Its Hillarious and true, Doveye wants to sell her MouthShut.com ! Rather drastic wouldent you say !




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I first stumbled upon Mouthshut while searching for information on Google. I found the site interesting. The reviews were good, very informative and straight from the mouth of the persons who had experienced it and gone through the pain. I soon became a regular reader on the products that I would be procuring soon or that interested me generally.

Very soon I realized that some of the writers here had exceptional writing skills and their reviews were worth reading just for the sheer pleasure to be derived from it. Their personality reflected in their writings. Some would be full of pain and frustration that they faced, some full of humor and wit. So I started reading the reviews of items that I would not even be interested in. Rating and giving comments was a bonus. When u comment on a review and the person replies, you get a sense of having connected with that person. Doing this several times you feel you have made a friend. Amazing and unique site this was.

Then one day someone included me in his or her trusted circle. Though the site never clarified anywhere the significance of this circle, it just made me feel good, and soon enough I too included him in my trusted circle. That gentleman never logged in again but thus started the saga of my trust in MS.

Then came a day when I wrote my first review. I thought for so many days what should I write on. And the very shy person that I have always been, expressing myself was never easy. So I choose the topic that is the closest to my heart and on which I have a very good command. What else could it be other than “Exercise”. And then I progressed to health foods, and soon without realizing I started loving to write.

When the gifts and the diaries were introduced MS moved one level up. Again I could hardly ever see myself sending someone a gift. But then again things change and there’s hardly a gift that i have not exchanged here. The hugs, juices, chocolates, earrings, cakes, kisses, love balloons..

And today when I came here what do I see- MS has changed once again. For Good or for Worse only time will tell, but it sure is moving more and more towards being a social networking site. The focus on Hot Profiles is clearly visible. In summation I will just say that today MS looks like having the features and functionality of a combination of site categories while retaining its original “Product Review” character. You can now see a glimpse of Bazee/Ebay (for sale products), Kijiji (local community needs), Orkut (social networking), etc

So friends all I can say now is enjoy the new format!

And Congratulations to you Faisal and your team !

Friends, there’s a popular e-mail story doing the rounds on the forwards circuit these days by the title of “The 99 Club”. I’m not going to reproduce the same here as most of you may have read it already but I do want to use it as a preamble to what I have to explain later in my diary post. I will therefore, recount it here for the benefit of those who haven’t read it in as small a jist as I can.  

In the palaces of a king, there was once a lowly servant who always seemed to be very happy. He would go around the place doing his chores of cleaning the floors or dusting the windows with a song on his lips and a bounce in his step. The King could never understand the logic and reasoning of his happiness and was in a way jealous of that servant. So he consulted his wisest advisors and explained to them his predicament. They advised him only one thing, make him a part of the “99 Club”. Now what’s the 99 club, the king enquired? To demonstrate, the wise counselor kept a bag containing 99 gold coins in front of the door of the servant’s house. When the servant discovered so many gold coins he was overwhelmed with joy. He took the bag inside and counted and recounted the coins. Only 99, he thought. What happened to the last coin? Surely no one would give him 99 coins. He went out and searched again, but could not find the last coin. He was very frustrated, but determined to work hard, save money and collect that last coin to complete his beautiful collection.  

From that day his life changed, he was overworked, scolded his wife and children for not working hard enough and lost his sleep. The wise councilor then declared in total satisfaction. “Your highness, the servant has now officially joined the 99 club”.  

But what relevance does this have to what I have to say further in this post. Well it’s like this. There was once a time when we used to write reviews and would be very happy to have it rated VU. The comments were a big bonus. In fact I had not even written a single review after joining MS on 30.4 06 right up to 15.11.07, and was only content in reading and commenting on others reviews!  

However everything changed with this new format of Diary posts and gifts. Kweldebs sent me the first ever gift as an appreciation of my reviews. And boy was I elated. Like a little kid who has just received his first racing car! And soon this became quite a practice, sending and receiving gifts. Can anyone forget the famous gift of the Airplane costing a whopping 30000 points to FE by Rohitthebest? What an interest that generated. I cannot help but mention another interesting episode that I happened to notice. One member cool_sun, saw Veekeey’s profile flashing as a star writer and went to the same. She incidentally saw all medicine gifts there that day, as Vee was feeling unwell and Smita had mentioned that in her post. However cool_sun had no background in the matter but seeing all medicines assumed that he needed more and without even knowing Vee sent him medicines! When I went to Vee’s profile page to check if he had received the medicines that I had sent him and also to see if there was any activity and consequently if he was feeling better, I happened to read cool_suns message to Vee. Her gesture inspired me so much that I too without knowing her, sent her a gift for gifting medicines to my friend!!  

Almost all my friends have given me gifts, and I cherish all of them. I too on my part have probably sent gifts to all I know here. If I missed out someone, Pl do forgive me. I do not want to mention any name here as I will not be able to cover all the 95 gifts and the ones who I miss out will feel bad. But I must add that all gifts irrespective of the value are very special and I use this post to thank all my friends who have sent them to me, including one from Faisal. In fact I advocate that we send gifts of lesser value so that more people and gifts can be covered in lesser points, as there is always a debit and credit issue to be taken care of.  

So friends now coming back to the issue of the 99 club, I now have 95 gifts (95 I may add is not much different from 99) and would like to complete my collection of 100. So what say, return gifts are assured! 

Hi Friends,

 

I had sometime back reviewed the German resort, Hotel Krone. Since then I had been struggling to get the photographs loaded but some or the other issue kept me from doing so. I think I am obliged to elaborate here. Firstly the camera that I have is rather primitive (read - not digital), so each time one has to wait for the reel to be completed before one can get the same developed. We also have here in Vadodara a rather nice studio that convert the pictures taken to digital version for no extra cost, if the original roll has been purchased from them. So we always make it a point to get the film roll uploaded from them whenever a trip is coming up. And then on our return they do all the needful.

 

To get back to the story of this reel, after I got them developed and loaded on a CD, I realized that even though the presentation that they usually make is working fine but for some reason the individual pictures are not copy able onto the hard drive. So I had to again take the CD back to them to assess the problem. When I did that they informed that due to some error they did not copy the pictures in digital form as they usually do, in addition to making a presentation out of them, and that I would have to get the negatives back to do the needful.

 

Managing all this in between a couple of hectic weeks has taken quite some time. So thank you for being patient, and do see and comment on them.

 

I would particularly like your comments on a practice of farming that I saw while returning to the airport there. If you notice there is some kind of a covering on the fields where certain crops are growing. If it was cloth or some other synthetic material, I could not figure out from the distance and the speed at which the van was being driven. Maybe we do cover our crops too here in India, but frankly I have never seen or heard of the same.

 

PS : I did not want to bother anyone with M2Ms of the post and still wanted to duly inform those who had been goading me to post the pictures, so thot of diary as the best method. Also i promise to change the camera before the film reels go out of production. Please bear with me till then !

Monday Blues

 

Why is it that Mondays are always the worst days of the week. It obviously has something to do with the fact that we feel the burden of the full week in front of us, and getting through the same looks like a daunting task. There are even statistics to prove this. American studies have shown that the maximum number of heart attacks take place between 9AM to 11AM on Monday mornings. And many among these are fatal. Such is the extent of Monday Blues.

 

So what can we do to lessen this burden. How do we get over this time. Suggestions are welcome as I too am feeling kinda blue right now…

It has been probably nearly a month now that news of the sex scandal at DIET-PET in Patan broke out. All the culprits were arrested the very next day and cases have been registered. Even the girls returned to the school after a week or so. Whereas one would have expected a respected and popular newspaper to report such news with high priority and then also follow it up to some extent, but what is being dished out now is too much.

 

Till now not one day has gone since the incident, that The Times of India – Ahmedabad edition has not reported this news on the front page with daily doses of the gory details. Someday they will tell of who out of the 6 teachers did what. What exactly was the procedure, how they took out chits, etc etc. Who watched and who performed. It has become like reading a pornographic book early in the morning. Every day for the past one month on the front page, is that not too much.

 

I am really disgusted with this newspaper, just as I was with the news of such a happening in Gujarat and am seriously considering changing my paper. Do some others in Gujarat also feel that way or am I overreacting ?

It was in the end of June 2005 that it had been raining incessasantly for several days. I was only going to the office and back. The streets and the city of Vadodara were full of water but were motor able though with some difficulty. Unfortunately an urgent meeting came up in Mumbai, which I just could not afford to cancel or postpone. Since all flights were functional, I hardly thought it to be an issue.

 

Though the weather was turbulent, our flight reached Mumbai without any event. It was raining incessantly in Mumbai as well. After the meeting when I reached the Mumbai airport for the return flight in the evening, I was informed that the all flights to Vadodara had been cancelled as the Airport there is submerged in water. I wondered what to do. I had no intension of staying on in Mumbai. With the weather unrelenting, I wondered how many days it would be before I could get back home. No it would certainly be better to get home somehow and face whatever came there. I rang up our travel coordinator in Mumbai office and asked her to book me a ticket for a train to Vadodara. She however called back within a few minutes and informed that the train service to Vadodara had been suspended due to a breach in the rail track near Vadodara. But, being the very home loving person that I am,  I was still determined to somehow get back home. So I checked several airlines at the airport and asked then the options available. Fortunately, Jet Airlines could find an available flight to Mumbai on the early morning flight the next day. I thought it a stroke of luck and took the ticket.

 

After spending the night in our company’s Bandra Guest House, I returned early in the morning to the airport with fingers crossed. Fortunately, (or not as would find out later) the flight to Ahmedabad took off on time and despite the very turbulent weather landed safely at Ahmedabad at about 8 o clock in the morning. The journey from Ahmedabad to Vadodara by road usually takes about 2 hours via the expressway and that is what I was counting on when I took the flight. I asked our local office to send me a SUV from Ahmedabad just as a matter of abundant precaution. The Qualis was waiting for me when I landed at the Ahd airport. I picked up a packet of sandwiches and told the driver to leave for Vadodara. The roads in Ahmedabad also had several inches of standing water at most places but we did not have much difficulty in reaching the expressway. It was then that I faced the most shattering moment in this whole saga. We were informed that the rains had breached the expressway and no traffic was being allowed on it.

 

Then only two options remained, one was to take a hotel room in Ahmedabad and await the opening of the expressway and the second was to chance the other route on the national highway. I asked the drivers opinion on the condition of the road on the National Highway. He said that he had come from Vadodara last evening and it was Ok then. That seemed like a good enough reason for me to try the same.

 

We somehow managed to negotiate this road right up to Anand, even though it took us up to 12 noons to get there. The roads were full of water and the Qualis was in it right up to its wheels. At around Anand, the water started climbing even higher than the wheels of the vehicle. The driver then informed me that if we go on any further its very likely that the water will enter the engine and we shall get stranded. I again had to choose between the options of option of heading back to Ahmedabad or finding some other higher vehicle to take me further as the quails was surely unable to do so.

 

On this road we were not alone, other SUVs and buses and trucks were also trying to negotiate these waters. Again on my drivers advise, I stopped and boarded a bus and send the quails back. As the water further was really very high, almost 3-4 feet, the bus moved at an excruciatingly slow pace. Also there were traffic jams at several places where vehicles had broken down and were left stranded. By evening my mobile phones battery also died out, and my connection with my wife also broke down. She had been a source of moral strength to me through the entire journey up to now. I had finished long back the lone sandwich that I had carried. How much I missed a cup of tea that day I can hardly explain.

 

By late evening the bus somehow reached the outskirts of Vadodara and since it was going to Surat, I got down at one suitable place there. I had two pieces of luggage with me, a small suitcase, like an overnighter and the laptop. With one in each hand I tried my best to keep them out of the water coming up from the legs while I walked. Fortunately I found an auto rickshaw that agreed to take me up to whatever point he could go near my house. He took me to about 4 Kms of my house and then refused to go any further. I had no opti