Dreaming of Mauritius Contest: Win a Stay at Le Meridien Ile Maurice!

Shivya Nath, a travel blogger, a women on wanderlust has quit her corporate job in the summer of 2011 and decided to travel for a living.  Her wanderlust has taken me to 18 countries across 4 continents.

Recently on her visit to Mauritius, she explored the  Le Meridien Ile Maurice. Through her blog she gives us a sneak peek of how she got pampered at Le Meridien.  The beautifully written blog along with apt pictures just makes you want to explore the island of Mauritius & unwind at the Le Meridien.

Well you can actually make your dream come true and win

- A four nights stay for TWO in a deluxe room at Le Meridien Ile Maurice.
- Complimentary breakfast & dinner.
- Water sports activities: Water Skii, Glass Bottom Boat, Kayaks, Pedalos, Snorkelling, Windsurfing and Aquagym.
- Access to the Hydrotherapy room for Jacuzzi, Steam & Sauna at Explore Spa.
- Yoga Sessions (thrice a week) at Explore Spa.
- Access to the fitness centre at Explore Spa.
- Free Wi-fi in the lobby area of Le Meridien Ile Maurice, so you can share live updates and make the rest of us jealous!

Know how at http://the-shooting-star.com/2012/09/18/dreaming-of-mauritius-win-a-stay-at-le-meridien-ile-maurice/

New Twitter: Everything you should know

Twitter joins 'Facebook', 'Google Plus", launches brand pages for marketers. The new comprehensive designed Twitter or 'New Twitter' will help promote you and your brand better. Following are the things you should know about #NewTwitter.

 It’s just not four tabs  and a new brand page, but below is the detailed version of how the game changes for you via the New Twitter:

1. Changes in Home Page: Your home is where you access to the tweets of people you follow. The difference is the tweets of the people you follow comes on the right side of the page break and on the left you see the trends, who to follow, stats (Just viceversa to the old twitter, refer to the image below).  Photos, videos and conversations are embedded directly in Tweets so one can see the complete story of what you share.

2. Change in Mention: The new @mention is now called ‘@Connect’ feature which I like the most is instilled here too: You can Track your impact across Twitter. Interactions shows all the actions other people take related to you and your Tweets. See who follows you, retweets or favorites one of your Tweets, or adds you to a list.

3. Change in Hashtag Access:  Initially we searched for tweets and hashtags via the search tab, it has now been replaced with the term “# Discover” – helps you discover stories on the hashtag that comes with embedded conversations, videos and photos.

4. The New ‘Me’ page:  Me tab gives you an opportunity to showcase your interest, lists you have created, lists you are listed on, your favorites, following and followers ratio. The best feature of the Me tab is that you can now stay current on your direct message conversations too.

5. Changes to Tweeting Feature: The tweeting style, tweeting limits is similar just that the above value has added the feathers to the bird, which can now make your twitter experience better and help you fly high. The above changes will be reflected in your twitter profile on mobile phones too.

6. New Brand Page: Twitter is also introducing enhanced profile pages for the brands that can make twitter a hotspot for the brands.  The page is not competing with Facebook at any instance. This new twitter business page gives few value added elements to the brands from their usual tweeting experience.                          

7. Branding on the Brand Page: The Twitter profile page for brands allows marketers create an impression with a large header image for displaying your logo, tagline, and any other visuals (as in the picture )

8. Promoted Tweets: Marketers can control the message visitors see on the first visit on the brand’s twitter profile, it allows them to promote a particular tweet to the top of your brand page’s timeline. This feature helps marketers the most engaging and important content and bring more value to the brand by better connecting to the target audience.

9. Embedded Version: The promoted tweets on brands page gets automatically embeds conversations, videos or photos the marketers link to from the tweet, thus making your profile look richer and enhancing the value of promoted tweet.

10. Its Free: The brand page and the promoted tweets are not chargeable and is completely free of cost. As twitter says it’s Your profile page is your own – your colors, your logo, and your messaging

Everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life, and a secret life..Is it??

Quoted by Gabriel García Márquez "Everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life, and a secret life"

Some have even described it as establishment of a distinct ecosystem for cultivating and grooming who we are in public, private, and in secret.

Let us understand what each of these Lives or ecosystem mean

Public life -- that which any ordinary person can see of you.

Private life -- that which somebody with investigative skills/voyeuristic tendencies/obsession could find out. So basically it open to close friends, loved ones and family.

Secret life -- that which is kept to oneself (and sometimes even from oneself!)

 

While most of us will agree with Gabriel García Márquez, but I on other hand will beg to differ.

I see it as 'Three interconnected rooms in our minds' in the following order of Public, Private and Secret. The door to the first room (public) is suppose to always open. Anyone can enter and leave at any time.

On basis of trust and emotion we intentionally or inadvertently allow people to the second room(private) by opening that door for few. These happens when we want to feel special, share things, know what others think about us etc. Sometimes people overstay in this room and are needed to be ousted from the room while many times people themselves leave the room by their choice because they find it too suffocated.

There are times there is lot of external stress and fatigue affecting our inner struggle and we are forced to open the door to the third room. We allow someone through the door to the third room (secret) to know our concealed feelings, thoughts and action. We feel a lot better by sharing it.

I called it as three interconnected rooms because any fluctuation or damage in any of the room has a 'Butterfly Effect'. It result is in shutting of all the doors for time being. Making all the rooms secluded and concealed there by; all of them become secret rooms.

But in reality it is a mere illusion we have created. What is Public to someone is secret to the other and what is secret to some one can be public to others. 

We all were born with single lives. We had nothing called as public, private or secret when we were born. But over the course of time with our surrounding and experiences, we created these so called rooms/ecosystem/lives to assure ourselves we are unique and we are happy.

We have trained our mind "To accept the illusion as reality and reality as illusion". May be that is our formula to be happy or just yet another way to complicate our simple lives.

Payback Series or Deja Vu

India vs England series was billed as "payback" series for the miseries India suffered in England. Being one of the many Indian fans who went through a phase of severe depression during India's tour of  England 2011, I too wished that the English suffer the same Agony as India.

But as the series ended, the things I could relate between both the series was that, here in India, English Batsmen were Clueless, Bewildered and Confused dancing to the tune of the Indian Spinners on dusty subcontinent wicket. While in England it were the Indian Batsmen who hopped, jumped and ducked to the swing and bounce on the Green English wickets. If  young Suresh Raina seemed clueless against the swinging ball, then Jonathan Bairstow's expression after getting bowled by Jadeja was no different. If Indians after losing couple of matches started fielding like Donkeys, than English after losing first couple of matches fielded like one legged Donkey.

In fact the last time England won a series of any kind in India was in 1984-85; no matter how much they plan or how early they turn up, a tour of India usually seems to end up a discombobulating ordeal. In 2005-06 England lost the series 5-1, in the next tour the English were humiliated by 5-0, in the interrupted seven-match series in 2008-09. Here again in 2011, they are humbled by a scoreline of 5-0. So can we call it a Deja Vu?

In fact India in India are really strong with 27 wins in 36 over the last three years and only a single defeat in 16 home ODIs in the last 12 months.

There is no taking away anything from India's performance. They have been really professional and merciless with their spirited performance. But after all these, the series just proves only two things, one that India are exceptionally good at home and two that England are terrible on Indian soil.

It wasn't the revenge or avenge of their humiliation on the tour to England. It was not a Payback series. Some say that if the English had been whitewashed in the test series than it would have been the perfect Payback. 

But the "Payback if at all, has to be served to England in their den"

Till then Kudos to Team India for their dominating performance, Captain cool for retaining his form and tag, Ravindra Jadeja for his comeback and young Indian guns to keep our hope alive.

Poochne mein kya jaata hai???

I am sure all of you must have watched this latest Tata Sky Ad 'Poochne mein kya jaata hai'



The ad put the reality in front us in a simple and beautiful manner. The ad is built on the premise of "ask, why not?". I am sure almost most of you must have liked the concept of the ad. The ad shot to fame immediately because everyone of us could relate ourselves to the ad.

As kids we always use to pester our parents and teachers with endless questions that were stupid but yet inquisitive. In fact sometimes we even left our parents and teachers speechless with our questions and our inquisitiveness. We believed in what they answered, we learnt by asking.

But 20 years later, now we don't ask questions.

In Classrooms, we think what if everyone thinks that my question is stupid and everyone starts laughing on me?

With Friends, we think, If I ask him/her what shall he think about me? He will think that I talk to him when I need help. He will think of me as dumb. He will think how insensitive I am.

With Someone we love, We don't ask them out because we think 'What if he/she tells me no?

In Office, We think, our bosses might think we are unqualified for our job?

While shopping, we don't ask about discounts, because it harms our image.

We hesitate to ask help from strangers, we hesitate to ask for lift, , we hesitate to ask for direction, we hesitate to ask for more, we hesitate to ASK. We all know this but still we hesitate. All of us face this syndrome. We just don't feel comfortable to ask.

Because of this we lose our friends, loved ones, money, time and many other important things of life which we would have enjoyed, had we ASKED. The ad showcases it is better to try and fail rather than failing to try. You never know when the lady luck smiles on you.

To be candid, I got the very thought about writing on this very topic when I was talking on phone for work related purpose to some one and I was hesitating to ask for help, but some how I did and the opposite person really helped me to come up with a brilliant plan. So it is a matter just trying to come out of your comfort zone and ask.

The other ad that perfectly answers the situation is Airtel's 'Barriers break when people talk'




Let the curiosity in us come to the surface, lets learn and lets ask..coz 'Poochne mein kya jaata hai'

The confessions of 'The Unsocial Guy'

Many people I meet tells me that you are too social to be 'Unsocial' . Some even say that it is a publicity stunt you are trying to put together to garner some attention. I don't know how much right/wrong they are. In a world where everything from a smile to orgasm is faked, 'The Unsocial Guy'  believes in being candid.

Here is the candid Confession by 'The Unsocial Guy'

1) 'The Unsocial Guy' has never felt the comfort to share. He is afraid of opening up to anyone. Because people always prejudice and assume thing which are often not true. He doesn't like people helping him as people can consider that as favor and start expecting back from him. 'The Unsocial Guy' wants to be free of all expectation. So staying Unsocial helps him not to expect from other and more importantly others not to expect from him.

2)  'The Unsocial Guy'  lives by his own principles and philosophies. He highly disregards the Social Paradigms. He knows that if he becomes social, he cannot live his life on his principles. Hence he is 'unsocial' by choice and not by force.'The Unsocial Guy'  thinks that being social is being fake. He hates to carry those fakes mask of emotions, fake smiles, fake laughter. He believes in being candid and hence 'unsocial' by choice. 

3) 'The Unsocial Guy'  agrees with the assumption made by a friend

That people may use the unsocial tag so that they can befriend only those people that they are fond of and find similar to themselves and yet not be expected to be attached or close to them coz of their unsocialness.

Since any other social individuals will find his way of living as weird or something they haven't seen in the fake world. So being Unsocial helps the 'The Unsocial Guy' to stay aloof from people and allow people to stay aloof from him.

4) 'The Unsocial Guy'  has tried living the social life. But he doesn't understand the emotions of being together. He finds that Social world is selfish where people just want to fulfill their needs either emotional or physical. Being Unsocial helps him to avoid getting entangled in those emotional traps which might affect his decision process, action and inactions.

5) Although 'The Unsocial Guy' may be seen surrounded by people, talking to people or socializing, but in reality he wants to be alone or with people like him, who are candid, direct and believe in living in the real world rather than the fake one. He is just talking to them to know what people think, how people react under different circumstances and how people fake.

6) He believes that there are three kind of people in this world. i) Strangers ii) Known Strangers(Whom people call so called friends) iii) Special people( These are people for whom one doesn't see his/her calender). Since human nature is being selfish, difficult to find the third category of people in life of any individuals. This is just another reason why he feels the social world is fake.

The above confessions doesn't by any chance signify that 'The Unsocial Guy'  does not have any feelings, desires or wishes. But 'The Unsocial Guy'  is in a journey where he wishes to reach a state of trance called "Beyond Everything"

"Beyond Everything" to b honest it is a Zone..Where in he is not dependent on any one.He doesn't get affected by surroundings or any one's action or inaction in his life. He knows it is kind of philosophical. He believes that it is difficult but achievable.

I hate love stories

Reading  'Diary of a Single Girl' in 'Times Life',  one article really caught my attention. It was about the girl being getting an opportunity to complete her dream of becoming a Super Model. She was already a successful model. But getting into ivy league she would have require to don 'The Bikini'. So informed this to her Boy Friend. Her BF and she argued over an hour. The BF said, 'What would his family think of a girl who wears Bikini?'. At the end the BF told her, 'You have to decide one, Career or him'. This came up even when the guy knew that girl was a model when he proposed her.

Reading this article I realized this ain't only her problem. Everyone of us who has been in relationship associate ourselves with the above article. How many times in your relationship you have faced that awkward situation where you have to choose between 'Your Loved one' and 'Your Passion'. ?

'Love' is best when unconditional. The moment we start putting conditions it becomes more of a compromise. Why have we made it a complicated, messed up drama. So messed up that we have to say 'I Hate Love Stories'.

Imagine you fell in love with someone who is really good at talking. You loved the way he talked with you, your friends, your parents, your siblings and others around him. But once into a relationship you only stop him/her and tell her not to talk with some Tom, Dick, Harry or some Jane, Jennifer or Janice. The thing that made you fall you in love with your partner is the thing you want him/her to stop doing. Of course when that happens, the epic statement comes up saying 'You have Changed, you are no more a person whom I met couple of years back'.

How painful it is to give your passion for the only person who should be most happy to see you pursuing it?

How many times in relationship you have given up talking to your Best Friend because your partner didn't liked it?

How many of you have given up your dreams just because your partner was not convinced?

Love was meant to support you through your thick and thin and ride with you all life long to support you. But with all such pre-requisite , it is more of a burden that makes you slow down or just give up your journey. Why are you forcing me to scream 'I HATE LOVE STORIES'