The Fashionistas

Screaming posters announce the arrival of the new collection, Of the oncoming spring, of the exaggerated exuberance and frivolity. Itchy fingers with packed wallets, dazzled eyes with greedy faces, Drop their tattered Cards at the counter. The season of being talk-of-the-town has arrived. Who else is ready for fawning attention and looks of envious admiration? Do you know that innocent lambs are slaughtered for the shawls and scarves? Do you think I care? I am busy with planning my calendar of cocktail parties for the spring season. Discounts and rebates are for the fringes of the society, for the untutored. The trends of Paris will storm the town and guess who will be toast of the Effiel? The collections are sublime, I hear. The cut and fit exquisite. The prices, well talk to my assistant about the bills. The World where Fantasy and Fashion are soul sisters. Is too much to expect a reality check here? Seasons come and Seasons go…Spring gives way to the Summer collection. By the way the Winter collection was a complete let down. But the cocktail parties and the shoot sessions among the snow was the highlight of the season. We believe in the form and not the content. The sizzle and not the steak. Wait for the opening night of the Spring season. I will sizzle in all my splendor and form.

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I was screaming into the canyon At the moment of my death The echo I created Outlasted my last breath My voice it made an avalanche And buried a man I never knew And when he died his widowed bride Met your daddy and they made you I have only one thing to do and that's Be the wave that I am and then Sink back into the ocean I have only one thing to do and that's Be the wave that I am and then Sink back into the ocean I have only one thing to do and that's Be the wave that I am and then Sink back into the ocean

Are you being served?

What customers want and what businesses think they want are often two different things. Here’s what customers are looking for. Anyone who has gotten an unsolicited and irrelevant offer related to something they’ve done online knows that creepy feeling that someone is watching me. This kind of reaction is the third rail of today’s drive to personalize interactions with customers. To better understand what customers really value, we asked 60 shoppers to create mobile diaries of their personalized interactions with various brands over two weeks. With over 2,000 entries in total, we were able to see what kind of personalized communication works for customers and what doesn’t. 1. Give me relevant recommendations I wouldn’t have thought of myself. 2. Talk to me when I’m in shopping mode. 3. Remind me of things I want to know but might not be keeping track of. 4. Know me no matter where I interact with you. 5. Share the value in a way that’s meaningful to me.

Picture This

Welcome to the future of insurance, as seen through the eyes of Srikanth, a customer in the year 2030. His digital personal assistant orders him an autonomous vehicle for a meeting across town. Upon hopping into the arriving car, Srikanth decides he wants to drive today and moves the car into “active” mode. Srikanth’s personal assistant maps out a potential route and shares it with his mobility insurer, which immediately responds with an alternate route that has a much lower likelihood of accidents and auto damage as well as the calculated adjustment to his monthly premium. Srikanth’s assistant notifies him that his mobility insurance premium will increase by 4 to 8 percent based on the route he selects and the volume and distribution of other cars on the road. It also alerts him that his life insurance policy, which is now priced on a “pay-as-you-live” basis, will increase by 2 percent for this quarter. The additional amounts are automatically debited from his bank account. When Srikanth pulls into his destination’s parking lot, his car bumps into one of several parking signs. As soon as the car stops moving, its internal diagnostics determine the extent of the damage. His personal assistant instructs him to take three pictures of the front right bumper area and two of the surroundings. By the time Srikanth gets back to the driver’s seat, the screen on the dash informs him of the damage, confirms the claim has been approved, and that a mobile response drone has been dispatched to the lot for inspection. If the vehicle is drivable, it may be directed to the nearest in-network garage for repair after a replacement vehicle arrives. While this scenario may seem beyond the horizon, such integrated user stories will emerge across all lines of insurance with increasing frequency over the next decade. In fact, all the technologies required above already exist, and many are available to consumers. With the new wave of deep learning techniques, such as convolutional neural networks,1artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to live up to its promise of mimicking the perception, reasoning, learning, and problem solving of the human mind. In this evolution, insurance will shift from its current state of “detect and repair” to “predict and prevent,” transforming every aspect of the industry in the process. The pace of change will also accelerate as brokers, consumers, financial intermediaries, insurers, and suppliers become more adept at using advanced technologies to enhance decision making and productivity, lower costs, and optimize the customer experience.

Devil’s Dance

Let the curtain rise, on the Dance of the Devil in the sea. Let the waves rise and flood the hallowed halls. Let the roar of thousand winds drown out the screams. Those very screams of terror, of the people who filled the room. They had innocently come to watch the play. Perhaps they may also see the Devil make a fool of himself. They came prepared to be entertained. But now they are being washed away. Stage stands broken and ripped to million pieces. The Crowd cowers behind their seats, silently praying to the absentee God. Meanwhile Devil continues his demonic dance, swirling mud, blood and waves of oceans all around. Trembling lips, hurriedly vomits out prayers for mercy and deliverance. The curtain stays up, the chaos and madness doesn’t seem to stop. The performance was supposed to be for 2 hours. Now it is almost 2 years, and it still rages on. Let the brave men from the crowd bring the curtain down. Bring the show to a stop. Haul away the Devil to the backstage and gag him. But no one dares. They all tremble in an impotent fear. Suddenly as it began, the madness stops. The Devil is tired of his silly dance and the screams of the people that he terrorized. He is bored of the one-sided dominance of the stage. He would have loved a good resistance and fight. He would have wanted someone to take up the challenge. But they all are busy running for their lives. The Devil pulls the curtain down and the show stops. Tomorrow the Devil will dance his chaos in some other stage, in some other town. Today was Syria, tomorrow who knows where he will be?

Travelling Light

Let the void embrace the promise. Time for you to be disenchanted with the outcome. Prayers and bargains that is in your heart, needs to be forgotten. Try to remember what you used to be, before you took your form. Tornadoes of your voices and thoughts have generated, the person you have become. Surfing on top of the waves of life, you are just a speck of dust. Be still and comprehend. That you are a force of energy. Your journey is not this. Only in form and image, you do not exist. See through the haze of smoke that lies before you. You will realise that, you are just a travelling light. On and On through eons, we have blazed across the cosmic sky. We have gathered nothing. Nothing have we lost. You are part of the Cosmic desert storm. Just a dust in the Storm.

SuperBlueBloodMoon

Universe is getting ready to put on a great celestial show. The Cosmos is ready and wired to bring us the grandeur and the mystery in our skies. The human mind can't comprehend the magic and its mystique. The logical and mechanical mind dissect the Wonder in the rulebook and framework of a structured thesis. The Universe smiles, a smile of condescense. But sometimes we need to acknowledge the Superior presence. Not question it. Not frame it in millions of logical and clinical explanations. The Wonder and the mystique is lost on humans. Thousands click the celestial show on their mobile phones, not forgetting to add filters of self importance. But the Universe goes on with its show from the Dawn of time to its end. The Wonder and the magic is witnessed by the Cosmos with a thunderous applause. The multitudes of beings on Planet Earth rush to their timelines to Post their moment with SuperBlueBloodMoon. Wondering how many likes and retweets it will get?