new semester,hampi and all things nice

a lot has happened since my last post…my final year has started,finally…nearing the end of my sentence….cant wait to be reunited with my darling sanity….i missed her the last two years(i am in no way associating sanity with the female sex,its just convenient in this analogy) …i had gone to hampi last week..photos here…its a hippy paradise…i had no idea and everytime i told someone, they were like,”you didn’t know?”….no one told me it was before i had gone there..

and about all things nice, that was me being optimistic for the weeks ahead….

 

my first self taught lesson!

a basic lesson in sales that i learned the weird way…the company where i intern(origami) organised an art fest last weekend..i was put in charge of the flea market and one of the items on sale was a huge piece of rock which looked like it had two small footprints projecting out of it…i thought it was worth something and sold it for rs.2000..later when speaking to the owner of the rock, he said he expected around rs.300 or so…what i realized was that if i knew that bit of info earlier, i would have never been able to sell it for so much….1st moral of the story-good salesmen are those who convince themselves that the rock worth rs.200 is actually worth rs.2000,then convince someone else,make the fellow buy it and then live with their conscience….the 2nd and more crucial moral of the story- i suck at sales

 

origami

i have been working with origami for about 4 days now..it is essentially a corporate communications firm(in a broad sense). Apart from ads, it also makes brochures,menu cards,websites etc etc..though its only been 4 days, i have already learned my first valuable lesson..

it is harder,much harder to give clients what they want than to do some truly creative work,especially with stuff like brochures and the like..giving clients what they want is the equivalent of waving the white flag at mediocrity.  my respect for the copywriters at origami have ballooned. they are an extremely talented bunch of writers who manage to write what the clients expect,everyday, without losing their sanity.

 

Britain’s got talent

a cool video i stumbled upon..i still can’t say if Britain’s really got talent,but there certainly are a lot of Indians

 

my best made plans

its been ages since i have posted and a lot has happened since then…..i was supposed to join maa bozell for the internship but my plans were thwarted by me getting diagnosed with typhoid. before i knew it, i was shipped to kerela and put under care of my 90 year old grandmom. after two weeks there, i was back here in bangalore,it was may 14th… maa bozell refused to let me intern for only 21 days i.e. from today till june 8th…the college rules said that i couldnt attempt my exam without doing the internship for 45 days..for a while i gave up hope on going to college and told so to my mom as well…then my superman brother suddenly felt like the time was ripe to ease my mental agony and puts me in touch with his friend working at origami creative. they have agreed to let me work even after college opens by coming in after college(after 4 pm)…so from having high hopes of working at maa bozell, to the high temperature horrors of typhoid, to thinking that i lost the year, to now starting an internship at another place, this ride was an unexpected one and just saying all of this leaves me breathless!…it has left me scared to make any plans beyond 24 hours..but hey!, i am starting work tomorrow and its a good feeling…my journey to the starting point was one hell of a ride(in a bad way) , i hope the internship will prove to be another hell of a ride(in a good way)

 

now who is the smart alec??

i am sure you have heard this phrase before. when you act or say something smart(which ever applies), some one will most likely call you a smart alec…i dont know if i am the only one who did not know who alec is but when i looked it up on wiki, i was rather surprised!! it turns out alec was a pimp who used to con his customers….i wonder if all the people who used the phrase knew its origin…

 

slap in slow motion

just came across the video and i couldnt stop watching it…

the narrator is really funny too….

 

i think i have bagged it

as for my internship search, an ad agency that goes by the name of Maa Bozell has agreed to take me in as a trainee in the creative department…I am still cautious about the whole thing as its only a verbal consent…I had never heard of this agency prior to me applying there but now that i got the internship it seems suddenly that everyone’s uncles and fathers work or worked there….

 

neat

a really cool ad

 

the hunt

well…its been two weeks and i have been on the internship hunt..i want to work in ad firm..as the internship lasts the duration of my summer hols i.e roughly 45 days, my hopes weren’t too high…after loads of hopeless phone calls to “contacts” who is a friend of a friend of a friend of mine,i have landed nowhere..

i was having a hard time making a resume as well.somehow i found the whole exercise futile.i mean, what the heck am i supposed to write under strengths- that i can bend steel with my leadership skills?? seriously, trying to boil down your personality into bullet points is like trying to shove yourself into a box…and what about my career objective…i had a look at what my friends had put and they were so damn silly with fancy phrases like creative asset sprinkled around for good measure…another friend well versed in such stuff told me that it should reflect what i see myself doing 5 years from now. in other words, it should be specific.. sadly i have no idea where i see myself five years from now and honestly, i dont want to know…..i stumbled upon the blog post by seth godin about resumes that talked about doing away with it entirely…while i agree with his opinion on one level, i must also point out that me being in the back office of the world(bangalore) , remarkable jobs are very hard to come by….