Fill in the blanks. With laughter. A nice web experiment, built by two guys from Seattle, WA. It will instantly bring a smile to your face. Write your smart take on any subject under the world. Filling in the blanks has never been so much fun. Try it! Thank you, Hans Johnson and Jared Wunsch.
The image says it all. Clean and simple. Gimme Bar. We love it. Thanks to the guys at Fictive Kin for creating yet another gem.
On Saturday, I was having a very late lunch at this place called Shri Krishna, a small eating joint in one of the bylanes of Mahim. It serves, mostly delivers, gharguti jevan (food that tastes like it’s been made at home). All the staff, mostly young guys and girls, had finished working for the first shift and were tidying up and having their lunch. While I was relishing my Chana Masala and Chapattis, I heard two of them, a girl and a boy, talking. She asked him about his admissions to which he replied something and then later started talking about his exam schedule. He talked further about his lectures he has in the coming week. She asked him whether he had opted for Science or the Arts stream to which he replied that he had opted for Commerce. That’s when it hit me. It was such a contrasting situation. On one hand, the work that they were doing at that very moment was cleaning the leftovers, washing the utensils, arranging the cleant ones, and the conversation that they were having—that too a passionate one—was about studies. They seemed to have no qualms about working and the kind of work that they were doing given the fact that at this age, they should be just studying. Maybe, they knew that they need to work in order to survive and study, in order to grow. In my mind, studies or not, they had already grown up. Kudos to them for doing what they are doing and here’s hoping that they reach where they aspire to reach.
Charles: You going to tell me what’s the matter? Or will I have to read your mind?
Raven: You promised me you would never do that.
Charles: Until recently, I never had to use my powers to know what you were thinking, Raven.
Raven: You know Charles, I used to think it was gonna be you and me against the world. And no matter how bad the world gets, you don’t want to be against it, do you? You want to be a part of it.
—X-Men: First Class
Charles: You know, I believe the true focus lies somewhere between rage and serenity. Would you mind, if I…?
Erik: What did you just do to me?
Charles: I accessed the brightest corner of your memory system. It’s a very beautiful memory Erik, thank you.
Erik: I didn’t know I still had that.
Charles: There’s so much more to you than you know. Not just pain, and anger. There’s good too, I felt it. And when you can access all that. You will possess a power no one can match. Not even me. So, come on. Try again.
—X-Men: First Class
Whether you answer ‘Yes’ or ‘No, you should definitely read these books. They are self-help books and yet in many ways, they are not. Crisp, direct, funny and most importantly, not preachy. Paul Arden (author and executive creative director of Saatchi & Saatchi) was taking these lessons down as life was teaching them. He left this world in 2008. If we ever would have got a chance to meet him, it would have been one amazing conversation of our life. There is a third book too—God explained in a Taxi ride. We can’t wait to get our hands on that one. For some reason, we keep reading these books again and again and it helps us in a different way every single time. A must-have for your book collection.
Simply awesome. Sometime back, this image had caught our eye and before we knew it, we were in the wonderful world of Noma Bar. Bar is an extremely talented artist who conveys complex messages with amazing simplicity. We couldn’t find our favourite piece from his work because they are all equally mindblowing. We won’t write anything more now because we would rather prefer you explore his work and enjoy it as we did. Via: Dutch Uncle
Partnership mein 90% trust to hona hi chahiye. 10% dhoka chalega.
—Owner, Guru Da Dhaba
In a partnership, you need 90% trust. Then, we can make do with 10% of cheating. This wise and practical thought on business partnership came from a soft-spoken Punjabi man who runs a small hotel called ‘Guru Da Dhaba’ in Lokhandwala, Andheri (W), Mumbai. While we were waiting for getting the money back after paying the bill, we shared how we really liked the lip-smacking, tastes-like-home-cooked-food Punjabi fare and asked him why he didn’t he open branches in other parts of the city. The man replied that he and his wife manage this place; children work at big companies and don’t want to sit and run a hotel; and he can start branches if only he could find someone trustworthy to run a place like this. During this piece of conversation, he dropped this gem of a thought. I later realised I never asked his name. There’s always a next time, I guess. Thank you, Sardarji owner of Guru Da Dhaba for the food and sharing your wisdom.
A while back, I had stumbled upon Good Fucking Design Advice which, well, gave good fucking design advice and then some. I happened to visit the site again to download another wallpaper and I noticed this small line at the bottom after the Copyright stuff which said, “Inspired by this and this.” Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it didn’t bother me. I went ahead and clicked on ‘this’. And the other ‘this’ too. The first one led me to a website called ‘What The Fuck Is My Social Media Strategy‘, made by two other guys which takes a dig at corporate jargon about Social Media Strategy (duh?). I enjoyed the dig and I noticed something at the bottom. Guess what? A line that says, “Inspired by this.” I clicked on that too. I mean ‘this’. Meanwhile, the second this from the first website called for my attention. I checked it. I landed up on ‘What The Fuck Should I Make For Dinner‘. This site shouts out random dinner suggestions which you can keep on rejecting if you like (don’t try it with your wife, though). Remember the first ‘this’ on the second website. Yes! That one led me to this same dinner website. I couldn’t help it. I checked the bottom of the site. There was a ‘this’. But it was not a clue. It was a part of a sentence that said, “This site was fucking made by Zach”. “To hell with the cat”, I said and clicked on Zach and it led me to a website of Zach Golden, a copywriter in NYC, who, by the way, didn’t have ‘Fucking’ anywhere on the site. So, all in all, a nice fucking search from one fucking interesting website led me to another and then another and then yet another one which further led me to one fucking cool guy who fucking started it all. Fucking copying, you might say. Well, I think it is fucking inspiring. Maybe, I will start a fucking website. Be sure to check the bottom that will say, “Inspired by this, this and this. Or maybe that. Whatever. If you are still fucking reading this, don’t! Go and surf these fucking awesome sites instead. Thank you fucking Zach for starting it all.
To do or not to do will never be the question. A to-do list should, well, be only a to-do list. TeuxDeux does just that. A simple view of my week with items to fill and nothing more. Since they know the human tendency to procrastinate, they have a ‘Someday’ field for backburner items. Clever. It’s available on the browser as well as the phone. We love it. Thank you, SwissMiss and FictiveKin for creating it.