Advertising blunders

I have been commuting in car these days to office and back. So, needless to say, am hooked on to FM radio atleast for 2 hours/day. Recently an Ad on one of the FM radio station caught my attention. It was to do with online coaching/tuitions/tests/homework guidance for children from KG to PG. Nice concept, all the facilities were explained properly, but... I could hardly make out the website . Well, I could make out www & com and that word inbetween these two were very elusive. It sounded like "letsgo.com" or "learnsgo.com", followed by a tag line "Learn on time". Thanks to my 2 hours/day loyalty to FM stations, I could listen to this ad many number of times over and I paid special attention to their website name, everytime. Alas, I can never get it. Determined, I started Googling for "Learns go", "Lets go learn" etc and landed in some education related websites, but was not sure if that's the one which was advertised on air.

I finally gave up on this website, untill yesterday when I saw an ad in the newspaper. "KG to PG" phrase caught my attention and I felt a bit happy to have found the proper website name this time around. Umm, not so lucky, even the way they have written the name in the ad, it was really tricky to understand it in the first read. Finally I could make out that I was always listening to the ad from www.lampsglow.com (check their website and their Lampsglow logo) !!! Uh, so much for the advertisement. It is like writing an exam with full confidence of scoring 90+, but forgot to mention your registration number on the answer sheet.

Missing someone special...

Well, our friendship goes back to 1998. It was sometime in summer of 98 that I met him. Eversince then, its been a fantastic journey together. We were close friends for last 12 years. We used to go together to play cricket, go for swimming, go to anywhere and everywhere. It was an inseparable bond and unfortunately this came to an end today.

Although from last few years, we have not been so much together as we used to be 10 years back, we had that special feeling for each other. He never said NO to go anywhere at anytime together. I was really amazed by his enthusiasm and energy, which never seem to be low at anytime. Its really hard feeling to miss such best friend of mine today. I still cannot believe that he does not exist for me anymore. I am really going to miss you my dear old Kinetic Honda. Do take care.

M-A-N-O-H-S-I-P-C-I-G

Poorvi's experiment with words are on. She tries to read the words on the sign boards, words in the movie subtitles etc. She also tries to guess the word most of the times either looking at the associated picture or from the context. Well, most of the times she gets it right.

With such reading confidence behind her, she has also started etching some real good literature on her room doors, on the board etc.


One fine day, there was a mysterious word written on her door - M-A-N-O-H-S-I-P-C-I-G. I did not give much attention to this word. I presumed it was just a random set of alphabets Poorvi has written. Later that day, Poorvi asked me to guess that word. Oh, is that a word, well, I started guessing all possible words starting with M. Is it "Manmohan Singh", or "Manohar" ? No was the answer. Something to do with "Man"? No. Finally she gave a clue - something to do with phone. Oh yes, I could see "May I know who's speaking" written all over there now !! Wow, thanks Poorvi for such nice literature. I really enjoyed it.

Parallel ringing...

All of us get innumerable tele-marketing calls, offering loans, insurances and what not. I say "No" to most of these requests, but occasionally have fallen for this trap. One of these marketing calls I entertained was from Airtel when they offered the "Parallel ringing services". I thought this is one convenient service as most of the time our home is locked and if I get a parallel call alert on my mobile (whenever someone calls our landline), it is better. The marketing guy mentioned how I will be able to distinguish the parallel ringing on my mobile and I immediately registered for this service.

Well, not a bad decision. I do have the luxury of picking the calls to my home number from anywhere in the town/state (never tested in roaming conditions), however, this also puts me into embarrassing situations many a time. First time it happened with one of the relatives who called our home. I was away somewhere and picked the call (obviously I did not notice that small bar indicating the parallel ringing). I generally mentioned to them that I am out somewhere. There was 2 minute silence from the other end. Then the conversation continued at a hurried pace in a suspicious manner. 

Many a times I also get calls from our security in the apartment to let some visitor come to our home or not. I find it hard to explain to them that no one is at home. I do not know what those visitors would be thinking about us though, turning down the entry to our home after talking with the security.

Until some technology and service become popular, there needs some explanation to do - and am getting used to explaining this service to all those people who called our landline ! Tring, Tring...

Words...

Poorvi's school has started & as expected, our days are filled with lot of suspense (whether Poorvi goes to school or not), thrill (of last minute rush to the school bus) and a nice climax (many a times not-so-nice-anti-climax).

Well, new academic year, new things to learn for Poorvi. On an evening last week, Poorvi was chanting something like "Daddy, Dog" etc. I was curious to know what Daddy had to do with dog. So, Poorvi started reciting the new rhyme - "I had a Dog, His name was Daddy, His tail was short.. best in the world is my Dog Daddy" so on. Is this the first thing to teach for the kids at school? I was really furious. I even tried to teach Poorvi - " I had a monkey, Her name was Mummy", but unfortunately she never picked it up.

Thankfully, yesterday Veena did some research on this interesting rhyme (probably she wanted to know what other adjectives are being used on daddy). Actual rhyme goes something like this:

I had a dog, and his name was Dandy,
His eyes were brown and his coat was sandy,
His tail was short and his legs were bandy,
The best in the world was my Dog Dandy!

Uff, what a relief for me.

Another incident with words during this summer. Poorvi is hooked on to POGO channel for 15 hours a day (rest of the time she sleeps). Probably she knows more about Pogo channel & the cartoon timings better than the Channel director. She was telling me about a program called "Maruthi Daughters". I was little bit puzzled. As far as my little knowledge goes, Maruthi (Hanuman) remained bachelor for life. Who were his daughters? Anyway, in this age of Chota Bheems & Maruthi-mera-dost, I thought Pogo must have come up with some cartoon. When I saw "Maruthi daughters", it neither had Maruthi, nor was it close to anything with mythological characters. Then I came to know about the correct name of the program - "My Three Daughters".

So much for the words. Poorvi now has a friend in school called "Mythri". I usually pull Poorvi's leg - "OK, you have a friend Mythri, but where are the daughters?".

End of Summer?

Cool breeze, evening rains & cloudy mornings. Is it the end of Summer of 2010? Are we done with the hot days of 2010? Hope so.

End of summer has mixed emotions for me. On one hand, no more irritating hot days, nice weather to look forward to. On the other hand, it is Poorvi's school ! Oh God, all those running around in the mornings begin from next week. Poorvi will have 100's of reason not to go to school & we need to convince her that the best thing ever happened to mankind is the school. As she grows older, it becomes ever increasingly difficult to convince her to do something, including going to school :-( 

Coming back to Summer of 2010, it was nice last two months. We had IPL for most part of the summer, full of entertainment for 45 days. There was a match on each day & definitely made the summer evenings that much more hot with some exciting contests. So, I was looking forward to each day (rather evening) enthusiastically.

During this summer, I also tried commuting by Volvo bus for few days to beat the summer heat. It is a completely different world in Volvo buses compared to normal BMTC bus. Most of the commuters on board are either hooked to iPods or to laptops/mobiles & most of the crowd are from software industry. They also play music from local FM stations, which really makes the journey in Volvo buses all that more comforting.

Poorvi also had her first stay outside Bangalore for 3 days during this summer :-) Although she wanted to come back to Bangalore from day-1, she managed 3 days without much of fuss. Hopefully in an year or two, she will be big enough to look forward to spend her summer holidays in Ajji-Thatha's house.

Now that summer is almost over, am thinking of the coming months. Heavy rains, clogged drains & traffic strains? Hopefully it will not be as bad as the rainy season of 2005 when the lakes overflowed with water flooding some of the main roads of Bangalore south. 

Anyways, till next summer, wishing you all a very cool year ahead.