The word “Koo” used to mean a multitude of words on the other planet’s vocabulary.
The two different scenarios of how the movie ends – the violinist coming back after six earth years only to find that his name’s been discredited because he ‘stole’ the precious violin or both the violinist and Uncle Vova returning to find each other at the very same moment right before they were transported to Plyuk.

Most of the inhabitants of Plyuk live under the ground. Everything visible above ground is mainly a deception.

The possibility that inhabitants of any other planet with life would, in all probability, be as stupid as human beings, with differences in what racism is practiced in – for example – on earth, there’s racism based on the color of the skin whereas on Plyuk, it’s based on what color their magnetic remote glows when pointed onto a person – orange is a Chatlian while green is a Pastak.

Hilariously enjoyable, it had it’s moments of insanely imaginative storyline and aptly confusing incidents, “What the hell was that?”

The ‘aliens’ trying to make money with their limited singing skills. The only word in the song being, you guessed it, “Koo”.

The only allowed abuse in their vocabulary is “Ku”. Too close to the only other much-used word. Probably a play on how confusing our own languages can be? We use “Fucker” when referring to our best friends and also while referring to someone who’s fucked us up. Many such moments thrown together in the movie make it very watchable without being confounded. And yet, it’s new enough to not make you feel jaded – I haven’t seen anything like this earlier.

The aliens, together with the two Earthlings, trying to make more money singing along and using the violin, which I might add, no one knows how to play – especially after it has been smashed to bits and then repaired with whatever parts that could be salvaged.

Since you expect it to be a crazy movie from the moment the dial is turned, the fact that the “aliens” speak Russian as well as the two Earthlings, doesn’t come as quite a surprise.

Kin Dza Dza is one of those movies that I’d like to keep in my collection. Not too heavy on the philosophy unless you stop and think [ which would be a bad idea for this film ] and neither does it encourage slapstick. It’s a smooth ride with enough interest to make you want to keep going. Definitely worth a revisit maybe once a year – from my stash of must-sees.

The two Earthlings :

I liked the color palette of the movie and there are multiple scenes that look like they’ve been painted.

We make assumptions based on incomplete information and our perception of the truth. Our behavior is governed by assumptions. Do we know why is a customer our customer and how to keep the ones that are loyal?

There are two ways to affect human behavior :

• to manipulate [ drop prices, promotions, fear, peer-pressure, aspirational message, pseudo-innovation - innovation is not a shiny new feature, innovation is game-changing - it changes industries, nations. ]
• to inspire

There were two Colgate toothpastes in the 1970s. There are 34 Colgate toothpastes now. And we’re not even talking about the other brands. There is too much choice and companies are having trouble differentiating their products, even though they are using manipulation in their marketing. Manipulation does not breed loyalty, it becomes expensive, stressful to both seller and buyer.

Talking about inspiration : Golden circle

• Why [ not to make money - that's a result - but what is the purpose, cause, belief, why does your company exist? Why should anyone care? Why do you care? ]
• How [ some know how they do it - companies know USP ]
• What [ what they do, what it is that you do ]

As an example : Apple : everything we do we believe in challenging the status quo, we believe in thinking differently [ why ] no trickery, no manipulation, no celebrity endorsements.

People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. They don’t buy it for you, they buy it for themselves.

What you do simply serves the tangible proof of what you believe and why you’re doing it.

This isn’t some theory pulled out of thin air – it is cross-cultural as long as your customers are people and this is also grounded in the tenets of biology – the brain’s neo-cortex and limbic systems.

Why does it, sometimes, just feels right no matter what the facts and figures say – it is because of trust. And sometimes, no matter how rosy the facts and figures, it just does not feel right. This is where you’re functioning from the part of your brain that has no language powers – you just know it. It is your gut – [ but gut decisions are not scalable ] – why do you love your husband / wife – impossible question sometimes answered with “He / she completes me.”, which doesn’t even mean anything logically.

Feelings drive our behavior.

Repeat business is different from loyalty. Repeat business is, “I will come back to you and buy from you again and again and again.” Loyalty is, “I will stand in line for six hours and buy your more expensive product.”

If you don’t know why you do what you do, then how will your customers? This is followed by the discipline of ‘how’ – values, guiding priciples – followed by ‘what’ you do – results.

How to instill authenticity : this means that the things you say and the things you do, you actually believe.

We are social animals, ability to form cultures communities – culture is a common sets of values and beliefs – to ensure our own survival – when you surround yourself with people with similar beliefs, trust emerges.

Differentiation does not happen in ‘what’ – it happens in ‘why’ and ‘how’ you do it – you can’t copy and expect it to work – best practices are a joke.

Price, quality, service, features – these are adjectives for commodities – if these are the only points available for comparison / differentiation, then there’s no ‘why’. What the product does serves the tangible proof with which customers can rationalize why they need it.

Law of diffusion of innovations. Read more here and here.

I have a dream vs. I have a plan. The latter is uninspiring. Yes, you need a plan but you don’t START with the plan – give instructions after inspiring.

Being rich and famous are ‘results’ – if you don’t care why you’re doing it, you’re screwed.

For passion to survive, it needs structure and for structure to flower, it needs the growth of passion.

Successful businesses – entrepreneurships are always two people. Partnerships. JFK RFK. Steve Jobs and Wozniak, etc.

We’re always looking for advice – how and what to do – asking friends – don’t take all the advice – the ‘why’ will be confused.

Stop talking about what you do and talk more about the why you do it. Once you’ve created that value-connect and trust, then talk about the how you do it and then finally what it is that you do.

Stuff I did today

• Field-tested the spy lensand wrote a review / blog post about it on the studioaside blog.
• Added the Facebook fan box to the sidebar on the WordPress based studioaside blog
• Edited the WordPress code on Bharat’s gaming blog Morpheus.in to align content on all pages, sidebars, search results, taking the organization of the blog to the next level.
• Prepared EPS, PDF, PSD, JPG, PNG and black and white as well as Pantone, CMYK, RGB logo files and emailed them to a client.
• Consulted another logo design client to help them make the right choice on the logo – which they did. Created & emailed the invoice to them as well
• Replied to a prospective client email for a logo design engagement enquiry
• Dug out my insurance paper work and ‘submitted’ to Dad for review. Also managed to locate some previously-missing fixed deposit receipts & in the process put in order some bills and statements that were floating around.
• Finally blogged about my Malazan story on this blog
• Because of the above, re-wrote some elements on the WordPress CSS for this blog
• Watched Bones, Season 05, Episode 08

Can’t think of much else.

My introduction to The Malazan Book of The Fallen

A childhood friend [ @shadeheart ] was also on a vacation from his Merchant Navy job and we decided to catch up for a bit. It had been ages since we’d had a chance to hang out and the plan was that Bharat would come and pick me up from home and we would drive down to Gurgaon to hang out at one of the many malls. We decided on The Metropolitan Mall – I’m not sure why or even ‘who’ decided that.

Bharat and I were sitting on one of the benches near the elevators and the Om Book Shop was visible from the corner of my eye. If memory serves, Bharat suddenly decided to show me some of the stuff he was reading – he warned me it might not go down well – it was epic fantasy and I’d never read any – but I do love books. Bharat thought it would be a good idea if I started with something light like David Gemmell but I decided to take the plunge and not only did he buy me a copy of one of Gemmell’s books, we also found Steven Erikson’s Gardens of The Moon [ or maybe Bharat loaned me his copy - which is highly unlikely because he doesn't like lending hos books - neither do I for that matter. ] My memory sucks – I follows the rule that the secret to a happy life is a short memory.

Apparently, that was the point where Bharat and I realized that we had a lot more in common than we had originally believed. And we also did not know anyone else who so much as ‘knew’ about The Malazan Book of The Fallen.

Life goes back to normal, the book takes over.

We went our separate ways. Bharat sailing and me back to Bombay after a disastrous New Year ‘celebration’ in Goa. Disastrous for me that is. Once back in Bombay, I decided to get a divorce and moved out to a new place. Gardens of The Moon turned out to be a tough read – I skimmed many pages without a thorough read but one thing was certain – I was definitely going to be reading more from The Malazan Book of The Fallen. In Bombay, I looked high and low for copies of the other books from the series and they were exceptionally tough to locate – even book stores like Strand and Sterling, ancient, well-known and exceptionally well-stocked, did not have copies of ANY of Erikson’s books.

Bharat and I were exchanging emails for a while and discussions invariably led to Erikson’s book. It was as if I’d found a new way of expressing myself – referring to events in the book, characters, dialogs, slang – it was like a whole new world. [ It still is. ] One of my closest girl friends was flying to the US and I asked her if she would please get me as many of the books as she could – I wanted all after Gardens Of The Moon and I was aware that many had been published in the States and elsewhere.

Priyanka managed to get me three of the books and I was over the moon. Since I was dying to read them, I skimmed till I hit Memories Of Ice. There is NO WAY you can skim that book. Absolutely no way.

Crazy lady at the book store

I still wanted the others and after another couple of months of running around from one book store to the other, I was The Infinity Mall’s Landmark bookstore – it was about to close for the night but I managed to get in. As always, I walked over to the “Fiction/Fantasy” aisle and screamed when I saw that they had all SIX Erikson books! The people who work there were first scared-shocked, then it quickly turned to ‘crazy-lady-shocked’ and soon turned into ‘wow-sales-shocked’! They told me they knew quite a few book fanatics but they’d never heard someone scream quite the way I did. I don’t quite remember when this was but I bought all of them – even though I had copies of some of the books – but because the covers were different. I had a purpose in life!

Many favorites stored on the NOTES on my mobile phone

This is a dialog between Stormy and Quick Ben from The Malazan Book of the Fallen, when these two and Kalam are staring at the looming K’Chain Che Malle SkyKeeps over their heads and wondering what the fuck they’re doing there.

“You know what’s the problem with you? I’ll tell ya. I’ll tell ya the problem. You think too much, and you think that by thinking so much you get somewhere with all that thinking, only you don’t. Look, it’s simple. Something you don’t like gets in your way, you kill it, and once you kill it, you can stop thinking about it and that’s that.

But what if that “something” is too big, or too many, or nastier than you?

Then you cut it down to size.

And if you can’t?

Then you find someone else who can. Maybe they end up killing eachother and that’s that. You think you can make all sortsa plans? Idiot. I squat down and shit on your plans.”

And then my favorite by far – the dialog between Tool and The Adjunct.

“Tell me, Tool, what dominates your thoughts?’
The Imass shrugged before replying. I think of futility, Adjunct.’
‘Do all Imass think about futility?’
‘No. Few think at all.’
‘Why is that?’
The Imass leaned his head to one side and regarded her. ‘Because
Adjunct, it is futile.”

There are way too many to list on blog post! It IS an epic series after all.

How it all has a life of its own

The series has gotten darker – a lot more morbid than book one. Some times I used to feel like the book was running my life. I was evaluating things based on what Kalam would have done or Quick Ben would have done! Comparing my love life to Kalam and Minala’s! It was obsession. My friends were tired of hearing about ‘this book that she reads’.

I moved to Gurgaon where my parents are settled and am only now looking at options of reading Erikson’s novellas.

I finished reading Dust Of Dreams, book 9 about a couple of months back and so far, it is the darkest book yet. And I’m not thrilled that I will have to wait more than twelve months for The Crippled God to come out. I am dying to know what is going to happen next. None of the other books leaves you the way Dust Of Dreams just picks you up and slams you – picks you up with all the new stuff that happens and slams you down with what Erikson’s not telling – not just yet. Damn.

Till the time The Crippled God is out, I’m going to read the novellas – I’m currently reading Esselmont’s Return Of The Crimson Guard and it’s nothing compared to how Erikson writes. Esselmont’s writing seems disjointed and he doesn’t seem to have the ability to connect stories like Erikson does. Maybe it’s because I haven’t read Knight Of Knives, which is supposed to be the prequel to Return Of The Crimson Guard.

I also have to re-start the series – each time a new book is published, I go back and start reading from book one – one of the down sides of a short memory I think! So I’ve read 1 and then 2; then 1, 2, 3; then 1, 2, 3, 4; then 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; then 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; then 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7; then 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8; and then 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Now till the time no. 10 is out, I need to go back to Gardens Of The Moon and start again. Another chance for an absolutely fantastic journey! It takes some self-discipline to stay objective and keep real-life separate from the book – the book truly does have a life of its own.

End well, into a new beginning. Just like Erikson tying everything together so well

In other related news, Bharat and I are engaged and we’re getting married in January 2010. So now we have more than two copies of each book. Every time I see a new edition with a new cover, I buy that as well. Still have to start on the hard cover collection – the only one I have with a hard cover is Dust Of Dreams. Maybe something gilded? We’ve also discovered quite a few Malazan fans on Twitter – mostly thanks to the efforts of Rahul Vohra. And there seems to be some big news in the offing as well.

If you are a graphic designer, you’re supposed to be creative, you’re supposed to dress funky, you’re supposed to have crazy deadlines, you’re supposed to have clients who want the logo bigger and you’re supposed to be used to almost everyone treating your profession as second class pretty-boy work. Male graphic designers – at least in the country I live in – are considered somewhat of a joke – obviously always behind their backs. Female graphic designers are supposed to the “homely” kind who aren’t supposed to protest when a male client asks them over for a meeting and proceeds to invite them to Lonavala for a weekend getaway. They’re supposed to smile meekly and say yes while accepting the cheque.

If you’re getting married, you’re supposed to be doing the Big Fat Indian wedding. The seven circles round the so-called sacred fire, the traditional 9-yard long sari, the choreographed sangeet – one from the groom’s side and one from the bride’s side, the reception with nothing less than a 1,000 people on the guest list, the alcohol on the menu, the exorbitant wardrobe shopping for not only the bride and the groom but the immediate family – stocked with designer couture that they will wear only once. INR 62,000 for a Ritu Kumar lehenga to be endured [ you can't wear it without scratching and cutting and bleeding your skin in hundreds of places because of the ridiculous zari work and other embellishments ] for precisely two to three hours on the day of the wedding.

You have to be fucking kidding me. She’s never EVER going to wear it again. And don’t go on about how it’s a sacrifice for the most important day in your life. I’m divorced. I know how important that day is. And I’d much rather invest the INR 8,00,000 that the parents insist on spending on ONE day of the wedding into some mutual funds or just fucking put it in a simple bank account or fixed deposit – it’ll take care of the rent for the next +4 years. Wouldn’t parents be happier if the bride and groom can live peacefully for four years without having to worry where the rent’s coming from? Especially when the parents themselves had no money when they got married and were turned down by so-called family when they wanted to borrow money to purchase a refrigerator?

A thousand people will come for the reception, eat like pigs without any appreciation for the food because as the hosts, we would not have paid any attention to the food ourselves. When there’s a thousand mouths to feed, you don’t think about how many spices you can taste in the food – you tell the caterer to cut costs and kaam chalao. The next morning all that food is anyways going to be flushed down the toilet.

Just because it is tradition and a billion other people follow it with their eyes, ears and mouths closed, does not mean it’s right for me – or right for them either. But I’m not really concerned about the billions. I’m concerned about me. When law and order cannot prevent the rape of a woman on the streets in the national capital city, what fucking right does anyone have to pressure me into what career I can choose or how I can get married or what car I can drive and what clothes I can wear?

I love my family but in no way does that mean that I have to be their clone. If they expect that, they should get their heads checked. I do as I please and I live for me. Just as they did and continue to.

Special Marriage Act allows any two individuals to marry (including intercast marriages), irrespective of their religion, caste and nationality. It even applies to people living abroad, with Indian nationality. Therefore, any marriage under the Special Marriage Act is a Civil Marriage by registration. However, there are some conditions to be fulfilled under this act.

Neither party should have a living husband or wife.
Neither party should be a lunatic or insane.
The bridegroom should not be less than 21 years of age whereas the bride must be 18 years old.
The parties should not be involved in any prohibited relationship.
Both parties should be the citizens of and domiciled within the territories mentioned in the Act.

Marriage Ceremony

Notice must be given by the bride and bridegroom to the Marriage Officer of the district, with one of them residing immediately previous to the notice for atleast 30 days.
Marriage Officer records the notice and sends a copy to the Marriage Officer of the District.
30 days time is given for any person to raise any objections to the intended marriage.
From the date of receipt of any objections, the Marriage Officer should enquire into the same, within 30 days.
If the objections are found valid, either party to the intended marriage may appeal to the District Court, whose decision shall be binding.
In case there is no objection or the objection is rejected, the parties with 3 witnesses sign in presence of the Marriage Officer, declaring they are unmarried and are not related within prohibited degrees.
The marriage is then solemnized in any form which parties choose to adopt. The form must have the following declaration by each party to the effect; “I take thee to be my lawful wife (or husband).” The parties and 3 witnesses then sign the certificate of solemnization. This certificate is conclusive certificate of solemnization.
The solemnization should be completed within 3 months from the date of notice, failing which the notice lapses and a new notice needs to be issued.

Lucky people tend to see the positive side of their ill fortune. They imagine how things could have been worse. In one interview, a lucky volunteer arrived with his leg in a plaster cast and described how he had fallen down a flight of stairs. I asked him whether he still felt lucky and he cheerfully explained that he felt luckier than before. As he pointed out, he could have broken his neck.

From The Telegraph : Be Lucky, it is an easy skill to learn

Unlucky people tend to be creatures of routine. They tend to take the same route to and from work and talk to the same types of people at parties. In contrast, many lucky people try to introduce variety into their lives. For example, one person described how he thought of a colour before arriving at a party and then introduced himself to people wearing that colour. This kind of behaviour boosts the likelihood of chance opportunities by introducing variety.

From The Telegraph : Be Lucky, it is an easy skill to learn

Unlucky people often fail to follow their intuition when making a choice, whereas lucky people tend to respect hunches. Lucky people are interested in how they both think and feel about the various options, rather than simply looking at the rational side of the situation. I think this helps them because gut feelings act as an alarm bell – a reason to consider a decision carefully.

From The Telegraph : Be Lucky, it is an easy skill to learn