Photobucket had recently changed their policy and now all the images from my 650+ blog posts are disabled. I am slowly editing them by moving my images to my own server at AWS, but it will take time. In case there is a particular old post you want to see the images of, kindly drop me a mail at mizohican@gmail.com and I'll keep that at a high priority. Thank you.

Tuesday, December 05, 2017

Chp 690. Pool Party in Pune


So let's add a little bit of glamour to my December blog update :)

The other day, I took my three nieces Tuli, Remruati and Sangsangi to an afternoon roof-top Pool party at The O-Hotel, Koregaon Park.


(sorry boys, they are all taken, no vacancies)

It was a special event organized by renowned DJ Abhishek Mantri and my good friend DJ Rajbeer, in collaboration with the amazing Kirri Pirri who also hosts STARIANS NITE (Shooting Star Event). Since it was a trial run, it was not a public event and entry was based on invitations only. It was truly an honour to be included in the guest list (I'll be blogging about Starians nite events later).

The roof top of The O-Hotel, known as "Addah" lounge, was beautiful.


Wide breathtaking open ambience and yet cozy with a sense of solace. The weather that day was also perfect, with a slight drizzle now and then giving rise to a wonderful aroma of petrichor and cool gusty breeze gently blowing across our hair.

The view from the top -





Met the co-organizer Kirri Pirri. A truly awesome dude indeed. I have attended most of his parties the last couple of months.


We sat down to have some snacks and drinks. There was also a brunch buffet at the corner, but we didn't opt for it as we had already eaten. The buffet was around 2000 per head and the variety of food available looked impressive, though I didn't observe it closely since we weren't planning to go for it anyway.


By the way you can click on all images to enlarge to a new tab/window. If you're browsing from your Facebook mobile app, it will open the link with the default In-App FB browser. Click on the three dots on the top right corner and select "Open in Chrome" (or any other browser you have). You can also change your FB settings to always open links using a different browser.


We took a few more candid photos around our table.






DJ Rajbeer was rocking the scene with his music. The musical theme of the pool party was Deep House, Tech House and Funky House. Or as we used to call it back in the good 'ol days, "untz untz untz untz" :D


We ordered a plate of Tandoori Fish, which disappeared in a matter of minutes as it was so good :) The fries were also scrumptious.


Kirri Pirri had earlier created a Facebook group consisting of all the invited guests. Suddenly somebody posted a photo in that group of us eating, lolz :D


I looked around and immediately saw Karma and Mike at the other table. I took a pic of their table and sent it to the group as well.


They laughed as they received the images and we waved at each other. We had seen each other many times at various Shooting Star events though we had actually never spoken to each other. That was the day we spoke to each other for the first time and became good party buddies since then. :)

We headed out to the poolside once we were done with food as my nieces wanted to take a few pics here and there…



My nieces also taught me how to take proper photos, like holding the phone from a lower position with a slightly slanted angle so as to give a better picture. See, I keep learning new things every day!





Mike was slyly taking a photo of me taking a photo of the girls from the other end of the pool :D



And oh, we all experienced a very strange phenomenon that day… all our hairs were flying up in the air! Maybe because of the rain, some kind of low atmospheric condition was created or high electrical static field generated, because this was how all our hairs were that day (and it was not because of the breeze) -




Strange indeed. Well I guess we can literally call this event a hair-raising event, lolz.

After some time, Aman appeared on the scene and Kirri Pirri asked us to pose for official Shooting Star events photos. We happily obliged :D



"Aman's Photography" is the official media partner for all Shooting Star events, and trust me, his pics are really good. I'll publish some of his work when I cover "Starians Nite" in another blog post.



All of us posed for two photos each, one with the Starians banner and one without.



Soon it was the turn of us guys too… :)



The official pics came out so well! Nice job Aman.







We spent some more time clicking pics around the pool…




Some pics not from my Oneplus 3



Yeah you can see how much fun they had with their selfies… I miss being young sometimes, because of how easily we were pleased with life…




We headed to the dancefloor after that. DJ Rajbeer kept rocking the crowd, and soon he was replaced by DJ Abhishek Mantri. I didn't take any pic of us dancing though, because I was busy dancing, duh :P










We headed back to the pool one more time once we were all exhausted from dancing. The afternoon roof-top party was only till 5 PM so it was almost time for us to leave…




There was also a birthday cake cutting occasion, to which all of us sang along too, and afterwards they distributed the cake to all the guests :) Happy birthday once again, oh unknown friend, thanks for the delicious cake.


The girls were fascinated with the way the water was distorting their legs :P




Even Kirri Pirri joined in on the fascination! :D :D :D


Last group pics before leaving…










As we left Addah, we headed to the other side of the balcony which was empty. By the way, we asked a receptionist whether we're allowed to go to that section, and she replied to us in Mizo and said yes :D It feels so nice when you suddenly meet a fellow Mizo now and then. We exchanged pleasantries quickly and headed out to the balcony.

At the other section, once again my nieces utilized my Oneplus 3's amazing camera again and I became the cameraman for the umpteenth time that day.








And so with that ended a memorable afternoon at The O-Hotel.

I'll cover more of Starians Nite and Shooting Star events in a later post. As for now, if you have any enquiry regarding such events, feel free to contact Kirri Pirri at his Facebook page.

So until the next pool party, cheers mes amis.






Friday, December 01, 2017

Chp 689. Zomato's response to my blog post


What a beautiful start to a new month!

So two days ago I wrote a blog post about Zomato and Swiggy [Chp 687. Moving from Zomato to Swiggy] where I compared the two of them and talked about why many of us Zomato customers were switching to Swiggy.

One of the main reasons I talked about was that many of us from office were fed up of having to collect our Zomato order from the main-gate because the delivery boys didn't have proper ID cards to enter our Corporate Center.

I also mentioned that my blog post wasn't going to make any impact because I'm just an insignificant fish swimming in a large ocean of the Food Tech Industry which is expected to cross a market worth of $540 Bn soon.

Well surprise surprise, yesterday I received an unexpected call from Zomato main office!

Apparently they had all gone through my blog post (!), and even cross-checked with my Zomato account because otherwise there was no way they could have known my phone number.

We spoke for around 30 minutes, where they explained the reason behind all the points I mentioned in my post. We actually went through my blog post point by point, lolz. They assured me that Zomato had recently acquired their own delivery fleet called Runnr and soon there will be a big change in Zomato orders not just in terms of delivery service but also packaging as well. They also told me that since I have placed more than 500 Zomato orders, I wasn't just a customer but a part of their family :)

It was a really good talk, and after we hung up, it felt good to know that I'm not as insignificant as I thought I was. Yippeee.

And then today, Zomato paid me a surprise visit at my office!


They presented me with a Gift Hamper to show their appreciation for my blog post.

Apart from that, Masoom Kakar, Key Account Manager (KAM) gave me her personal number and told me that I should reach her directly the next time I face any inconveniences with Zomato! Wow. It feels so nice to be taken care of. I love the gifts they gave me today, t'is definitely a season of giving and sharing :)

So the Gift Hamper includes a personal handwritten letter from Zomato…


Three extremely quirky food-related posters…


Haha I love this one! It's like, they could read right through my mind, lolz. This one is so going up on my bedroom wall :D


A vaderful poster…


And last but not the least, a Zomato coffee mug and a badge.


Thank you so much for these freebies, Zomato.

You know a company is bound to succeed by the way they treat their loyal customers. I mean, family members :)

Hoping to see some of the points I mentioned in my previous post quickly implemented in Pune too (that is, the activation of logistic service through Runnr delivery fleet). Until then, cheers everyone.