Years have passed, and so the gadgets have changed. But I have become more productive with them, and my relationship with them has become more meaningful than ‘the latest available, just out of curiosity’.

So here’s my top 5 gadget list that I’m using as of now.

1. The MacBook Pro

I had always been a PC user. Half of the time I was forced to use Windows. The other half I used different flavours of Linux, for some time Red Hat, some time Ubuntu, and most of the time OpenSuSE.

Well, that changed in the middle of 2011, when I finally decided to buy a MacBook. It’s a 13″ MacBook Pro, now souped up with 6GB RAM and an additional 120GB Intel SSD, which make it all the more fast and a pleasure to work with.

2. The Phones
At present I’m using a Karbonn A9+, which was a distress purchase from Croma, because my 4 year old Nexus One had refused to charge that day, and I needed a phone.

Before this, I was using a Motorola Defy+. An awesomely rugged phone, which did not fear water, dust, or any such thing specified in its manual. Too bad it had to go to the repair shop, because one night I dropped it from four feet and it landed face-down and its glass panel cracked. Gave an effect of an awesome psychedelic wallpaper though.

3. The Battery Pack
In this age of smartphones, where screen sizes are getting bigger and processors are getting faster, battery capacity is hardly able to keep up. Most smartphones die within 12 hours of charging them full.

This gave rise to a new category of mobile electronics – the USB battery pack. You charge it at home when you charge your phone. When you leave home, you carry it along with you, and when your phone’s battery is about to die, you plug it in the battery pack and turn the pack on. Voila! Instant charging without being tied to a wall. It’s like carrying an extra bottle of charge along for when your Camelbak runs out of charge.

Mine is a CoolerMaster Choiix Power Fort 5.5Wh. Why did I buy this one? Because it’s tiny enough to fit in my pockets along with the phone, and it came in my budget.

4. The iPod
This was my first ever Apple device. And I bought it only because it offered me the largest capacity to store my entire music collection, and was still the best on the price/GB scale. Moreover, its battery has lasted me well, though it shows fatigue nowadays (This iPod Classic 120GB is 4 years old).

5. The Camera
I own a Nikon D90. In its time it was a game changer. And it’s not a bad performer now either. This isn’t a device I use daily, but it’s important enough for me to make the list.

Now, out of these 5, I have bought at least 3 (4 if you ignore the Karbonn and consider the Motorola) online – the laptop, the camera and the battery pack. In addition, I have bought innumerable memory cards, for the camera and for the phones, cables, chargers, flashguns, flash controllers, studio equipment, old lenses, new lenses, all online.

Yes, online. I believe that retail has matured enough in India for us to buy even high value things such as these, online. Except for maybe clothes, shoes etc. (where you would like to hold and feel the product, and maybe try it for fit), I think everything else can be bought online, what with trusted platforms like Flipkart, eBay, SmartShoppers ensuring that we get value for our product, get it in time, and any complaints we might have are resolved. Even though I haven’t yet, but people have been buying even clothes and shoes online, now that Jabong and Myntra are here.

There’s another reason I bought these things online. It’s cheaper. Yes, most of the time it’s cheaper than buying from a brick-and-mortar store. I’m not talking about the convenience of comparing and ordering, or about the opportunity cost of driving down to a store. I actually got these products for lesser rates than I would have gotten them offline. Many a times it’s because the vendor passes on some savings to us, but quite often it’s because I come across a deal. For example, the now almost famous laptop sale period on eBay, where I bought my MacBook and where I send my friends to buy their MacBooks from, or Flipkart’s birthday music giveaway.

There are three ways I find such deals:

1. Mailers: eBay regularly sends out mailers with coupons for specific discounts on specific categories. I just try to time my purchases with the validity of these coupons.
2. Sites: This is another way I get coupons and deals for my purchases: by looking for them online. There are quite a few coupon & deal aggregators online, like Cuponation.in, and a few others, where I look for deals for the product I’m looking for at the shop I’m looking to buy it at.
3. Phone recharge: Vodafone and Reliance (that’s all I know of) often give out coupons of eBay and other shopping portals when you recharge your phone connection from their site. It’s quite handy when you have to buy something in the range of Rs. 300 to say Rs. 2000, because the discount is not a percentage, but it’s often a flat Rs. 100 discount.

And it rained today, after the sky turned yellow and made us crave more and more for what was to come.

These were shot just before it rained.

Write I did. But quite a few months late (yes I am a lazy blogger). So here goes.

Yoforia is a unique place. It’s a frozen yoghurt place. A place where you can walk in and eat a big cup of frozen yoghurt and no one would stare at you for eating only a big cup of dessert at lunch time. It is a new concept in India. And it looks and sounds cool.

As I entered the place, I noticed a few things – the colour theme of the wallpaper, the furniture, the huge and deep counter on the right, with a waffle maker, an espresso machine, a microwave, and a weighing scale among other things, and the insets in the wall, where I could see machines with snouts, that looked like ‘softy’ machines.

Once inside, and having seen around myself, I was, frankly, a bit clueless about what they offered, what would I have to pay, and what was I doing with my life.

But pretty soon, the people manning the counter decided to get me out of my conundrum, and asked me if I had come there for the first time. Then he offered to help me. By first showing me their menu, which, for some reason is placed right over the entrance, and is set in I think 14-point type. Well, the menu would look good as a spiral bound thing that I could hold in my hand. Sadly, they had not thought of that. So I went to work trying to figure out what’s on it, like you would try to read the names of soldiers on the India Gate.

The Process

After explaining the menu, he showed me the 5-step process:

1. You wash your hands (the outlet had a bottle of hand sanitizer instead of a washbasin),
2. select the cup size,
3. select the flavour of the yoghurt,
4. choose your sauces,
5. choose the toppings (fruits & nuts),
6. Then you pay by weight. The cup’s weight is standard, so that’s deducted from the total weight.

It’s similar to Subway, in that there’s a process, you select your components, and the main product is a customisable-from-a-fixed-component-menu item. Different, in that it’s not a sandwich, but yoghurt (duh!), you don’t pay a fixed price for each flavour/type of the item, but pay by weight (so, get more toppings, and you pay more, and if you just want one dollop of yoghurt, you don’t run a big bill), and, it’s you who is doing all the work of getting the components, and making your dessert.

Pretty cool.

What Else

In addition to the frozen yoghurt, I could order waffles, crepes, cold drinks (like iced teas & coffees) and hot drinks (chai, coffee, latte etc).

I made a modest medium cup of yoghurt for myself, with two base flavours, some pistachios & almonds, and some chocolate sprinkles. After I weighed the cup, the store manager Mr. Shiv, refused to bill me for it. It was, he said, on the house.

After a while, he whipped up a delicious number for me, complete with candy sticks, cherries & mangoes, and the beautiful yoghurt swirl on top. I could not eat any more, but he insisted that I take at least one bite, which I did. And then the staff there shared it amongst themselves on my insistence.

Ambience

The decor came across as a bit confused, what with the wallpaper’s colour scheme (pastel) not going with the furniture and cups’ designs (more primary colours). I kept thinking about sci-fi movies from the 70s, because of the stainless steel, and the insets in walls – this could have been a Stanley Kubrick style dessert bar on the moon.

It’s a bit stark, because there’s nothing on the walls apart from a. the 5-step process (placed so high that I had to crane my neck to take a look at it, b. the menu, and c. a big softboard, where patrons had stuck Post-It notes with praises & suggestions. The wallpaper is nothing but a cacophony of vertical coloured stripes, with silhouettes of animals, birds, trees & flowers in reverse. The silhouettes make it a bit interesting, but I am forced to ask – how is this connected to the brand, product, experience?

What Works

The product. The yummy, chilled, delicious, creamy, yoghurt, with the assortment of toppings, sauces, and sprinklings. It’s delicious.
The concept is new, so that’d work for a while.
The idea that I pay by weight, works for us Indians. Because we won’t feel cheated. Yes we could freeload by taking only the expensive toppings and still paying the standard 79p. This also works for us
The soft board. It’s of course a tertiary concern, but when you walk in somewhere where you see people have shown their love for the place, you feel like you have come to the right place.

What Does Not Work (For Me)

The process. It stands out so much. Because you are supposed to follow that process (total self service) for only one product on the menu, never mind that this product is the reason for the existence of the store. What are the staff supposed to do when you are making your yoghurt? Guide you through each step? And it’s not like I’m guaranteeing a return visit. So much of process learning and knowledge transfer to a customer for one cup of yoghurt seems a bit too much. So the staff has to do this hand-holding for almost every cup of yoghurt they sell.

The menu. It mentions everything else in a properly aligned set of columns, save for the hero product, which is mentioned last, in one multi-lined entry – “by the way, frozen yoghurt is 79p/gm”.

And the placement of the menu. It’s not the first, second, or third thing I saw. I had to turn 180˚ to see the menu, and that, when I was told to look for it. And well, they could maybe add a telescope to the existing decor, so that patrons could see what’s written on the menu.

The staff. They are courteous, they are helpful, they are sweet, and they know the products well. But they didn’t come across as much trained & polished. Also, they could do with a smart uniform. That would add to the credibility of the place.

I got talking to the store manager, and had an enlightening time. The Vimannagar Phoenix Mall store got anywhere around 45 to 200 walkins every day according to him. More on public holidays, and business was good, even though I only saw two other customers during the time I was there. Maybe because it was a weekday afternoon.

What They Could Do Better

Apart from what I’ve mentioned above already, I think there is a need for the walk-in customers to be given a clue. If a customer has to prepare the dessert by herself, how about putting up a big sign at the entrance and on the facing wall with the instructions in big bold letters? Nowadays, you also have the luxury to play a looping movie on a TV screen, where someone is demonstrating the process for the benefit of customers. Unless something like that happens, I think the staff could be a bit quicker and more proactive in asking customers if they need help, and showing them how it’s done.

It’s a new process. You’d need to educate the customers.

But despite these concerns that I’m sure they’d be working on anyway, the place is a must visit, because a. you now know the process (you’re welcome ), and b. the yoghurt is really really really delicious.

Dance.

After a while I just stopped what I was doing, and decided to make the most of their presence.

Three bikes with three photographers entered Lavasa. By the time they reached they were drenched, and it was dark & foggy.

All their plans of shooting the shiny new Enfield with the colourful city of Lavasa in the backdrop were also drenched, and had to be thrown in the lake.

We had to do the best with what we had. And I think we did decently well.

And you get the wallpaper one day early because tomorrow is an international holiday

Guess what the fly is sitting on

Anish took me there. He has been a part of Word of Grace, and wanted me to help him in making a video for the Church.

That Sunday I met all these really wonderful and warm people, who come together to share their happiness & sorrows with each other, sing & laugh with each other, and welcome anyone with open arms and a heartfelt smile.

At some level, it was for the kid in me who loves toys too And for everyone in the house who was enamoured by it.