Well, I HATED the movie. Sure it has eye candy value, pretty stars and reasonable acting, fantastic locales and dresses, and the odd joke or two about lesbians and gays, about contemporary Bollywood, the occasional humor by first time side actors (Jai’s best friend is as plain speaking as Pratik Babbar’s character in Imran’s first movie), but the essential question kept bugging me as the movie plodded through: Where’s the bloody plot? Where? Under Imran’s chocolatey-goofy looks? Inside Sameer Soni’s strange expressions? Simply put, there is NO plot to speak of in this movie. Its almost as if the entire movie is targeted towards some kind of context-less, robotic, teenage and youth audience whose goals in life include making fun of everything contemporary and past, and living life in the moment with branded entertainment and clothes.

Even then, the movie would have made sense if it didn’t fall step by step, in the second half, into the very cliches, the very platitudes, the very hackneyedness that it tries to criticize and question in the first half. In the second half the director simply ran out of things to do, and forced a strange New Zealand angle, making Sameer Dattani look even more forced and pathetic than in the first half, making Imran and Sonam stare at each other inscrutably and making the audience almost heave a sigh of relief when he finally proclaims his love in the end, in the most cliched manner possible.

I would go so far as to say that I felt my heart yearning for the very classic contemporary Bollywood movies this movie tries to spoof/criticize/whatever else it does. The first few scenes of the movie are a montage from DDLJ, Hum Tum, and various other Khan classics, and I daresay, you realize how golden those movies are, when IHLS finishes. IHLS is so dull it makes Rajneeti, with all its hamming and cliches stand head and shoulders above it.

Now i need a good tightly scripted, gripping movie to cleanse my palette of all this pink bubblegum BS

First, once I reached the boarding area, I neither found a complaint register nor anyone who knew where the complaint register was. Courtesy Mr. Amar Nair of the Duty Free shopping area, who was professional enough to escort me around to find the complaint register, we managed to get an official from the ground area. It turns out there is a complaint register that you can fill BEFORE you embark on customs and immigration. It also turns out that if you need foreign exchange and medical assistance, you should sort out all those existential issues out BEFORE you reach customs.The inside story is that the duty free shop boys end up helping out distraught passengers by running downstairs and getting medicines when any emergency help is needed. I fail to understand how the airport could have overlooked such fundamental issues.

Its 1:35 am and after several discussions with BIAL officials here and shop owners, I am convinced that the government and the official authorities of BIAL, despite tall claims about  the services being offered here, have not fully tried to understand what constitutes a superior user experience. THey have 1 hour free Wifi but they fail to advertise how one can access it. They have a Crossword and sell magazines, but you can receive change only in Dollars and Euros (sorry you poor Indian consumers with your depreciated rupee). They have shops selling all sorts of fancy jewellery and gear but not enough water coolers.

That’s it for now. I hope to blog more once I reach Hong Kong or LA, my next destinations on this short trip.

The BIAL COO (and projected CEO) Mr. Marcel Hungerbuehler is speaking at the event and I’m looking forward to hearing their stories - as much as those of the Reva electric car, bus rapid transport systems in India and technology interventions in transportation.

Hope to see you there!

I just hope we use the economic opportunities this downturn provides and emerge stronger by 2010, especially on the infrastructure side.

Via Sequoia Capital’s presentation to CEOs, a blunt and analytic take on the current economic and financial downturn and its implications. The lessons pretty much apply to everybody in the business of business…

After 4 years with Oracle (and the brief stint with PeopleSoft before it got acquired), I have moved to Yahoo for a new gig in User Experience Design. I started off last week and am based in the the very conveniently located Inner Ring Road office in Bangalore. I will be working on a couple of properties including Yahoo’s next generation open advertising platform and some emerging market areas. I’m hoping to retain some of my learnings from enterprise user experience but at the same time immerse myself in the consumer Internet space with a very open mind. So far the office’s been good, there’s an experienced and enthusiastic product and design team here and the India office has a nice casual vibe.
I hope to also blog more about my experiences in this space.

Slideshare continues to be one of my favorite experiences on the web. They just released the results of the World’s Best Presentation Contest. Each one of the 3 finalists has created a visually compelling and thematically powerful slideshare presentation.Two of the presentations are on the Water crisis and the Zimbabwe crisis. A third is a lovely take on our very own two feet as seen by an intriguing travelista…

Via SiliconIndia, “BPOs turn to regional accent proficiency to tap domestic market”. So the BPO wheel turns full circle and in these BPO’s as the article puts it “People with a heavy mother tongue influence are preferred”
This should give  solace to all those folks who wanted a break in the BPO/call center industries in India but weren’t proficient enough with the English language. Perhaps the Indian BPOs should start training people in Chinese next…