Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Job opening

Applications are now invited, in India, for the post of next spiritual 'guru'. This position is very challenging because it is equivalent to that of a CEO of a large, financially successful corporate organization. There is exactly one opening and competition is high.

The key roles and requirements of the job are listed below:
  1. The role requires you to be the public face of a large establishment. You need to be charismatic, a good public speaker, and be able to carry yourself well in the presence of VIPs.
  2. Ability to amass large amounts of real estate both in India and abroad.
  3. A decent understanding of science, Chemistry in particular, to be able to synthesize chemicals in liquid/powder form. These chemicals must resemble substances that have a religious symbolism, for example, holy ash (vibuthi).
  4. Ability to exploit science to appeal to faith.
  5. Sleight of hand. Further training in sleight of hand will be provided based on the selected candidates current abilities.
  6. Ability to create mass hysteria for no apparent reason. This ties into requirement 1, of being charismatic.
  7. Ability to keep secrets - very important.
Perks: All your expenses - including medical expenses - will be taken care of using other people's money. The disadvantage is that you will have to be celibate (or atleast appear so to the public).

Friday, April 08, 2011

Indians to stay off social networking in attempt to support Anna Hazare

Anna Hazare recently gave the war cry to Indians to battle corruption and the masses rallied around him; masses including corporate honchos, actors, sportspersons, celebrities, pseudo-celebrities, and celebrity wannabes.

The knee-jerk reaction to this war cry was creating pages on Facebook/Orkut and other social networking sites to spread the cause and using these pages to put pressure on the government to pass the anti corruption bill. Ideas floated initially to post the colour of ones piece of clothing associated with corruption - analogous to the case when women posted the colour of their bra on facebook to spread awareness on breast cancer. Because no piece of clothing could be associated with corruption, it was decided to post the colour of one's purse or wallet instead.

Later, the net-savvy Indians decided that in order to further their cause, they would now stop using social networking sites after realising that the chances of Indian politicians having Facebook and Orkut pages and being interested in the colour of their wallets and purses, is quite close to zero. They have now declared a blanket ban on social networking usage catching (primarily) their supervisors, system admins, and ISPs unawares.

While the sudden drop in traffic was surprising to ISPs, who suffer loss of revenue and system admins, who see a sudden change in traffic patterns, the worst hit has been company management - across the board -which has not been able to deal either with the sudden spurt in productivity, or with the money suddenly made available due to reduced electricity and bandwidth usage. Sources from different companies have stated that hasty meetings and adhoc committes that includes HRs, managers, and system admins, are being setup to handle this unforseen situation.