And this video created to celebrate 10 years of erection (sic!) of viagra is very well done.

It perhaps also alludes to the fact that there was a time when spam was falling down. Losing it’s strength. And then came viagra. And spam once again rose from the depths of ignominy and reached dizzying heights of success ejaculating at the rate of millions per day.

Prost!

Video via David Airey.

It appears to be in an evidence bag from the scene of a crime. A CRIME AGAINST BLOODY COOKING. Either that or some sort of back-street underground cookie, purchased off a gun-toting maniac high on his own supply of yeast. You certainly wouldn’t want to be caught carrying one of these through customs. Imagine biting into a piece of brass Richard. That would be softer on the teeth than the specimen above.

But what really takes the “biscuit” is the reply:

Paul Charles, Virgin’s Director of Corporate Communications, confirmed that Sir Richard Branson had telephoned the author of the letter and had thanked him for his “constructive if tongue-in-cheek” email. Mr Charles said that Virgin was sorry the passenger had not liked the in-flight meals which he said was “award-winning food which is very popular on our Indian routes.”

WTF!

Do see the link for photos of the food!

TechCrunch once again proves it worthiness!

Being an entrepreneur is also damn hard, for thousands of reasons and then some. I would like to point you to a testimony of that undeniable fact, penned by one of the founders of web startup MakeFive, whose Elevator Pitch video we recently highlighted. Eric Karjaluoto is his name, and his must-read blog post is titled ‘Why your web startup will fail‘. Required reading for aspiring entrepreneurs!

Here’s the gist, summarized in 6 points:

- You won’t have an audience
- You’re going to run out of cash
- You’ll get frustrated
- The emotional rollercoaster will beat you
- You’ll get excited about something else
- But it won’t be because of the competition

Read the full thing here.

And after ‘Traffic Signal’, nothing really surprises me. But this weekend was an eye-opener to be honest. So here’s what happened…

There’s a guy who is supposed to be cleaning the car daily and once weekly from inside. He is a habitual bunker and after about four warnings over the last year, I finally decided I had had enough. Apparently, he hadn’t! And that counted more than what I thought!

So I called him over, paid him for 15 days of work and fired him. And appointed someone else. But our man wasn’t too happy with this. He went and spoke to the new recruit and told him that there would be ‘consequences’ if he cleaned my car. Sigh.

The new recruit refused to have anything to do with me or the car. He is not yet part of the cartel, I later found out and is considered and outsider by the controlling party! So I track down the fired employee and ask him the deal. “Don’t hire him. Hire anyone else. He charges less. I brought him so many clients and he is now stealing my client. Gaddar!,” said fired man. WHAT?!?

So now I was unclear whether this was a loyalty issue (among themselves) or a money issue. Interestingly, I was yet to discuss money with the new chap.

As things panned out, I re-hired the old one, had a good firm chat with him and am really hoping he is more regular.

Mind you, I remain baffled as ever about how he got me to revert my decision. Incidentally, our cook didn’t like when we told her the rotis weren’t good. She stopped coming effective Saturday. I don’t know what to do now!

In Mumbai, I never had this problem. For one, the car cleaners were much cheaper and more regular, punctual, better… I did have an irregular chap in Bangalore, though… but nowhere as bad as this!

Which brings me to my point. It was a day of power cuts across the city. So no power at home or at office. And in such a case, it’s best to line up a few meetings and get that out of the way. So I did. Only, near the venue of my meeting, an impromptu morcha was organised. I don’t know who organised it or why. I just know that it caused a helluva lot of inconvenience. Just a casual question to the organisers of the disruption: Why on an arterial road in the middle of a work day? Why not on a ground or an auditorium? And I don’t ask just because I had to walk about a kilometre in 38 degrees on a May afternoon. Hell, no. God knows I need the exercise. I was just asking, you know.

Silly question, says my cynical self. It’s obviously to show others what their suffering is. From what I overheard, the issues being raised by a nondescript, almost invisible speaker ranged from power cuts (sick no sic!) to jobs to accidents on the road where the underprivileged suffered. And all this, if I am not mistaken, happened under a red banner that somehow to me signified workers.

That’s their way of passing time during a power cut. Maybe next time, I’ll gather a few hundred friends and have a party on the road. Maybe I should have got the number of their truck-size generator provider…

And if you’re still wondering, no work happened. A pile of emails beckons. Which also makes me wonder why I am writing this…