Mumbai rain is here..and it makes me wonder

Of the very VERY few things I like about this city (that never gets to sleep) the absolute pelting rains is most definitely one of them.

There is something soothing about it, the gentle pitter patter. The constant static sound is actually better than the usual absolute silence I prefer when I want to be alone (which is getting to be more and more of the time these days)

Sitting in my balcony feeling the rain drops fall on me reminds of the time in college we all went to marine drive and got completely drenched. I wonder why I haven't gone back and gotten wet in the rain again. Come to think of it, I cant remember the last time I went out in the rain to get wet.

I wonder why I stopped. I wonder when I will gather the will to step out and do it again.

The strong coffee in my hand is making me strangely nostalgic. It also brings up another observation and subsequent question.

I miss that smell of fresh earth that you get if you experience rain in the country side or smaller towns. We dont get that in Mumbai. All we have here is cemented roads and depressingly boring buildings which start looking rundown 5 minutes after their renovation ends. We also get tons of garbage.

Just spending some time with my cousins and it dawns on me, they don't even KNOW what this smell is like. They get excited when we step out of town and they can see the rare star filled sky. Another thing which I had simply forgotten about.

What else have we forgotten ourselves and cant share with the next generation coming in? What all was forgotten before us that we haven't yet experienced and probably never will?

Today is probably "that day" when Mumbai will come to a standstill. Just as well. Everyone should stand still and enjoy the few remenants of nature still available to us in this concretized monstrosity.

How long till we forget about this as well?

Evil Google knows ALL!

This is what I was afraid of.

The sheer amount of categorized, identifiable data with Google.

If you think I am taking this relaxed weekend to indulge in favorite pastime - Google Bashing, well, you are probably right BUT my passion for bashing google does not mean what I say is wrong.

If you want to be scared and/or shocked head over to : www.google.com/history

Type in your google password and see a list of ALL the search queries you have ever made on Google. ALL of them. Even the naughty ones.

You can see statistics of your searches per month, per day and infact even by the hour. The graph here is my search statistic for this past week. Do post your "scores" so we can see who searches the MOST :)

Go check this out. You will find that Google now knows more about you than even you do.

Be scared. Be VERY scared.

Poetry. Saying more, with less

I remember rather vividly, once when I was having one of my many arguments my ex-boss (one of the most brilliant people I have ever come across) he said to me:

"The biggest and the deepest thoughts can be conveyed in the simplest of words" I argued vehemently against it as at that point in time I was arguing FOR increasing the word count per article but generally, I agree with his drift.

Those of you who know me would probably be thinking "but you talk so damn much!" Well, that is simply because I want to communicate a lot more :)

But you are right, I am a words person (if I may invent a category) so much so that music for me is all about the lyrics. Poetry has always fascinated me, even when I had to study it as part of my course at school.

Having said that, I am the first one to clarify that I am not into the sort of poetry which goes through reams and reams of pages and thousands of lines to get to the point. No, I like poetry that says more with less and its incredible how the simplest lines can define ones entire life and yet not make the life seem shallow.

It is the ability of the poets, to simplify complex thoughts, emotions and events and convey them in a couple of lines which you remember for the rest of your life, that draws me to it.

Sitting here in a rather reflective mood, listening to Tequila Sunrise, my mind seems to keep repeating these 6 lines again and again. These lines have changed by life and are the most inspirational words I have ever read, save for The Alchemist which is at once inspiring and dangerous - but that is a story for another day.

For now, read these lines, go read the whole poems if you so like and if possible, post your favorites here so I can read them too.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
- Robert Frost. The Road Not Taken

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
- Rudyard Kipling. If

Barter works better than money.

While surfing the wibbly web, I came across this guy called Kyle. Kyle has done an interesting experiment. He has proven, in no uncertain terms what early man knew all along.

Barter works better than money.

His experiment of starting with a red paper clip and trading it to ultimately get a house in one year's time is something that flies in the face of common wisdom of "money" or "finance" if you will and as these things do, it got me thinking.

BTW, you can see what he did and how here: One Red Paper Clip

If you really think about it, paying money for objects is infact a kind of barter. Goods, in exchange of "money"

In the early days, people exchanged what they had plentiful for what they lacked or had less of. Now, we all barter with a common commodity (if I may call it that) and that is "money" so in a way, the barter system never stopped, it just evolved with us.

But since everyone now has some money (and some have loads) the barter system got a little skewed. As more and more people started getting more and more money, its value started going down and people had to pay up more money to get what they wanted.

Come to think about it, this is possibly one of the simplest explanations for how we get inflation. Granted that it isnt perfect but it does get the point across.

In theory (this is entirely my opinion) if we start bartering again, we might might end up paying a lot less for a lot more. To take an extreme example, if some one is stuck in a dessert and is thirsty, would he rather have water or a bagful of diamonds?

In barter, the value of goods traded may not be the same in monetary terms. But, in their perceived values to the parties trading, they might be equal.

Consider another example of stamps. Sweden 1855 Three Skilling Yellow is perhaps the most expensive stamp in the world, fetching over 2 million dollars (US) at an auction. The only reason the stamp is worth this much "money" is because that is the perceived value of the stamp by the collector.

Now consider a situation where there is no money and the owner of the stamp is not a collector but an auto enthusiast, while the collector is the owner of a vintage car he doesnt much care for. They will both trade and feel that they got a steal because for each, the perceived value of what they received is far far more than what they gave away.

It's amazing to speculate how we would've gone about life had money not been invented.

If you have something you want to trade for a paper clip, let me know. It should preferably be a house because I don't have the patience shown by Kyle to go around trading for a whole year!

In return, I will make my offer better than his. You are no longer limited to a red paper clip. I will get you one in any color you like!

Observing people.

Me and my girl get into frequent arguments about how ascerbic, cribby and, in her words, bitchy (girls!) I can be. Her favorite quote being, why must you comment on everything, analyse everything going around you? Why, if some fat woman has come to the movies wearing an outfit revealing more tummy than rest of the hall has, does it tick you off?

Why do you have to notice everyone in a restaurant and how they behave or act? And then why must you eat my head sitting for hours talking about why person X behaved or did what he did. Why? why? WHY?

Why dissect every nuance in a sentence spoken by someone? People blurt out things all the time?

I'll spare you the details of how I work my immense charm and get her to calm down but suffice to say, it is not something everyone can do. You have to be gifted and lucky. Mostly lucky :)

I have no answer to her questions except that observing people is my ongoing experiment. It might sound crazy but its fun and you learn a lot about people, which is important.

Observing people is like a hobby and a learning exercise. The more you watch, the more you learn and the more you learn, the more you understand and understanding people is always good. Ask people in any profession, from Investment banking to brand management, from advertising to publishing. Everything depends on understanding of people. So irrespective of the profession you are in you need to understand people.

It is said that to understand others, you must first understand yourself. This is perhaps the most misunderstood statement. It isnt a circumspect way of saying "mind your own business" But the best way to understanding people is to understand your own actions and reactions.

A branch off could be for you to say things for the heck of it and observing how people react. Some will be shocked, some amused and usually some won't care but each reaction or non reaction will teach you something about a person.

You could say this is a self learning method for manipulating people, you could be right but if you think about it, manipulating people isn't necessarily wrong in itself. It is WHY you manipulate them that defines the correctness.

Just walk into a mall and don't just hear people talking listen to them talk. Listen to the words they use, listen to the inflections in their voice, watch their body language and soon, by just looking at them, you will be able to tell whether they are genuine buyers or not.

A restaurant will teach you more about peer pressure than school. Look around and you will find people picking at their food and desperate to make small talk so they can forget about it for a while. Why? Its not because they are upset and didn't want to eat. If they were, they could've simply not ordered. Its because they ordered what they don't like. Maybe because what they like is the wrong thing to order with the crowd they are with.

Its intriguing to observe and sometimes even chat up people. It expands ones views and understanding of people as a whole. It can even make you more patient with them.

If you think about it, it isnt as creepy as it sounds. It is the most natural thing, to notice those around you. It is our "mind your own business" mindset which has created these silos and erected the barriers most of us live within. But we don't have to and we shouldn't.

Money gets you to god. Faster!

It's wedding season. Or so they say. I frankly cannot imagine how someone can get married in this..excuse the expression.. heat!! It's way too hot to dress up and play bride and groom. It's way too hot to attend a wedding in your best suit and eat all the oily food.

But common sense, isn't, and people end up tying the knot in just such times.

Note: If you are reading this and planning on inviting me to YOUR wedding, please make sure its in cooler climes if not downright winters!

I recently took 3 days off from work and went to attend a wedding reception of a not so near cousin. That being in Indore, I absolutely had to visit the Ujjain temple (more on the why part later).

So off I went, in a nice looking car with the sun glaring down and doing its best to roast me with the 43 degree C temperature. Inside ofcourse, thanks to Willis H. Carrier, I was sipping on a coke in a very comfortable 19 degrees (the minimum the in-car a/c could do)

The comfort however, was rather short lived as I was about to find out.

On arriving at the Mahakaleshwar temple, I was greeted with a deceptively friendly sight. There were no queues. I was about to find out why.

Stepping out of the car instantly brought me to the harsh reality of heat. It was hot. So hot, that I was dehydrated in less than a minute. And then it really got worse.

The idea is, being a place of worship, you cannot wear any footwear inside the temple. So while common sense would entail that you take your slippers out right at the entrance to the temple, here, you have to do it at a road side stall. This means, you have to walk, barefoot, across a road so hot, you would be forgiven for thinking the tar had only just been laid.

I ofcourse found out how hot the road was the hard way. I stepped on it barefoot. A few explitives from me confirmed to everyone that I wasn't a veteran at this and wasn't too good at coping up with walking barefeet on near molten roads.

Things didnt improve once we reached inside the temple. Only the gate had any kind of shade. The rest of the way to the Jyotirling (more on this later as well) was a giant exercise in crowd control with those rows created like you normally see at immigration points at airports.

Finally, reaching the designated place, I found out, it wasn't "it". This was where one hires a pundit and he gets all your puja done.

Now there are two ways of doing the Puja. One is, to stand in the "queue" (and there was a long one inside the temple) and wait for your turn to go in. And yes, you wait under the sun with your feet getting blistered on the burning hot floor. You have to shell out $4 per person for this "experience"

The other alternative is to pay around $30 to hire the Pundit who then takes you through the "V.I.P" route. No points for guessing what we paid, $30 it was!

Our misery didn't end here though. It turned out the V.I.P entrance was really just that and for convenience was built right at the main entrance of the temple. This meant we had to troop all the way back on the super hot floor (no feet hadn't become used to it yet. I don't think they ever would've)

From there it was mostly ok, except one mad dash across a large verandah which was again bathed in sunlight and was hot as hell. Our Pundit chap then shoved all the other non VIPs out of the way and got us an exclusive spot we could stand on, while he directed the hoardes of human traffic around us. We performed the puja to our satisfaction (I was distracted though, more on this follows below) All this, from taking our slippers off to putting them back on, took us 45 minutes. The time that an average $4 payer spends just standing in the queue!

Money apparently, gets you to god, faster and you also get more time to explain precisely what you want him to give you.

The story ofcourse, doesn't end there. Once we did come out, we realised one of us had lost our wallets inside! It had been flicked! The wallet had little money but 2 dozen credit cards inside!! Then began a frantic dash to get them cancelled and we finally returned to the hotel.

But all through this, the one thing I was thinking was how wrong the whole thing felt. I mean, sure I felt elated to not have to stand in the line, but just because I can pay more money, why should I be allowed to stay longer than other, needier people?

By definition, any place I go and worship, I would expect it to bring me peace. A sense of security and calm. The experience at the temple was none of the above. It was uncomfortable, taxing and with the massive crowds elbowing everyone out, including themselves, it certainly didn't bring me any peace. It was more like a race of who can pray the longest in the minimum time that the operators were allowing people to stand for. Unless ofcourse, you paid VIP money then you could take as long as you wanted.

Oh and it definitely wasn't reassuring on the security front either. We had a wallet flicked.

I am more agnostic than an atheist but even I can tell this is the wrong way to go about instilling faith in today's youth. A generation that is more object oriented than any other before it. A generation that texts and chats and knows more people online by class 10 than its elders ever met in their entire lives. But still, a generation that understands religion and rituals for what they were really meant to signify and achieve and not just blindly follow them. A generation that respects tradition and culture more than before and follows it willingly where it makes sense.

For a generation already as mature as this, our institutions are depressinglyand hopelessly out of synch and frankly, I don't really see anything changing this in the near future.

This temple, for example, is supposed to be one of the holiest places for Hindus, but if you ask me to go back, I wouldn't and I suggest you don't try it either. It just isn't worth it.

Why Two Blogs?

Frankly, as mentioned on some other post, I started bloggin on Blogger only because one of my friends couldn't read my blog on Windows Live Spaces and being a Google hater, going this is no less than sacrilige.

However, also wanted to conduct an experiment about which one was overall, better. And after about a month of using both, I still maintain Windows Live Spaces (WLS) is better. By far

Here's why:

1. Photos are an important part of the blog. And handling of photos in blogger sucks. It's just too painful while in WLS, its supremely smooth. Just brilliant.

2. Posting. This is such a pain in Blogger. WLS has this cool utility called Windows Live Writer, which is like a cross between a super light WYSIWYG website creator and MS Word. Its brilliant. I can type whatever i want offline, thoughts I want to pen here can come to me anytime and I might not ALWAYS have an internet connection. I can drag and drop and position images like a dream. Even format them in various ways, something NONE of the stupid tools for Blogger let me do.

3. Credit to Microsoft that they have infact made Live Writer such that I can even post it to Blogger but stupid blogger doesnt let me post images on it! Apparently for this, you must go and do it from its web interface. How stupid is that?? So, once I post text, I have to open my browser, login to my site, edit the post, put in an image and after all this, i can only put it in one of 4 formats. And god help you if you were to try and put in more than 1 image. That's so cumbersome, I have resorted to posting just one one image for most of my posts.

4. Blogger doesnt have a photo tool so I need to maintain WLS just to put up all my pics.

Coming to Windows Live Spaces, I have only 2 problems with it:

1. It has a big fat banner on top with ads which I hate completely. Blogger has a thin bar and no ads. Thats how it should be.

2. Its so idiotic that WLS does not allow anonymous comments. I mean, how thick is this!! They should give an option to the blog owner to CHOOSE which type of commenting he want sto allow, the way Blogger does.

So yeah, neither of the blogs offers the critical features that I would like to have so I guess unless one of them fixes the problems, I will have to stick to both! Pain!

The world's best love songs.

I'm a rock fan and to me, love songs are all about the strumming guitars and lyrics. I don't care whether the guy can sing to a tune or not. Lyrics are above all else. They are what I connect with.

Why am I on about love songs? I don't know. Maybe because I had coffee in the morning with my girlfriend after 7 months and found myself wishing I could do this forever.

Maybe because in 7 years of being together, we've been with each other for only 8-10 months and I really hope you have no idea what that is like.

Or maybe I'm just tired with all the travelling and working around the clock and this music is right now really getting to me and I mean in a good way.

Anyway, here goes the list in no particular order. Click on it for links to lyrics incase you haven't heard them. These are quite possibly the world's best love songs ever.

Goo Goo Dolls - Iris

Sting - Fields of gold
Dire Straits - Love over gold
Dire Straits - Romeo & Juliet
Elvis Presley - Cant help falling in love
U2 - Unchained melody

G'N'R - Patience
G'N'R - Don't Cry
Rabbi - Tere Bin
Ronan Keating - If Tomorrow Never Comes
Robert Miles - One and One

AeroSmith I don't wanna miss a thing
Euphoria - Tum
Euphoria - Ab Na Jaa
Euphoria - Mehfuz
Pearl Jam - Last Kiss

And a last minute entry, listen to Mitwa from Kabhi Alvida.. sure, the movie absolutely sucks but listen, REALLY LISTEN to this song and you'll see why I think its brilliant.

Kabhi Alvida - Mitwa

Missed chance!!

It's been a while since I've posted here. That's because I've been travelling like crazy and got back only today. Sure enough, posting soon as I'm back!

Last week, I met up with couple of Director's from Bollywood. One, the moustached and bearded Rohan Sippy (of Bluffmaster fame) and the other, Nikhil Advani (of Kal ho na ho fame)

Ofcourse, I came to know who these guys were only when I reached home and my mom asked me "where did you meet these guys?"

I have NEVER rued my inability to remember director names and match them with correpsonding faces.

Turns out, Nikhil Advani is the same chap who also directed Salaam E Ishq, the most mind numbingly devasting movie ever made. This movie is so bad, it warrants a rehab centre just for those poor folks who made the mistake of going and seeing it.

He lives another day to perhaps make a sequel (spine chilling shudder) or a worse movie. And it's all MY FAULT!! Should've just shot him when I had the chance!

And if you are about to post a comment praising this movie, please save me the trouble of coming over and shooting you. Just do it yourself.

Google says SWIM the Atlantic!

Our friendly neighbourhood search engine which seems to be blessed with a squeaky clean image (somehow!) seems to continue on its tongue in cheek ways of giving out irrelevant answers to irrelevant questions.

Case in point, type New york to London in google maps and you will be greeted with driving directions for the whole 4000 mile journey!! No seriously!

How do you drive through the Atlantic? Google is smarter than that! It KNOWS when the Atlantic has come and simply says "swim through the Atlantic" and resumes driving directions when you arrive in UK.

Sure, this is tongue in cheek for those who KNOW Google is kidding and its a fitting response to a cheeky "test" question. But, there might be stupid people (they are usually Americans, who only know about the neighborhood they live in) who could be asking this question and might take this advice seriously too!

Click link below to see the directions yourself. Incase Google has fixed this, click the screenshots.

Google Maps: NY to London

This is one CRAZY marriage.

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Great example of Megapixels aren't everything!

For all of you looking to buying a new cell phone with a camera, you must read this.

While it is almost common knowledge that megapixels in a camera are not the "all decisive" factor, an interesting comparison by Mobileburn actually shows you what this means.

5 Megapixel Nokia versus 3.2 Mgpx Sony Ericsson.

Sony Ericsson v/s Nokia

Amul. The king of Good Lines

Every one of us has stopped at a traffic light and chuckled at the Amul ad. For nearly 40 years, Amul has been giving us outstandingly brilliant oneliners and topical humor which has been appreciated by all.

Whether it is the sacking of ministers to India losing the world cup (again!), Amul has had a hoarding with a slick line for everything.

But while I do say, rather dramatically, that it all began 40 years ago, the exact dyear is 1967, when the first Amul hoarding went up and the cute round eyed polka clad girl winked and came to life. Her name is Moppet by the way.

From then on, Amul has played the role of a social observer and has been bringing to us the funny side of things. Jokes that any and everyone can relate to, enjoy and not take offence at (unless you are a politician obviously!) Plus they give you something to do in this miserable city traffic.

Incidentally, Amul, the butter was actually launched in 1945! but struggled to do well because the previous ad agency utilised standard corporate ads while what Sylvester Da'Cunha, then Managing Director of the agency, did was bold for that time. Bold because India was quite sensitive about food. We did not like stupid jokes being made about it, especially from something we considered largely as a dairy product.

Moreover Da'Cunha didn't just make timid, safe ads, no sir. A lot of his lines were quite risque and actually got them into trouble.

Their hoarding over the Indian Airlines strike actually got them a threat notice from IA saying if he didn't take it down, they would stop serving Amul butter on their flight! well, IA never ever seems to make sense to me anyway and when the Amul Moppet dawned the Gandhi cap, boy oh boy did the government take notice and immediately got it removed. Such was the national mindshare that these simple and witty hoardings enjoyed and infact continue to enjoy even today.

Such has been the power of the mascot and the lines that Amul is now vying for the Guinness book of world records for the longest running campaign ever! It is probably also the most successful, having endured the usually split second attention span that we devote to ads, much less hoardings.

While I have been trying to get my hands on the first ever hoarding, I have sadly been unable to do so. But I did manage to find a collection of these ads from 1976 till today. If you want to take a look, clik here: Amul Ads

Click below are some of my favorites from their long list. Also, if you manage to find the first hoarding they had come up with, do let me know!!

Varun's Favorites

Sony: like.no.other

If there is one company that has always fascinated me with their advertising, it's Sony. Granted, their step down from the pedestal of "Its a SONY" has been long overdue but its here. And if anything, their like.no.other campaign is probably one of the best ads I have seen on TV.

The ad is fantastic considering its a lot of colorful crazy balls running down a San Francisco street.

Its fantastic because the connection is simple. Balls represent colors. Sony TVs show you the best colors. I am so in love with this ad that everytime it airs (usually I sit around waiting for it almost!) I shut everyone up and crank up the volume.

Some trivia that I have picked up about the ad:

1. This is a real shoot. There is ZERO computer graphics in it. Several million points to Sony and the AD team for this. It makes the ad even more breathtaking.

2. The total number of balls used is 250,000 !! yup quarter of a million

3. The ad was shot in just ONE take. Obviously, with many different cameras catching many different angles.

4. Number of camera people used was 24. Usually, they shoot with just 4!

5. And if you love the background score, then its called Heartbeats, has been performed by Jose Gonzalez and goes like this:

One night to be confused
One night to speed up truth
We had a promise made
Four hands and then away

Both under influence we had divine scent
To know what to say
Mind is a razorblade

To call for hands of above to lean on
Wouldn't be good enough for me

One night of magic rush
The start: a simple touch
One night to push and scream And then relief

Ten days of perfect tunes
The colours red and blue
We had a promise made
We were in love

To call for hands of above to lean on
Wouldn't be good enough for me

And you, you knew the hand of a devil
And you kept us awake with wolves teeth
Sharing different heartbeats in one night

To watch the full ad in HD click below:

Sony Bravia AD

Femina Miss India. What the fuck?

Ok first of all, NEWSFLASH. Femina Miss India is a BEAUTY PAGEANT.

This little detail gets missed by the judges everytime they sit in olympian judgement over scantily clad teenagers looking out for World peace.

I don't want women who can speak 6 languages. I dont care for those who can juggle 10 balls at once or sing like Madonna. For the love of GOD, this is Miss India not Ripley's.

If you want a role model for your kid, would you it rather be a giggly adolescent who starves herself eating JUST an Apple a day or would you rather choose Princess Diana, Jackie Kennedy, Margaret Thatcher, Kiran Bedi or Mother Teresa?

The one and ONLY job of a model is to bloody look pretty. Its a no brainer. You are either pretty or you are not. Is there any confusion about Giselle Bundchen being hot ? NO
Can any one mistake Renee Zellweger for being pretty? NO

How hard was that??

But year after year, pageant after pageant, FMI keeps getting it devastatingly wrong. And I am fed up.

I mean just look at them. Not ONE stands a chance on the global platform.Our contestants are a joke.

This is because the stage where these judges sit is too far. The parameters are too wrong and the contestant filter has holes the size of Jupiter.

We'd better fix this or the world will start believing we have run out of pretty eye candy. Which simply isn't true. Step inside our colleges or the neighborhood pub and your eyes will meet with some zipper defying beauty. THAT is what should be brought on stage, not this riff raff.

My kinda bedspread!

Now this is what would REALLY set my bedroom on fire.
Especially when my beloved is away :)

believe me, you make THIS my bedspread, and guess who will be the first person to "make" his bed everyday!!!

Plus, it might give the ladies who visit some interesting ideas :)

And no, they dont make it with guys on it. Just as well!

if you wanna buy, go here:
http://www.realitybedding.com/

Music gets you talking

This is something that just blew me away in my couple of visits to london recently.

This ad has instilled tremendous respect in me for their marketing department and the copywriter AND the photographer.

Its just so compelling and evocative that it almost makes me wanna go out and buy that phone. Something that Nokia hasn't been elicit from me for 2 years now.

The photography captures the mood brilliantly. The models used are perfectly next door and the tag lines tug at your heart. At mine anyway.

Attached here are the two slides I saw repeatedly at the various tube stations.

Click here for the entire campaign.

http://europe.nokia.com/musicgetsyou

And I agree, Music does get you talking.

How do you sleep?

kris.blog();

Surfing through one of my friends blogs yesterday, I came across this post that made me feel rather good about myself :)

U see, Kris has a wonderful habit of sleeping on his pillow like its his girlfriend. Yippeee!! my family has been teasing me about sleeping in the same manner for years!!! Now I know I'm not the only one :) Its a good feeling. For once :)

Do post in your favorite sleeping position (when you are sleeping ALONE that is!!) lets see how many more can join this "group".

Oh and, if you are girl who sleeps like a pillow is her "girlfriend" just post your phone number.

The NEW Seven Wonders

I finally found the website which is conducting a worldwide poll to decide the new seven wonders.

The ones we have been using till now will be scrapped except for The Pyramids of Giza which have been included in the possible candidates.

Headover and vote.

Surprisingly enough, I always believed that The Taj Mahal was in the 7 wonders. Well, it isnt according to the site, but it can be if you vote for it.

Here are the 7 that I have voted for:
1. The Taj Mahal
2. The Eiffel Tower
3. Chichen Itza
4. Easter Island Statues
5. Machu Picchu
6. Pyramids of Giza
7. Stonehenge.

http://www.new7wonders.com

One tip, read about all of them. You will then get confused. Massively.

The way I have chosen is that what you vote for should have some form of "wonder" and should exist.

For example, sure, the Acropolis was amazing but it isn't still standing is it?

The Eiffel Tower

It isn't the tallest building in the world anymore, that would be Taipei 101. It certainly isn't the one with any offices in it (save for the 4 ticket counters) but if you want to really be awed and WOWed, The Eiffel Tower has no equal.

Stepping out of Trocadero station and it is almost immediately to your left. Standing tall and majestic. With a healthy tan which is surprising since they have never ending winters and summer is more like Sachin's innings. Blink and you miss it.

Its huge. And not in an "imagine making it in those times" kind of way.

Step up the small ladder and emerge onto the open air part of level 3 and the view wil blow you away. It makes up for the hours you'll wait in the long queues and the ear popping you'll endure as the express elevators do their best to zip to the top.

If you think about it, the view is no different from a city view atop its tallest building but for some inexplicable reason, when you reach the top of Eiffel you will ignore the howling frigid cold air and think of the one person in your life most important to you. It doesn't matter if she is your girlfriend, your ex or whether you've just had a fight or have recently been engaged. You will punch her number and call.

I have been there thrice and others who have been there alone concur, you will miss her and you will make that call.

I recently read somewhere that they are redoing the seven wonders.
If for nothing other than the sheer evocative presence, The Eiffel Tower must be on it.

If you are ever in Paris, make sure you land up here. Miss the Louvre if you have to. Its quite rubbish anyway.

Oh and, if you are wondering about this lovely picture, yes, it was taken by me.