Private and/or Public

So, after my last few posts, someone very special asked me what is the merit in having a public blog that anyone can read. What kicks do I get by sharing my life with strangers? I was told that I share things that are very private in nature and yet allow everyone to read them.

I think blogging helps me. It helps me put structure to my thoughts. I helps me take a stock of situations. I helps me with vital feedback and links me to the outside world. And obviously its a great marketing tool. I cant imagine not having a blog. A vent. A window to the world. A place where gyaan, bakar and conversations flow.

However, I do realize that I tend to get personal when I am writing and I need to stop that. Since writing is such an integral part of me, I shall start a new blog, private, strictly for myself and few very dear friends.

On War of Words, I shall only share random interestingness and oddities. I will talk about things like Bing's and Yahoo's "merger" in the search business, Manmohan Singh's reply in the Parliament, Bangladesh winning a cricket series over West Indies and so on so forth. And obviously I would keep writing fiction and posting one word posts. Hoping that they are cryptic enough to hide things ;P

And for the other blog, lemme know if you want access to that. There ARE early bird prizes.

Life 2.0. Part 1: Work

So after ab0ut a week of rest/leisure/running-around/buying-computers/explaining-to-mom-why-i-resigned/thinking/procrastinating and hazaar other things, I am back to action. I started work. No, I did not join any company but I started thinking about life and what I want to do next.

Working for myself is way different from working for someone else (GE Money or Creativeland Asia). Let me write them down in bullet points.

1. Home Sweet Home. While working for self, I work out of home. This means I have to tolerate door bells, telephone bells, courier deliveries, maids and other such sundry things. I also have to be polite to mother India who is trying to feed me with her best preparations. I have to get creative while answering questions from relatives (in some cases lying to them). There, no one wanted to know how much I earned, how bald am I, how long does it take to reach from CP to East Delhi etc. No questions asked, easy life.
   
2. Money. Not to mention that constant worry of where that next rupee would come from. After all I am used to an extravagant life style. In Mumbai, I knew my paycheck (not that fat) would arrive by the first week and I could splurge it on gifts, knick-knacks (all those tiny obscure things that I got for P, rruts, random people), pool (lost most of the times to Gandhi and won most of the times from Gawri), restaurants (next time you are in Mumbai, try Caravan Serai) and teeshirts (white/black, one large block on print on chest and thats about it).
   
3. Place. While working for someone else, I could concentrate. There was tea/coffee/soup (which sucked btw) on demand. The loo was always clean (ok not always, but mostly). I had a place that no one else could take. My desk. My drawer. Here in Delhi, I dont even have a room to myself. The things that my "almost girlfriend" gave me when I was leaving Mumbai, I dont have a place to put them up (show off). P.S. I hope you ARE reading this and you now know why I haven't unpacked gift #5 :).
   
4. Computer. I did not share my Macbook with anyone. Although it was company property but the company had entrusted it to me and it meant I could customize it the way I want, it had my music on it, my passwords were saved onto it and so on and so forth Here I share my desktop with my dad and my cousin. Thankfully my sis is still in Mumbai. And since they belong to the Garg clan, they are curious by nature and on top of everything else, they know how to access hidden folders in Windows.
   
5. Media. I had access to printed copies of ten newspapers, 20 odd periodicals including Wired (which IMHO is one of the greatest publications ever). Now I have to rely on RSS feeds and a electronic screen to know what is happening in the world. I have a fetish for printed material. I dont think as long as people like me are alive, printed media is ever going to run out of business. Here I get three newspapers that I don't even read. I have no clue why I dont.
6. Time. Time management is an issue. Not trying to brag but I loved reaching office before anyone and playing my music out loud (Hindi songs mostly). And here, I wake up at leisure, laze around, roll in my bed, dream, snooze etc before I even get out of my bed. Leave alone computers. That sense of discipline has vanished. Though I used to work strictly till 5:30 PM, I somehow had time for reading, writing, blogging, meeting people, coming up with ideas and all that. Here I am always short of time. I haven't read my RSS in days, replied to my mails, twittered, FBed, Linkedined or even blogging.
   
7. Resources. I could use copious amounts of pens, pencils, pantone books, notepads, staplers, post-its and other items of miscellany. Now I need to scavenge a pencil, write on the edges of newspapers, buy my own post-its and keep the use in check.
8. People. I had access to tons of wonderful people. They had brains, talents, ideas and they were my window to the world. Every individual was special and taught me something. Now, only people I have access to are people I meet for cyntax and thats about it.

There are like another 12,334,233 items in this list but since time is somewhat precious now, I shall not delve on em. And then there is rant on Mumbai vs Delhi. On similar lines. But again, tonight is not the right time. Any thoughts anyone on how to fix these things?

P.S.: While ending, got an idea. I will make this a multi-part list. Since I am effectively restarting my life (and hopefully this is that reset button we always talked about), in each part, I will rant about my life on one specific thing. Today it was on work. Next would be Mumbai/Delhi. Will think about the third when am there.

15 August 1947

Got this from a friend.

Indias First News Paper After Independence

Settling down

Finally dust has began to settle. I am finding my groove. Will be going on full steam in few days. Keep watching.

Moved On.

For the record, I am no longer employed with Creativeland Asia. The decision to move on was a personal and I am glad I am still very good friends with the entire team back at CLA.

The two years went past in a jiffy. Little more than two years ago, I joined CLA from GE Money and things couldn't have worked out better. While I was there,

• CLA grew from a dining table to two offices (thought I dint play any part in that growth),
• I was given a lot of room to learn, experiment, make mistakes and grow,
• I learnt how is it to work on brands like Frooti, Appy Fizz, Cafe Coffee Day (amongst others),
• I made many good friends (and almost found the love of my life),
• I travelled and explored Mumbai and Maharashtra extensively
• And finally I grew by miles as a person.

I wish I could have stayed on but as they say, all good things, come to an end.

Creativeland IMHO is one of the best places to work at. Apart from coming up with great work time after time for all brands, CLA is a collection of few of the finest minds and interesting people. Everyone is handpicked (even our receptionist - Prakash Jee aka Yogi Bear) and its a lot of fuin being there.

If anyone is keen, I would be glad to setup a meeting.

P.S.: Just for the curious few, I dont know what I would be doing now. Would post here moment something is finalized.

I am ...

26. Going onto 27.
Intelligent. Frustrated.
Bored. Fragile.
Sleepy. Disgusted.
In love. In despair.
Suffering from QLC. Awaiting for that AHA moment.

I lied.

I lied.

I lied to her. I just did not know any other way to tell her that I am going. Away. Forever.

Apart from being a mere financial support to her, I was at times her emotional support, her agony aunt uncle, her baby-sitter, her friend, her doctor, her son and everything else.

I cant say I was being good at any of it but I made sure I did whatever I could. And now that I am going away, I realize that it is so easy for people to just move on. And very unlike what movies proclaim. Anyways, this is a rant for some other day. For the time being, I am sad that I had to lie and find an easy way out of the soup I was in.

I was told/taught/preached that truth never hurts nobody. I am no sage, no legend and I am not honest for sure. But truth, hurt me.

Blogging is no fun ...

... when you know that you are being read.

Counter-intuitive?

Of millionaires, gods and rock stars

Quote of the day.

Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.

Said Tyler Durden, in the Fight Club (wiki, imdb).

August 1, 2009

I talked about few dates here (6th June, 9th June and 4th July). As luck would have it, they have moved. I dont know for good or for bad. But they have moved.

The new date is August 1, 2009. Fingers crossed.

is hungry ...

for more.

@Saurabh is back

@Saurabh is back.

For the uninitiated, twitter suspended my account last week. I am now told that it was because the link on my account was compromised. I did everything to get it back. Wrote to them, made blogposts, spoke to experts, updated FB, asked for help.

And few people heard. They came forward and helped.

Starting with Zishaan, Rajesh and Rina who helped me understand the problem to all the people who tweeted and re-tweeted. This is going to be a long list. I did not know I had so many friends. AaruC, dhempe, FagunB, umeshg, sharadaprasad, GauravSaha, krist0ph3r, SLotH13, Raj_S, fossiloflife, danishctc, aritra_m, Gagan, prolificd, anaggh, sahnigagan, sakthidharan, saaket, Netra, iMBA, KapilJoshi, nakulshenoy, Sampad, mtaram, deepakravindran, punkpolkadots, b50, thinkerwrites. I hope I did not miss a name.

Thank you guys. You rock. And this is my followfriday list come friday :)

P.S.: I missed twitter while my account was gone. :|

@Saurabh finds friends on Twitter

After my Twitter account was suspended due to "strange activity" (which Zishaan, Rajesh and Rina helped me track to a malicious attack on my website), I have been trying to get the twitter account back. I wrote to twitter help, made this blogpost, posted messages on Facebook and asked for help from my online friends.

And it came.

Thanks to AaruC, dhempe, FagunB, umeshg, sharadaprasad, GauravSaha, krist0ph3r, SLotH13, Raj_S, fossiloflife, danishctc, aritra_m for their tweets and retweets. You guys rock.

This is what they did. Only thing that remains to be seen is if I get my account back. Anyone else wants to tweet? re-tweet?