Ye olde vanishing cream

Since it will do no good to dwell on the shame and remorse of neglecting my blog for so long, the old spilt milk and what not, I shall dive headlong into a review.

We come back to to good old Vicco.

I am familiar, and very happy, with 3 products from the Vicco stables: Vicco tooth paste which is excellent in dental maintenance but a little expensive (I use Dabur Red), Vicco tooth powder that my MIL swears by, and is considered wholly responsible for the intact set of gleaming teeth that my grandfather was the proud owner of till he died at 80, and the mysteriously labelled Vicco turmeric cream with foam base - an excellent face wash, read my review here.

For the past week, I have been using Vicco turmeric cream, and I cannot figure out what took me so long to try out this old familiar on the store shelves.

There are two variants of this cream: Vicco turmeric cream, and Vicco turmeric WSO cream. On a whim I picked up the latter, although I had no idea what WSO meant. I found out later on the interwebz that WSo simply means "without sandal oil". Huh? (Dear Vicco. What's with unexplained acronyms on your product label? Are you trying NOT to sell your product? On that note, please remove the scary man picture from your foam base product. And tell us on the box what that product is for.)

Vicco face cream is an old fashioned "vanishing cream" - opaque with a pearly sheen, disappearing into the skin quickly, leaving behind a smooth, light weight, non-greasy feel. The cream claims therapeutic value, and i am inclined to believe this because in the past week, my complexion is starting to even out, and small spots and discolourations are fading away.

Vicco turmeric cream may be "nahi cosmetic", but the product does have cosmetic value. Being non-greasy and light weight, you could very well wear it by itself before stepping out. The cream instantly brightens appearance, and being opaque, it should have some sun protection ability though it doesn't say so on the box.

As a bonus, the smooth matte finish this leaves behind means that you could very well use it as a primer over which to build layers of make-up, if you were so inclined. For the uninitiated, primers are creams designed to leave a smooth surface on the skin, over which other make-up stuff like foundation spreads and sits better. Vicco makes a great primer at less than 15% of the cost (L'oreal Base Magique primer = Rs 800+, a tube of Vicco = Rs.50), and a fraction, if at all, of the chemical load. (Disclaimer: primers are usually made of silicone which is supposed to be inert on the skin, but whatever).

For instance, for a no make-up look, moisturize, apply vicco (WSO if you are like me), dust some pressed powder on the oily zones and step out. For a dewy finish / warm lights and photo op, throw on a highlighter. Or a blush and a highlighter. or go all the way with concealer/foundation and the works.

Full disclosure: I have oily / combination skin that usually doesn't need heavy moisturizing, but if you have dry skin, you may need to moisturize before you use this product. Vicco isn't drying, but as a non-greasy cream, I wouldn't expect it to do much for dryness.

I am now also testing the original "with sandal oil" version (what would the acronym for that be, geniuses at Vicco?), and although this cream clearly has an oil base, it vanishes into the skin too, leaving no grease behind. I am impressed. Will know soon if it breaks me out.

All in all, this is a great product that offers great value. Low priced, time-tested, seemingly therapeutic, and a great skin-friendly cosmetic that works as a primer and ought to work as a light-to-moderate sun block.

How really really...

really, really quite so very long since I wrote here! Was worried that this blog might join that shamefully long list of orphan blogs created, then abandoned by yours truly.

I am back, I am, really, and I shall stay.

Let us get to work. The past six or eight months have seen me doing, in chronological order, the following:

1. July - Stumbled and fell face-first into marma treatment involving a 20-day extreme fast (relieved me of my chronic joint problems, but also, temporarily, of any interest in life)

2. August - dive holiday in the islands

3.  September - Quiet introspection, finishing touches on poor David's posters promised back in february

4. October - out-of-control annual vacation in goa followed by weeks of hypochondria and frantic detox

5. November - Stumbled and fell face first into full-time employment

6. December - gym, sensible eating, semblance of control, not regretting work. Actually enjoying it.

Ho-hum.

Improving shampoo even more

Read my earlier post here and here.

For absolutely the ultimate conditioning effect, use castor oil with Halo shampoo (or any basic low-cost shampoo from a known manufacturer).

I am not going to lie to you - the mix smells a bit like castor oil. Well, castor oil and shampoo fragrances. But it is not bad - it is the kind of natural, earthy fragrance that would smell expensive if sniffed from a small vial in a tiny air-conditioned organic products store à la Auro-boutique.

The important thing is, this mix provides the finest conditioning I've ever experienced (and that includes outrageously priced stylist recommended Schwarzkopf products and similar). The hair feels heavy, lustrous and absolutely silky, while the scalp feel is very comfortable (I have very dry scalp that is prone to flaking especially when I use conditioners).

Especially for daily washing of unoiled hair, this mixture is perfect. If you do not pre-oil your hair, be brave and use 1:1 oil and shampoo, dilute with water as required. (I do not dilute, I enjoy the thick, creamy consistency of the mix.

For pre-oiled hair, try 1 oil : 2 shampoo.

More on "Face off": So i wasn't alone!

Last week, I wrote this post about how I quit Facebook as part of an exercise in uncluttering my world (both digital and analog).

This article in today's issue of Slate reports that the social networking site has started to lose active users from the US, Europe etc. The past month especially has seen a marked slow down in member activity. Read the Slate article here.

HANG UP!

In response to my Chinese mobile phones post, Narayanan says “In 99.5% situations, synchronous two-way real-time communication is a luxury.”

This statement got me thinking about a whole lot of things from telephones, technology and our communication culture.

Technology has stirred things up quite a bit, and most of us seem to be blissfully unaware of the function and the proper place of each mode of communication. Where an email will do, we text. Where a text will do, we call. Where a land-line call is feasible, we still choose to call from our cell phones to their cell phones, spending money, absorbing radiation into our skulls, and forcing the recipient to absorb some into his skull as well.

Apart from the need to communicate, there is the almost completely ignored question of manners: Stephen Fry, Writer, comedian, British national treasure and my pet god, puts it beautifully in an episode of the Brilliant BBC show Quite Interesting  (Series B Episode 05):

“Telephones are fantastically rude things. It is like saying 'speak to me now, speak to me now, speak to me now'. It is as if you went into someone's office and banged on their desk and said 'I'll make a noise until you speak to me' "

At some level, we are all aware of how intrusive telephones are: The recipient is at the mercy of the bloody ringing beast, and the annoyance often shows in the opening “hello” that s/he proffers.

With cell phones, it is like you take your ball and chain around with you. What is worse, we develop some sort of a Stockholm syndrome and start believing that this enslavement is necessary. See how alarmed we get when we realize we’ve forgotten our phones home – we panic that we are now “unreachable” and that fatal crisis for which we bought the cell phone in the first place, will now surely befall us.

The way I see it, there are two factors to consider- The appropriate choice of medium for a given communication need, and the level of intrusiveness of that medium.

1.     Email – replaces postal mail. Cheap, fast and sure – a winning alternative to the ponderous, notoriously undependable “snail” mail.
Intrusiveness Quotient: Lowest. Recipient can check mail and respond at his leisure

2.     SMS: Cheap, convenient replacement to telegram. Check if can be replaced by email.

Intrusiveness Quotient: Moderate, but recipient can choose to mute his phone and check messages at leisure.

3.     Telephone: replaces showing up at someone’s door unannounced. So this better be important.
Intrusiveness Quotient: Very high.

4.     Cell phone: Dire emergencies when AWAY from a fixed line or pay phone – ergo negligible need to most people.
Intrusiveness Quotient: Astronomical. Recipient has just volunteered to be at beck and call of all and sundry.

 COMMUNICATION HYBRIDS:

5.     Instant messaging (Chat)  - if looking for recreational communication with friends or family, this is perfect middle ground between the non-pressure of email and the instant two-way communicability of a phone or live conversation.
Intrusiveness quotient: Not applicable, since recipient need not sign into chat applications if he doesn’t want to.

I am not including Twitter in this list, because twitter is more like a mass communication tool – it is like having a personal radio station, into which audience can tune in if they want to. It's use is often broadcast of theme-based content and creative expression.

In his comment, Nayaranan made a brilliant suggestion about the midway solution of an SMS only device. An Internet search shows that a lot of people are looking for such a thing.

A text-only device would take care of the dreaded outdoor on-the-go “emergency” situation, but leave your tranquility unmolested.

No minimalist SMS-only device seems to exist, but these are clever devices along similar lines:

1.     Peek: Twitter only device – this design would be ideal for an SMS-only phone:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peek_%28mobile_Internet_device%29

2.     Messaging only (SMS/email/IM) device – target at text-addicted teenagers
http://www.physorg.com/news1392.html

3.     John’s phone: The opposite of a text-only phone – this is a call-only phone. Not relevant to our topic, but interesting. The address book on this phone is a just piece of paper with a pen!!
http://www.johnsphones.com/

If you are interested in trying this out to take back your peace and privacy, you can easily convert your current phone into a SMS-only phone.

Tweak the call profile to silent for all calls, and have an alert tone for SMS alone. Kill GPS service, switch to the most text friendly plan. If you have a smart phone, sell it and buy the most basic phone possible – like the good & hardy Nokia 1100 – black & white screen, killer battery life, tough build. (and bonus LED torch - Now THAT is what makes a cell phone a useful tool during emergencies)

In order to still be available for casual conversations, the trick is to appoint and publicize a certain day of the week, or a certain hour of every day as “available to talk” time. This way, you’ll still have friends left. Irritated friends, but friends nevertheless.

I am sorely tempted to undertake this experiment right away. Getting friends and family to cooperate will be no problem - my offers to disappear are usually met with relief and rejoicing- but the problem is business contacts. I do freelance work, and if someone calls me about a new project, how will they reach me? I can give them  a fixed line number – we have two landlines at home and one can exclusively be my work number (So visiting nephews don’t take calls from clients and inform them I am in the toilet, again) but availability can be a problem, and missing a work call is my loss, not theirs – I am the one who wants their cheque.

This means I’ll be obliged to take calls from every bloody unknown number, which will undo the whole point of going cell-phone free. Ideas?

As soon as I have this figured out, I am totally willing to switch to the text-me life and see how it feels.

Face off!

My last post, along with the responses it elicited, has gotten me thinking about communication in general, and the idea of “staying in touch” in particular.

The last decade saw the birth of a new cyber-beast – online social networking. Myspace, Orkut and most popularly, Facebook.

Facebook was a hit not only with generation Y, the 1990’s born teenagers, but also with Gen-X who were in their late twenties or early thirties, having clocked sufficient time into the working world to be disillusioned with it, and nostalgic for childhood friends and playmates. I and my peers gobbled up Facebook whole, lured by the possibility of finding out what happened to long-lost acquaintances from school. A case of the proverbial cat that got, frankly, murdered.

I too managed to find friends from way back in Kindergarten, but was surprised to see that conversations never went beyond “Helloooo!!!” and the pro-forma glossing over of 20 odd years of detail. After that, there is little else to exchange. Your long-lost friends can't think of much to say, and you are hardly inclined to respond. And so they just sit on your friends list for years, privy to your personal information, status updates (read naval gazing) and photos of you tagged by someone else in idiotic albums that you wish you could burn.

In the meanwhile, Facebook will take you on a roller-coaster ride of security breaches and leaked private info leaving you jittery and squeamish about what said breach might mean for your data.

Now, let me point you to the biggest flaw in the plan. Nostalgia has emotional value precisely because it remains nostalgia. The mind does a terrific Photoshop job of the past and lets you play over and over again in your head only the nicest times, in slow motion and soft glow lighting. Finding out that your free-spirited playmate from grade school who went on papaya raids with you ended up a dumpy wash-out with a spouse s/he hates and children s/he wishes s/he never had, really curbs your enthusiasm. I’m now nostalgic for nostalgia. It felt wonderful to miss people and wonder how they fared.

What rubs the rage in is when papaya girl posts insipid kitten pictures as her profile picture, adds idiotic status messages about a roof that leaks or worse, inanities like "Life is a flower, sniff it" and drivel like that.

You, unlike me, may not be a sensitive soul, and may not mind these grave assaults on your sensibilities, but wait until your boss wants to "friend" you on Facebook. It is likely he is a much older man, new to the various delights of the Interwebs, and unlikely to have grasped the fragile and half-formed etiquette that governs social networking realms. He will send you a friend request. You will quietly decline it. He will send you another one and follow it with two emails and a phone call asking you why you've not accepted his request. If you were raised in polite society you are hardly likely to say "Why? Here's why: my last "family emergency" involved beer and a beach in Goa, and my idiotic friends have plastered tagged pictures all over Facebook. That's why."

If you are still unfazed, remember that eventually and inevitably, your aunt Saroja whose son bought her a computer so she can chat with him on skype from Madras to Milwaukee "for freeee!" will discover Facebook too,  and that's about when you realize that the dog now bites, and must be put to sleep.

To be fair, my relationship with Facebook was also professional. In the past two years, I helped run the social media marketing function of the online retail start-up that I worked for, and learning to acquire, maintain and manage a fan base was a huge learning experience.

Dynamic interaction with your buyer group is marketing gold. If you have something to sell, especially to young people, Facebook is your best friend.

Now that I don’t work for said firm any more, have nothing to sell and would like my nostalgia left alone, it is time to kill and bury the beast.

When I announced my exit, I was flooded with inquiries of how on earth I would stay in touch. I sent a “going-of-the-radar” message to Facebook contacts I wished to keep, and wrote them my email ID so they can E-MAIL me news, like we all used to in the simple olden days.

Twitter I continue to hold, but that is because twitter allows me to follow topics, and not just people.

I am now trying to forget the awful things I've learned - like how that kid from 8th grade, a boy of sparkling wit and intellect has grown up into a sad old schmuck who changed his name to suit numerology, so his new name now has 3 vowels repeated eight times.

The curious case of Chinese mobile phones

Chinese mobile phones have been on my radar for a  while now, and recently I got to take a closer look at them.

Some brands like Karbonn are gaining mainstream ground, but there are really lots & lots of brands on the market. Chinese phones are probably best known for being inexpensive, but are also known for making cheap knock-offs of popular mainstream models.

The case for buying cheap mobile phones is that phones, being small electronic items, are easily lost or damaged, making huge investments in them unwise. That said, I personally have a distaste for knock-offs. I can't explain it, but so it is. I don't mind a cheap, original design, but knock-offs and public-deceiving replicas I find distasteful.

Danny, being both ham-handed & forgetful, has wisely avoided the blackberry / iphone traps so far. His phone needs are basic, but his long bus rides to work make an entertainment device useful - a music player, but more importantly, a gaming device or best still, a video player on which he can watch his awful horror flicks.

A couple of months of research, and we landed on the Rocker Sure Diamond (no avoiding tacky names) - a touch phone that is turning out to be quite a delight. Its 3-page screen and reasonably good touch sensitivity make it fun & easy like any touch phone, but is longer & heavier, with a track ball for good measure. The weight might be a con for most, but we don't mind the extra grams.

A lot of the features like the gravity & shake response have been "inspired" by the iphone, but the makers have actually taken nice features from a lot of phone models to put into this one. The feature-ridden still/video camera is nice enough, the video / music players  are terrific. The dual sim feature is a blessing, there are also games, mail / FB clients and what-have-you, an antenna set up for FM radio, and a stylus for those who have trouble with the touch feature - if you've got big fingers and have tried typing on an iphone, you'll appreciate the stylus. All for under Rs. 3000.


It remains to be seen how long the phone will last - I'll be happy if it runs a year, and at that price, you don't have to worry so much about losing / breaking it. (It was hard to see someone drop an Iphone 4 from a car the other day. Rs. 45K. Ouch.)

Brands like Rocker & G-five have blackberry-type phones too - I saw one the other day that had a trackpad & full blackberry menu & functionality AND a pull-out antenna to watch TV!! (OK, public broadcast doordarshan, but still..)

Pros:
- Ridiculously feature rich - often the best features from several phones are integrated into one.
- No proprietary software / manipulative BS  
- always dual sim, allowing you to blend plans from two providers (talk on one, text on another)
- Very cheap

Fun features: I was very tickled to see that these phones have no qualms about throwing in  cheeky features like fake calls and background noises that let you lie to the caller about you location. No I don't find THAT ethically distasteful. There is a place for righteous lying. Like when the boss man calls. Or your mother.

Cons:
- the phones will most probably not have a long life.

- I hear reports that some Chinese mobiles actually exploded while in use!
- The ethical issues about Knock-off / look-alikes  (between you and your god)

Do your research!

Even if you aren't looking for a look-alike (eesh), a lot of these phones do seem to offer great value for money.