blogmeets


Launch of Saffola Aura with Kunal Kapur & Pooja Makhija

Recently I had been invited to the launch of  Saffola Aura- The new Super Oil with Olive Oil and Flaxseed Oil, launched with Kunal Kapur & Pooja Makhija. The event took place in Bombay and bloggers from all over India had been invited for the same.

So I found myself at the Smoke House Delhi, BKC one summer afternoon for the new “mysterious launch” of a product that had not been disclosed to us. The new Super Oil was launched with celebrity chef Kunal Kapur and celebrity nutritionist Pooja Makhija.

Launch of Aura Oil by Chef Kunal & Nutritionist Pooja

Launch of Aura Oil by Chef Kunal & Nutritionist Pooja

A never seen before creation, Aura oil is a unique blend of two super foods – Olive Oil and Flaxseed oil. Hence, this Oil gives you the benefits of both Omega-3 and powerful anti-oxidants that help renew your body cells every day.

The two variants of Aura Oil

The two variants of Aura Oil

Chef Kunal and nutritionist Pooja chatted with us bloggers about how Saffola Aura is the perfect wellness choice for today’s lifestyle. There is a variant with high smoking point, that can be used in Indian cooking, as well as an Extra virgin variant for pouring over salads, pastas etc. 

With the stressful times we live in, this kind of a product with its omega 3 and antioxidant properties is indeed beneficial to add to one’s diet. After the launch, there was a cook-off challenge amongst the bloggers. We were all randomly divided into teams and were given a list of ingredients out of which at least 4 were mandatory. We had to make one dish using the new Super Oil, within 45 minutes.  I started with making an Italian version of Shakshuka and then since there was so much time, I made a quick salad too. My team helped in chopping all the ingredients and helped in plating.

 

Caramelised Pineapple, Tomato, Avocado & Ricotta Salad for the cookoff

Caramelised Pineapple, Tomato, Avocado & Ricotta Salad for the cookoff

Finally, the evening ended with final team getting a masterclass with Chef Kunal Kapur at a later date. And all of us made our way to the airport. It was a nice evening and I hope to try out the oils in my regular cooking soon!



A drive till neemrana 1

The first 4.5 months of this year went in coping with the kneecap dislocation and the subsequent MPFL reconstruction surgery I had to get done to fix the ligament that got ruptured. This included intensive physiotherapy for 2 months and even though I am not 100% ok yet, I am at least “kaam chalau” ok. Good enough to go out and be social again. I’ll write more about the MPFL reconstruction journey later. For now I shall talk about another journey – one from Gurgaon to Neemrana, while driving myself (yes, a big deal after surgery) and that too in a brand new car – the new Tata bolt! I got invited by Blogadda to join in on this drive that was happening on 10th May. Even though I was a bit apprehensive about my driving a long distance after surgery as well as climbing stairs – after talking to Harish from Blogadda, I was assured that there were many other drivers and it wasn’t mandatory to drive. It was as per comfort level. In fact there was a participant who didn’t know how to drive, but I digress :).  As for the stairs, well some were to be climbed to get to our destination for the day, but I could skip anything else that seemed physically taxing for my knee for now. So off I set on Sunday morning, reached Galaxy hotel at the pre-decided time and was assigned to team no 1.  We were to drive the petrol version (revotron) of the car first, followed by an exchange with the diesel version at a pit stop.

After an intro round and some appetisers, Mr Sethi  from Tata Motors shared some of the features of the Tata bolt. They also announced a contest – the best picture of the day would win flipkart vouchers. After lunch, we got ready to leave. All the cars had an ice box that was filled with cold water, juices, lassi, lemonade and some assorted snacks. Much needed on the hot searing sunny day that was the 10th of May! They were also equipped with Samsung tabs using the “connectnext” technology, through which we were constantly in touch with “Captain Bolt” – for all practical purposes a mysterious voice that kept tabs on us, our whereabouts and our requirements 🙂 .. In reality a person of the Tata Bolt team who wasn’t a part of the cavalcade & also provided us some media to play during our long drive. All cars were RED in colour except the pilot car. Boy I love that colour! My team mates were Prasad – an angel investor amongst other things and Alok – An SEO specialist. Alok didn’t know how to drive … and then there were two :). Accompanying us was Anuja from the blogadda team. Since we were team no 1, we were the first ones to be flagged off. I decided to drive first for as long as I could drive and then hand over the car to Prasad. We first went to leisure valley grounds, where a track had been set up to test the suspension of the car. Once we were through that, we set out for Neemrana Fort Palace. The “Revotron” version has 3 modes of driving in the city – Sport (power), Eco (Mileage), City (Mix of both). We mostly drove in the city mode. Even on the highway on sports mode, the difference could not be discerned because of constant traffic jams. It felt great going for a long drive after a gap of more than 4 months. I didn’t feel the level of discomfort I had expected due to my knee and drove till the pit stop. Once there, we exchanged our car for the Diesel version and Prasad got behind the wheel. The hi-tech music system and the voice of Captain bolt kept us entertained throughout the drive. Soon we reached Neemrana. The heat was unbearable and I slowly troddled up to Jalgiri Mahal which overlooked the superlicious swimming pool! We had some refreshments and then it was time for a tour. The group went ahead while I decided to skip this part. However, I did venture out on my own and caught a glimpse of the Hawa mahal.

The place was seeped in history, and sounds of birdcalls & their echoes. Parrots and peacocks roamed around unafraid of human contact. It was strange seeing huge trees growing over by the stairs and what not. Small little peepholes in the parapets of the fort had been converted to toilets with a view! Bougainvillea creepers adorned the palace and in some parts they covered whole walls like ivy. There were tiny little manmade ponds all over the property at various heights. And a swimming pool of course. Wonder what it would have been like in ancient times.

The inviting pool on a sweltering day!

The superlicious inviting pool in the sweltering heat! #neemrana #boltdrives @tatabolt @blogadda #cinemagram

A video posted by Twilight Fairy (@twilightfairy) on

 

Soon the tour ended and the entire gang came back. We all had high tea and watched a folk performance. I was still uploading my instagram images from the day and making Cinemagraphs (Animated GIFs made with short video clips) when the prizes were announced. I shouldn’t have worried cos the only image I had managed to upload by then, won me the best image of the day award! 🙂 The prize was flipkart vouchers worth 4K. But the bigger surprise of the day was yet to come when Tata Motors announced the results of a blogging contest that had already happened a month or so back. And one of the bloggers  – Ragini – won a brand new Tata Bolt! I am sure everyone wanted to be in her place at that moment :).

My winning image!

 

  Eye of the tiger! @tatabolt @blogadda #boltdrives   A photo posted by Twilight Fairy (@twilightfairy) on

Cinemagraph of the folk performance

Soon it was time to leave and although this was a touch and go trip, it was still worthwhile. I clicked some more images of the fort palace that were appreciated by Neemrana properties as well.

Twilight at the Neemrana fort, clicked by twilight at the Neemrana fort 😉

 

The magnificent sun set as viewed from #neemrana fort. #boltdrives @tatabolt @blogadda #ipadography #panorama

 

A photo posted by Twilight Fairy (@twilightfairy) on

On the way back we had the diesel car with us throughout and since I had not driven that variant I decided to drive for as long as was comfortable. The journey back was again full of laughter, jokes, friendly jibes and of course Captain bolt’s announcements. He also conducted a quiz about the features of the car and we all won Bookmyshow vouchers. If only, we had won cars instead ;). Around halfway, I again did an exchange with Prasad and sat in the backseat. The car is comfortable and has enough leg room. We reached Galaxy hotels at 9:30 pm and after the entire gang bade farewell (which almost drowned the sound of a shaadi band) we all headed home with new experiences and friends. It was a Sunday well spent at #Boltdrives with BOLT from Tata Motors and Blogadda especially since there were prizes involved 🙂



A meet description in verse

One sunny April afternoon,
I excitedly rushed to a blogger’s music meet,
and quickly reached the venue,
For I wanted the front seat!

 

The restaurant was quite full,
The chairs were few,
I saw some old faces,
A lot of them new.

 

Soon the program started,
And along came Prateek Shah,
Who had people introduce themselves uniquely
And the audience doing wah wah.

 

Fun was had, along with introductions,
Imagine a male couple ball dance,
The audience chose all the next participants,
and a lot of people got their 15 minute fame’s chance.

 

Soon a presentation by HP was shared,
and a music demo to everyone was given,
Some HP hi-def headphones were also awarded,
and the audience seemed driven.

 

This was followed by a much needed break,
Variety in beverages & a sumptuous snack,
Hotel Garden Inn’s high tea menu was so varied,
No one could refrain from a food attack!

 

The last part of the day,
Was what everyone was awaiting,
Our tweets with music titles had been filtered,
And people’s breaths were bating,

 

A lucky girl won an HP laptop
for tweeting Pink Floyd’s “Hey you”.
She was followed by a lucky guy,
who had managed to tweet a pre-chosen song too.

 

I immensely enjoyed the meet,
Thanks Indiblogger and Hp connected,
I didn’t win the bumper prize,
That has definitely been regretted!

 

So here’s hoping that,
this blogger meet description in verse,
will be liked by the organisers,
and a laptop I’ll manage to coerce!



2008 roundup – part une 9

I am back with a long awaited attempt at getting back to the “Drid Nishchaya” of being regular at the blog (though I am sufficiently active on the photoblog, the microblog and to some extent the Delhi Bloggers‘ Blog). Here’s a roundup of the salient features of the 2008 chapter of my life, most of which was intended to appear on this blog but did not turn up for various reasons.

The year 2008 started on quite a bad note. Right after the 12am gong struck 1st Jan 2008, and I was holidaying at Sonapani, I discovered a “virtual” can of worms in my online social circle and had to perform the virtual equivalent of chemotherapy on a virtual entity I had started. All that done, it was surely a relief. I was very glad and also pleasantly surprised to see the support this ‘act’ garnered for me. It was one of the times where one could clearly differentiate between friends and foes, commitment and shallow words, sincerity and selfish, plain greed. On the whole though it was unpleasant, it was also a great learning. Human nature has many a fascinating avenue to explore and observe. And realise.

On 13th Jan 2008, the Delhi Bloggers group celebrated its 4th anniversary in Blues, CP. We all had great fun. It was a simple fun affair. For a change we had no agenda, sponsors or planning. Just a night with online friends who have been together since 4 years and liked to be together.  The common thread tying them – Delhi & blogging.

In late february last year, 23rd Feb to be precise, we bade farewell to our dearest doggie, as he left for the doggie heaven above, after giving us a glorious 17 years & 2 months of his affectionate company. I had planned to write about it on the blog to express the pain and I even put some other posts on hold because of that. But I never could. The loss of a pet may not be understood by those who have never owned one. But believe me, it’s like the loss of any family member or rather that of a child. 17 is teenage in human years and abt a 120 in doggie years. My sister and I have spent the bigger part of our lives in his company than without it, so it’s a loss that is unforgettable for life alright. The pain of the separation apart, it was a most unfortunate time we had, while looking for a decent burial spot (crematoriums have been stopped by the govt). It would have been better if we had thought out the horrendous details earlier, even though painful. I continue to miss him every single moment that I breathe. God bless him for the unconditional love he gave us.

In early March, I organised Delhi’s first tweetup (Twitter meet) along with @mojosanjay. It was great fun and we had a huge attendance even though organised in a jiffy. There were out station members as well and I even shot a video of most members. Got to still work on that to share it :P. It was a meet in a cafe, we explained twitter to those who didnt know it and also explained some mashups to those who did.

In late March, I “aged” another year. The least said the better :).

In April, we helped organise Blogathon India and had a partner meet in Delhi for that. This meet was sponsored by Alootechie. It was a nice cosy affair at “The Attic” in CP – a place to fall in love with. The participation in blogathon was good and had a great potential if done regularly. The sponsorship was based on verbal commitment. It was just 4K to cover the rent & snacks charges. However, getting a reimbursement of that money probably cost me at least 1/4th the amount in just persuing them for it and took 5 months of continuous pressure. A harassing experience, but I made sure I at least got my money back. I am told (via other bloggers) that this isn’t a one off thing, it’s a consistent one with this organisation.

In April again, Dinesh Khanna (who I co-administer “Delhi Photographers” with) drew my attention to the fact that my picture was there all over in Canon’s brochures in every camera box! Well, it still is. And unfortunately there’s not much I can do about it. It had been clicked by photographer friend Sanjay when he & I were trying out our brand new Canon 400D’s and the various features of our new “toys”. This pic as it turned out, suited a particular contest of Canon very well. We discussed the pros/cons of participation & Sanjay decided to send it in hoping to win the first prize – a cool camera lense (which we were quite sure of winning given the quality of the picture demonstrating every aspect of a camera). Later he got a notification that his pic would be used for some Canon related stuff. No news about the competition. Till date. In return he got nothing but a silly camera manual. The modified picture that is there in every Canon Camera’s box now, is so botched up that it literally looks mutilated. The worst treatment to subject someone’s creation to. The contest fine print allows them to publish the picture, however the whole episode reeks of unethical practices on Canon’s part. If the picture was that good that it can go out as part of a brochure of every single Canon EOS series camera now (and has been so since past 1 year plus), then it definitely deserved first prize. What better certification was required than the very fact that Canon decided to save on agency costs & used a picture clicked by a Canon user! However we never heard anything from Canon till date. Bad Canon.

Soon in May, I got an article published in Hindustan Times. It was on blogging and the community of Delhi Bloggers that exists – their meets, the events, the fervour. Felt great :). I have had many interviews (print/visual/audio) taken earlier, but in terms of writing something (not creative work that incidentally got published too) specifically for publishing in a leading publication, this was a first.

In late May, I left my organisation of 8.5 years to join another for the kind of role I wanted. It was a moment I expected to be “impacting” me in a very large way. Surprisingly it didn’t. Not quite. A smooth transition emotionally I guess is due to the disillusionment of many years. It was a long journey with many nuggets worth sharing here. I got a short break of 3 weeks in between both jobs. I tried to get a longer one but the IT industry is just not kind to people who want to take a sabbatical.

Just after I left my prev orgn, 104.8 Meow FM interviewed me in their studio. I had a great time with Ginnie Mahajan who was the host of the show – Tu Tu Meow Meow. It was supposed to be a live chat show where callers call and asked me questions about blogging and then there were random songs that played as well. During the songs part I got to know Ginnie and during the chat part, the callers got to know me. There were some rather hilarious moments where I just could NOT control my laughter while we were live and Ginnie had a lot of fun at my expense in a LIVE show! My family, extended family, some friends & ex-colleagues were all tuned in. Couple of bloggers who knew me called in and some others called me after the show because they had happened to hear me on air! All in all it was a great experience. I had been interviewed by BBC radio in Apr 2006, but a live show in a studio is a different ball game altogether. I had asked a friend to record the show on my mp3 player so I have some sort of a recording but it has a lot of noise in various places. Unfortunately when Meow FM sent me a much needed recording of my show it turned out to be someone elses. Probably someone, somewhere else is laughing off at the chat show that we all are supposed to laugh at! I am yet to edit the recording I have and share it for your hilarious listening pleasure.

On June 7th, I happened to organise India’s first social media camp. Note – there may have been many blogcamps earlier, but there were no camps at all which catered to social media or the various commercial uses of it or social media marketing. I realised this when I tried planning for this particular camp. I could not find any precedent for any sort of guideline. Eventually I shortlisted some areas where social media is used in todays Web2.0 world and tried to invite speakers from that very domain to talk about how they used social media. In the end we had speakers from the Print media, Travel industry, Corporate blogging arena, Social media marketing, a leading newschannel, developers who create social networks, a humour blogger talking abt his social media experience, a blogger presenting a debatable topic – “protecting” social media, a session on our evergreen twitter, social media in the mobile network and a lawyer talking on the much needed legal aspect of social media and of course monetisation. It was a very interesting affair. Our prime sponsor was Indiatimes and we were also assisted by IBM, WordPress and Tyroo. The event was very well appreciated. We got great feedback and accolades. It could not have been possible without Sanjay and Garima. The perfect team to work with. Thanks Guys!

On 16th June, I joined my new organisation, with a new role – the kind that I wanted for long but could not get in the ex-orgn. Later, within 6 months I would get an award at excellence in work and I would wonder why I did not leave my ex-organisation earlier.

I’ll follow up the next 6 months (part deux) in a separate post. Since it’s already been 6 months into 2009 too, perhaps those 6 months (part trois) in another post as well :\.



DBM#25- a meet for delhi bloggers and microbloggers – a roundup 9

On 20th, Delhi witnessed its second twitter meet. Unlike the previous twitter meet, which was held in a cafe, this meet was sponsored by Incube Business centre. The meet started at 5pm. I got there by about 5:20pm thanks to the traffic. There were already some twitter enthusiasts who had introduced themselves to each other. Kumar Rahul was fully prepared with a laptop, ready to just start. We had another round of introductions during which we noted down the twitter id’s or mail id’s (of those who were not on twitter). During the intro round, Gautam Ghosh walked in and I quickly put the onus of kickstarting a session, onto him. Gautam talked about what twitter really meant for him. Conversations are what matter – at the end of the day, whichever platform you are on.

This was followed by a talk on kwippy.com by co-founder – Mayank dhingra, who also got caught in the traffic and arrived midway Gautam’s session.

By the time this session ended, we had already overshot a lot of time and quickly rushed to the refreshment part of our agenda.

Some tasty grub later, we came back in, to discuss the TOI case of plagiarism that I had faced. I was also carrying the copy of What’s hot with the corrigendum in it. Everyone seemed amused by the whole sequence of events. This was followed by a talk on “Bill of rights” by Kumar Rahul. This is a collection of points he plans to take up with @scobleizer.

We followed this with another round of some rather tasty sandwiches, samosas, tea & coffee. Just before we all were leaving, someone suggested we click a group picture, so we did with about 1/4th of the participants. All pictures would be uploaded soon and a post shall be here to keep you all updated. Tune into the rss feed of this blog :).

There were about 40 participants, even though the confirmations were more than double. A lot of names may not have been noted down, so if your name is missing, please do drop in a comment. A list of attendees, in no particular order. Those not on twitter have had their mail id’s mentioned.

Twilight Fairy : @twilightfairy

Sanjay: @mojosanjay

Gautam: @gautamghosh

Kumar Rahul: @kumar_rahul

Vishal Singhal: @vishalsinghal

Ashutosh: @xyzashu

Divya: @dichakravarty (all the way from bangalore)

Sameer: @sameergupta

Mayank Gupta: @mayankgupta

Krisnair: @krisnair

Nikhil: freakynikh at gmail dot com

Amrita: kumar dot amrita at gmail dot com

Rajbir: @rajjo19

Nitin: @ndhawan

Niraj: imniraj at gmail dot com

Vidhi: @vidhithakur

Vimoh: @vimoh

Dipankar: @dipankarsarkar

Maitrayee: maitrayee.rcy at gmail dot com

Ketu Desai: swetaketu79 at gmail dot com

Aionava: myspeedpost at gmail dot com

Abhijit: @jeetblog

Abhishek: @abhishek

Arun: @simplyarun

Pankaj: @pjain

Rohit: rohit.sharma3 at wipro dot com

Gurudatt : @prolificd

Mayank Dhingra: @mayankdhingra

Arjun : @arjunghosh

Gayatri : @grath

Sanjay Jha

Manik

Monica : @jasuja

Check some of the tweets from that day. Here are the posts on this event written by Gautam, Mayank. If anyone else has written anything about the event, please leave a comment here and it will be added in the roundup.