Cigarettes in India (and throughout the world) are like religions. Once you are given your brand, you stick with it, live with it, and die for it or rather because of it. I say ‘given’ your brand because just like religion, which one inherits from parents, one is blessed with the cigarette his immediate seniors in college smoked.

So which cigarette is which religion?

1) Wills Navy Cut:

Navy cut is the one cigarette that defines other cigarettes. You compare your cigarette’s length, flavor, kick to its forefather: The navy cut. Which makes the navy cut an equivalent of Judaism. Like Judaism, not many people in today’s world actually are subscribers to navy cut. But those few who are, think they are the real smokers, look down upon other smokers, and know that everyone else is just trying to copy their brand with slight modifications.

2)Marlboro:

The worlds best selling brand of cigarettes! But in India, only elites or snobs smoke Marlboro. Yeah, you guessed it right, Marlboro is Christianity. I’ve heard that people who smoke Marlboro try to convert a lot of people who smoke Gold Flake (see below), but methinks that’s just crazy talk.

3) Gold flake:

The most obvious of them all: Gold Flake is Hinduism. Maximum number of smokers in the country, spread homogeneously everywhere. The people who smoke gold flake think that this one brand was the oldest, much before the navy cuts and marlboros of the world. They usually don’t insult people who smoke other cigarettes, and think that ultimately all smoke lead to the same result. But then, they have immense hatred for people who smoke pot (see below)

4) Marijuana:

Well, you may say that it’s not a cigarette. Yeah I agree, but recent statistics reveal that ~18% of all cigarettes smoked in India are filled with it. Plus, the green colour would make me compare it with Islam. People who smoke pot reveal that it’s kick is above anything which a puny cigarette can provide. They hate people who smoke wills navy cut. And they hate people who smoke Gold Flake, because flakers worship the cigarette packets.

5) Classic ultra milds:

In my opinion, Ultra milds is Buddhism. People who smoke ultra milds are the closest to not smoking anything at all. In fact, some gold flakers who are treated badly (because they smoke Gold flake small) convert to smoke Classic ultra milds. This way, they still get the pleasure of smoking something, but that’s just plain air, honestly speaking.

6)Phantom sweet cigarettes.

It is as much of a cigarette as bald is a hair color, or Atheism a religion. People who smoke these phantom cigarettes are the ones who find the actual smokers funny and wonder what good can be acheived by smoking. The keep their health and sanity intact by not smoking at all, and find all the brands of cigarettes almost equally harmful to health.

So which cigarette do you smoke?

Google is supposed to be the best when it comes to targeted advertising. And as orkut is another product from google, ads on it aren’t supposed to be that off the mark either.

Now, I don’t know where in my orkut profile have I mentioned anything for which I deserve an ad like this one:

Actually forget the targeting, how are these kind of ads even allowed on google?!

Vegetarian dishes have strange names: And paneer is one of those names which people just can’t associate with anything edible. So what do they do? Change it to banner, which is obviously a much more edible vegetarian dish. Don’t believe me? Have a look yourself:

Banner butter masala

And that’s what really grinds my gears!

Recently I came across a Romanian website for discovering restaurants in NCR region. (Courtesy Sukrit)

So here’s a short review about it:

The site basically revolves around restaurants in the NCR region, also featuring some events, and discounts. Restaurants can simply be browsed, or can be searched. I can’t really comment on the search quality as I don’t know about the NCR region too well, but at the first glance it looks like the site doesn’t support proper search, i.e. search by category, or narrowing by price or cuisine. The ’show me more options to search on’ link is not highlighted, and calls for an extra user click. But it’s a bag of cookies once you click on it! It looks like they have very detailed information on restaurants, as one can narrow search results by both features (a lot of them) and cuisines(a lot of them too). I was disappointed to know that I couldn’t get results for a simple query like: Restaurants in Central Delhi with Indian cuisine, and a rooftop/garden setting.

The search for discounts is a little low on search features as well. You can find discounts only on restaurant names, and only when you book through aplacetodine.com. The good thing about discounts was that I finally got to a restaurant details page (which I attempted to go through the search, but had failed). The restaurant page really looks a menu card for a fine-dine restaurant, very different from the parent site. I think the designers had intended it to be that way, giving each restaurant a number of templates to choose from. They have detailed menus for each restaurant, a BIG bonus from my side if they can keep that data updated. Also, you can book a table online and order for home delivery. Each restaurant page lists all future events in that restaurant.

The user registration process is painful and disguised as being pretty simple. First, you just give your email address, then check your email to click the link they provide. Click on it to activate your profile, but you’re not done! Now comes the real registration. You have to provide details like state, city (why would you ask all that when you’re only an NCR based website?), locality, landmark, and guess what… your mobile number as well. And that’s not optional. So basically to write a review, you have to put at stake your email, mobile etc. They will be sold to the restaurants or not, can’t be guaranteed. Anyway, giving a bogus mobile number works fine, so I just did that The website has a concept of reward points, which I believe can be reimbursed or redeemed in some form later.

Coming to the implementation and UI of the website, I think they have done a decent job at it. Nice use of colours and a homogeneous user interace. They haven’t restricted themseleves in using AJAX or flash wherever appropriate. A little more thought could have been given to make the site a little lighter on resources, i.e. the page size should be at least reduced by 100 kb, in my opinion. Their homepage gives about 90 HTML errors, which is unacceptable, as plenty of <div>, <td>, <tr>s are not closed.

Overall Rating for the website: 6/10 (Given that they will launch in at least 8 cities)

So here I was, at a railway station, trying to find a place to get some cold drinks. Finally found an IRCTC counter, and guess how did it look:

And that is what that grinds my gears

P.S.: Wonder what the gay kids are up to, btw.