary IT, the Chief Guest. He was welcomed on board by Sijo Kuruvilla George, CEO, Startup Village.

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Kurian Sir first asked each and everyone of us present there to introduce ourselves and then smoothly moved on with the session. He spoke from his in-depth knowledge about the field and from his first hand experience as the Controller General of Patents, Trademarks and Designs. He explained to us using various examples about what are the implications that could be faced if patents are not applied for at the right time and the legalities involved.

After Kurian Sir’s session and before moving on to Dilip Sir’s session, we had a wonderful Tea Break. Wonderful, because the samosas felt like heaven for both of us who hadn’t had anything since morning 😀

Well. As we moved on to the next session, each of us started understanding in more detail about why an execution strategy is needed for creating valuable intellectual property. Dilip Sir explained to us further about the structured model involved in the lengthy process of patent registration and “WHY” exactly importance should be given to patent registration – not just for protection but also as a means of getting investors and revenue generation based business model.

This last session, which also happened to be the lengthiest session of the day, also covered the differences in patent filing aspects in India and abroad and also revealed some important facts for technology entrepreneurs like how in India we cannot file for a patent for a software per se.

As the day’s session ended and I left the building, one couldn’t help but feel awed at the awesomeness of the place. A place, that would house some of the budding minds and aspiring entrepreneurs of the present generation. Something which maybe, only another start-up entrepreneur would be able to appreciate.

 

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Well, I’ll be frank with you from the start. It wasn’t exactly the first page. Or any page if I am to be true to myself. It was all a result of a prank which no one cared to verify about. And it ‘might’ have had become news too even before people would have cared to find the truth behind it.

It all started with a few of my friends – @rameezhere, @dubliyublog and @fuzzhead045 trying to get #OccupyUniCal to trend, to proclaim our open frustration towards our University. I too joined in the fun and came out with all sorts of jokes about the University (most of which were actually true!). For example the case when a guy passed the exam without even appearing for it and another guy passing the exam when he copied from his friend’s paper and both of them had different electives! All the stories, if jotted down, would be worth a novel!

So then, coming back to the ‘almost’ TOI story of #OccupyUniCal. Here’s how the events turned out over the past couple of days.

22 March 2012 – 11:50PM I sent out the following pic, supporting #OccupyUniCal

23 March 2012 – Full Day Me and most of my active friends on twitter sent out hilarious tweets supporting the hash-tag #OccupyUniCal

23 March 2012 – 11:30PM With an “evil grin” on my face and a prank in mind, I upload a photoshop’d pic, with the tweet –

“Looks like #OccupyUniCalDID Trend for a while!! Kewl!! Anybody noticed??”

24 March 2012 – 6PM By this time most of my active friends on Twitter had either Retweeted or atleast seen the above pic.

24 March 2012 – 7:31PM A correspondent from TOI tweets me and my friend @dubliyublog saying –

“I’m reporter of Times of India. Want to do story on unical. Reply asap. 944xxxxxxx”.

Needless to say I was ROFL and LMAO!! Since I lost my net connection at that exact time, I was not able to reply back to him.

24 March 2012 – Around 10:30PM I text messaged the correspondent apologizing for the delay in response from my side. He tells me he would call me the next day and get the story from me. Soon enough, I reply to his mail explaining to him the whole situation as just a prank with the concept of the prank actually meant as an initiation to actually encourage more people to tweet about it. I also ask him whether he would be able to make any news out of the first pic (The pic on top).

25 March 2012 – 5:29PM Not hearing anything from the correspondent (whom I sincerely presume was out for a sensational and not sensible news), I post the following tweet with the given pic-

The Story of how  trended in a single day with just about 40-50 tweets!!

BANG!!

Then began a chain reaction of @Replies on Twitter to all my friends :D. Couple of them see the lighter side, couple of them do not. But hey, all’s well that ends well! At least for me things turned out to be pretty good! I got more clicks on my Tweet than I have ever had and a TOI reporter even contacted me for the news! Sheesh! What more could I ask for? 😀

But all the same, this ‘experiment’ did teach me an important factor about the Social Audience- in the rush through to consume information, many people fail to check, or at least think about the genuineness of the news they read. People are so interested reading things they “want-to-read”, that at times they even stop thinking for themselves! How else can you explain to me that people believed a hash-tag trended with just 90-100 tweets by 7-8 users?

Well, I am no one to judge anyone. I intended my prank to actually be a prank and nothing else. But finally it turned out to be more of a kind of Social Experiment.