And that’s what I learnt from Cricket

If you are a regular Tweeter and one hailing from India and you are crazy enough to follow Indians on Twitter who are mad-frickin-nuts about the game of Cricket, you have like me most probably not been able to escape the mad frenzy of Cricket that’s been gripping the country for the last month or so. (Yes that would’ve be a perfect time to invade us because we couldn’t care less. We have already won the World Cup and that’s all we needed this year from Santa.) This post pretty much sums up all that I have learned from/about the game of cricket – a sport that I love to hate. Here goes and it is in no particular order-

1. Never confess in public that you hate cricket unless you want to get beaten up or looked down at like you be a miserable cockroach of sorts. At least not in India. *Whoops!*

2. As far as India goes, Cricket is a religion. No not one of the many religious religions that divide this county but one that unites everybody. Now that is one thing one has to grudgingly like about the sport.

3. Yuvraj and Dhoni are two different people and there is no such person as Yuvraj Singh Dhoni. *Who knew?!*

4. Your friends can and will refuse to defend you in a stadium full of people when you root for Delhi while Sachin is playing for Mumbai.

4A) Delhiites will root for Mumbai against Delhi just because Sachin plays for Mumbai. *Go Figure*

5. Who is Sachin you ask? Exactly! *teehehe ok ok, kidding*. Remember point 2? Apparently, if Cricket is a religion, Sachin is God (Sachin IMHO cannot be God, since God is a woman, but continuing … ). He is the guy the whole country worships blindly. I cannot write anything further without feeling insecure about my own safety, so I will move on from this point.

6. Nothing, Nothing and absolutely Nothing unites this country like the game of Cricket. The World Cup victory had even cynics like me cheering and I bet they heard us cheering all the way till Alaska.

7. World Cup is the best time to go shopping. No seriously, all the shops are empty, there is no mad line in front of the trial rooms at Zara because everyone is simply home, glued to their TV sets. (Pro tip: you can even try your hand at bargaining by telling the shopkeeper that India will win the world cup if he gives you a discount.)

8. Guys will slyly discuss Cricket in management meetings by attempting to derive effective management tactics from the sport. Apparently the same thing applies to Football. Basically whichever sport in more popular at that point in time.

9. Cricket World Cup semi finals = no traffic on the roads. Cricket World Cup finals = A day off from work. I could truly fall for this game. Have World Cups more often I say. Let’s just not make it a long drawn affair and jump straight to the semis and finals.

10. Little itty bitty, teeny weeny kids know the names of every cricketer and every possible cricket stat. There is real potential in this game to be exploited in the field of education. Have more cities and countries participating for kids to learn geography (who cares where it’s on the map as long as we know how many matches it won), have complex trigonometric calculations to deduce the score, name cricketers after historical figures etc, are some ideas off the top of my head.

11. You can buy Cricketers just like you buy vegetables but Cricketers are still more expensive than Onions or Petrol. Infact, you may never be able to afford one in your lifetime, not that you might want one.

12. The same people who play in the same team during the world cup, will play against each other in different teams during the IPL (It’s a league of some sorts that has something to do with movie stars. Don’t ask me, I don’t know. I just know that cool songs get produced as a result of this activity).

13. Unlike Football, no one pulls off their shirt to celebrate victory at the end of a game. Not even Poonam Pandey.

And that pretty much sums up what I’ve learned from Cricket. I still don’t quite like it, but I’m learning to put up with it. (Pro tip: log off Twitter and change the channel.)

And before I go, I’d like to leave you with the song ‘Loser’ by Ayreon. Not that it has anything to do with this post other than that I was listening to it while writing this, but I really like this song and it saves me the trouble of writing another post to tell you this.

After publishing this post, I have come to know from the great people on Twitter that a cricketer named Ganguly did infact take off his shirt after a match. And still no one bought him for IPL? Ok I may know a thing or two abt Cricket now but I will never understand it.

Love being a #BigLoser

Admittedly I am writing this post while feasting on a gorgeous slice of double cheese burst spicy chicken pizza (but hey, what’s  girl to do when she’s trapped in office on a Friday evening waiting for her colleagues to get that piece of CSS code to work just right *curses IE*). Coming back to the point…

It all started somewhere mid-Feb when I was pinged on chat by a friend – “Would you like to be a #BigLoser?”. Clearly any normal person would be taken aback by such a question and their first reaction would be to see red. But clearly the word ‘Normal’ makes me feel like an oxymoron (Look ma, I made a funny!) and the presence of a ‘#’ in front of any string of words always manages to hold my attention. (Refer to an earlier confession about being a Twitteraholic”

So obviously, my next question was “Err.. what do you mean?”

Friend: Well, @b50 has started this initiative on Twitter where people can sponsor other people who commit to lose a target amount of weight in a year (that would be by Feb 2012. So clearly the entire plan stands only if the world survives). The sponsors will commit a certain amount of money per kg lost to charity.

Now those who follow me on Twitter would know why this would catch my fancy as they have been relentlessly subjected to my constant rants on how I never lose any weight (this would be a good time to ignore the first few lines of this post). So this was clearly an opportunity I grabbed with both hands, after making my friend up the stakes for me to 100 Rs per KG. (In hindsight, that was a smart move. There is hope that the charity might get some moolah at least.)

Joining #BigLoser was perhaps one of the smartest moves I made in a long time. Had been struggling a long time to get into a consistent gyming routine and now the very many followers of this initiative, sharing their efforts and tips keeps me committed enough to make the effort of waking up early each morning. While the easiest thing to do each morning after the alarm rang at least 7 times was to switch it off and go back to sleep, now there is a motivation to go to the gym at least one more time this week than the last, so I can come back and eagerly report it to others on Twitter.

I had also wanted to join Gold Gym for a very long time, but had always put off making the investment as I was never sure I would go there regularly. Well now I am and thoroughly enjoying the experience.

It has also made me connect with and get tips from numerous others who I had perhaps not been interacting with earlier. These people might not know it, but they are a great source of inspiration on a daily basis.

So I write this post to offer my thanks to @nithinkd, for introducing me to the initiative and sponsoring me and most of all to @b50 for coming up with this fantastic idea. @SashG and the many others who offer tips and encouragement on a daily basis.

So with 2 slices of double cheese burst pizza and 2 slices of garlic bread down and with one glassful of renewed zeal to burn off them damn calories at the gym tomorrow morning, I can very proudly claim that I love being a #BigLoser.

(As for you God, you have just ensured very unfair and unequal distribution of fat and wealth in this world. I am willing to trade off this fat and accept that blank check please :|)

On a quest of how to search …

Everyone knows that search on the web is synonymous with Google. Or is it? I’d say it used to be … still is to some extent … but not entirely.

Anyone who spends a considerable amount of time browsing the internet and searching for content is bound to be – knowingly or unknowingly – using more than one medium to search. I will try here to share some that I use.

Well, see the problem with google search is that it throws up a lot of irrelevant search results along with the relevant ones. So that means you have to dig through the search results, drill down, refine your search string and despite that at times come back all sweaty, grimy and empty handed. Well maybe an exaggeration, but it could still leave you wanting for more.

The second problem that I see with google search is, that I am not getting any feedback, opinions, ideas related to the topic I am searching for. So there is no conversation happening. I cannot ask any questions, get any replies .. it is like watching television… very one sided. It is because of this reason that I had said on twitter once that “Twitter is making me lazy. I prefer to ask a question here and get contextual answers rather than do a search on Google”. This other time I tweeted that “Twitter search has something Google doesn’t have – people”.

But I digress. The point here is not to put down Google search (They are doing their job pretty well I’m sure) but to discuss alternate means of searching for content on the web.

The trick is in knowing what you’re searching for and what could be the optimum places to look for them. I was recently looking for a prototyping tool which would give me the option of adding rich in-the-page interactivity. Searched high and low on Google but came up with nothing. That is when I turned to LinkedIn. Yeah.. LinkedIn. While it is a great community for business networking, the added advantage is that it has an active community of professionals discussing, offering feedback and opinion – all of which is a lot more useful because here is someone talking about their own experience rather than trying to sell you something. Well guess what! In a discussion of User Experience professionals group, I found a list of prototyping tools I had not come across on Google, found opinions of which ones are useful in which context and also tips of how people are using existing tools like powerpoint and visio very successfully for prototyping.

I did mention Twitter already. A very active community, people on Twitter (notice how I refrain from calling them Tweeple 😉 ) are always more than willing to help you out if you need something. Just try it sometime. Looking for something? Ask a question on twitter. Believe you me, you will not be disappointed. People offer suggestions, opinions and if they don’t know, they will RT- retweet – your tweet so that someone in their network can offer you help. People on twitter called it Crowd Sourcing. I have indulged myself on various occasions, asking about tools I needed, acronyms I shouldn’t have mentioned 😉 and hell even opinions for narrowing down options while buying my car.

Even Twitter Search throws up very useful results. I now often tend to put a search string in http://search.twitter.com/ before I google. Twitter search again brings to you tweets of people sharing their views and comments along with suggestions. You do want to know more about the link you are going to click, the tool you are searching for, that phrase you have to research, links people are recommending. It helps to filter out a lot of crap which you otherwise tend to encounter through regular search.

You may even consider platforms like Slideshare and Scribd. Although with Slideshare you are most likely to end up with a list of ‘ten things your organisation should or shouldn’t in the social media space’, no matter what was your search string. If you have the patience to dig through that content, you may come across some real insights related to the topic you searched for.

Some of the other sites I have used successfully in the past are YouTube, Digg.com (this was a very useful resource while I was searching for icons once). The point is that these are all sites with user generated content. So if you search on them, you will definitely find more than you were looking for. Opinions and suggestions make your search more relevant and the conversations make it more interesting 🙂

Having said that, Google still has what none of these sites have – Pacman!! :-D.

Do share your experiences of searching on these sites and also any special tips or techniques that you use while searching. Would be really good to know 🙂

Tweet-te Raho!!!

Considering the amount of time I spend on twitter each day and in an attempt to certify myself a true twitter-aholic (read Twit), I am going to publish the following list –

You know you are a Twitter-aholic when:

1. With every major or minor thought in your head, you are already trying to compose a 140 character dialogue to tweet it. (Have seen people who write tweets like –> *heard sound* *woke-up* *realised nothing* *going back to sleep*) 😀

2. You are hanging out with friends and family and they are begging you to get off your phone and stop tweeting. (Happened to me today :D)

3. Yes, you are tweeting from your phone.. because you just need to tweet all the time!

4. You tweet while driving (done that) (I think they will come up with a law against this soon) (*gulp!*)

5. You can proudly claim to know people who are bigger twits than you! (twits = twitteraholic —> Look at the top right widget. Yeah I’m a twit :D)

6. You have participated in one of the rollicking trending of hashtags marathon. Great fun! Especially when we trended #iconicindianads

7. You start hashtagging each conversation with friends – even on IMs and SMS. (also, if you know what a hashtag is :-P)

8. You write everything in a hashtag and create bizarre and insane hashtags. I’m a newbie at this, but some great examples would be Dr. Gonzo, TyagiG and Nothing Man (great people all of them! Follow them at your own risk 🙂 ) #YouCanAlsoDoItLikeThis.

9. You feel very happy when someone RTs your tweet (RT is ReTweet you nOOB!)

10. You have a lot of fun on twitter and start believing that you are making great friends there (this could also be a sign of how you don’t actually have a life, but that point of view is just of people who don’t get it 😉 )

11. Follower count matters! You feel bad each time this count drops and hope it was a bot leaving and not someone you bored with your tweets. Yeah it matters.

Also, you have to admit, signs of a true twit is to be writing this post :D. So we will call it number 12. (For those of you who know me in real life.. don’t you dare laugh at this number!!! :-P)

Know of some more signs? Please do add to this list.