The two paths to glory

There are two ways in which you can advance in your career.

The first, the Dr. Jekyll method; consists of the following four factors happening in your life to varying degrees.

Privilege : You are have the advantages that your contemporaries do not have - it might be riches, connections or better living and educational circumstances.

Luck : Also called the randomness factor. You happen to be at the right places at the right time.

Talent : You have skills in your chosen field, skills, abilities and insights that put you far ahead of the others.

Effort : You are willing to try twice as fast and thrice as hard as the others in your field.

The Mr. Hyde method is constituted of the following four in varying degrees:

Shamelessness : You have no shame, and will do whatever it takes with whomever it takes to get what you want.

Arrogance: You believe that you are the best, and propagate the belief that you are the best long enough and tirelessly enough to make others believe you.

Thievery : You do not mind stealing - ideas, credit, opportunities, fame, glory from others. In fact, you revel in it.

Selective memory: You remember your personal history in such a distorted manner so as to always think of yourself as the hero, the maverick and the visionary.

Lists created over brunch at a Sunday afternoon with inputs from Adam Greenfield and Nurri Kim.

Signs of times

It is a past time of mine to take photographs of signs and notices. They are often sources of hilarity and some of them even make you want to meet the person who put up the sign. Somehow in my mind, they will have amazing trivia knowledge about comic books, will get all my obscure pop cultural references and we sing songs of merriment through the streets adhering to the standards of bollywood choreography.

Anyways, on to a few that has caught my eyes lately:

This tells me some awesome things about my colleagues. Yep, the sign was on the door of one of the ladies bathrooms in our office.

Somewhere in Nokia House is a chicca who knows her He-Man and has an amazing sense of humour. Future BFF, where are you?

Now, I am not sure if I want to be buddies with this person, but something tells me I better be, or else....

And if you are a Alto University student, this actually might be an innovative ad for a few swimming lessons, but why take the chance? Do the dishes.

However, the person who wrote the above must be good buddies with the person who wrote this one. Or it might be a frazzled teacher from Alto University. Or both.

Now, this is one sign that will always be close to my heart - this was done by a friend of mine on her last day in Helsinki around her neighborhood. You always made me feel mahtava, Candy.

Window Dressing

What to do when you do not have a lot of money to spend on window dressing your shop? What if you want to attract two very different, but equally lucrative demographics to your toy shop?

You mix and match them, hoping that the result would produce a chuckle in the minds of your customers, particularly the second demographics.

And come up with some thing like this:

And this:





I belonged in the second demography of grown-up comic fan, and am assuming the pink loving little girls also found the shop irresistible.