Thursday, August 31, 2006

Print Media, a few thoughts.

I might have spent the last five years of my life writing for two very different formats of the print media but yesterday I spent the entire evening reading the current issues of The Economist cover to cover and the cover story got me thinking. The leader which discusses 'Who Killed the Newspaper' is not as pessimistic as the headline, but the inside story is quite though provoking (both premium content - but if you work in the industry I would suggest you buy this issue) and because I'm also trying to work on/with both the print and online mediums right now, I found it relevant to myself. But I believe it shouldn't be just me, but everybody who works in the medium in India, particularly in the English language medium who is affected by this.
The explosion of TV news channels in India will not kill the newspaper - I honestly believe, and this is from overhearing conversations and TV News is sensational but unreliable, you can't ever believe everything some busty babe throws at you. But a story in the newspaper or a newsmagazine is somehow felt to be more trustworthy, despite what some of us might think - note ToI has trashed EchTee in Delhi according to the latest NRS surveys. But, it is this medium which I use to disseminate information right now which is the circuit breaker. How do you deal with the challenge of the internet - to revenues and readership? The article mentions various ways that several media houses have survived or are tackling the internet, but it goes further. certain media organisations such as the NYT or WP have embraced the internet wholeheartedly even using new internet technologies (RSS Feeds, Podcasting, Vidcasting) as well as their best writers for their online editions.
The article also mentions a gradual shift across the world, and this might agitate some people a lot, towards 'soft' news. Parties, fashion, entertainment, movies and music, that sort of stuff. Therefore, what the ToI is doing is part of a global trend, as is the selling of editorial space. C'mon, it wasn't as idea thought up by Vineet Jain, old Murdoch thought of it first. The Hindu is a rarity, not just in India, increasingly in the world. People it seems don't give a rat's ass about what you and I might think as serious news. Actually, most of the time I don't give a shit also if they're in the papers as well, I have my dedicated feeds coming in at Bloglines. (PS : This blog, through both its XML feeds has over 50 subscribers on Bloglines now)
But even then you face a challenge - advertising. How do you monetize your internet subscribers. Do you depend on Google or other news aggregators to allow users to deep search your site. Do you load your site full of adverts - the Indiatimes model and clutter up the page? But even if you load your page with adverts, should Google - as the media display house in most cases be allowed to keep most of revenues when someone clicks a advert? Look at classifieds - sites like Craigslist have taken away substantial revenues, particularly from smaller papers. Just look at what Naukri and the host of matrimonial sites have done. Despite the papers never admitting to it, I believe the matrimonial sites are hitting them where it hurts and hard, really hard. Just think about it, a web page listing of a matrimonial has a picture, more details than a 4-line, '25/160 Convent educated, outgoing' blah blah blah would have in a Sunday paper crammed with other text.
To be fair, Jain&Jain have realised this gradual shift in consumer preference and have tried to move their classifieds business online - and other than botched technology and crappy design, they have the right idea. But even then, how do you make money on advertising, online? When someone sells an issue of their magazine, the advertiser knows that X number of copies sell and approximately X*4 people will read it in during its shelf life. Therefore, our ad-sales chappies can sell ads at Rs X*10 maybe, and so on and so forth. I can't promise the same to an advertiser online. I take myself as a regular surfer, with a fairly decent knowledge about things, but I hate pop-ups - I have a pop-up killer installed. Too much Javascript, not good, zap that as well. banner adverts at the cost of content, even if the content is free? Maybe not!
Then where on earth do you make the money? Fair enough, a publication like mine isn't about to roll over and die tomorrow or even the day after tomorrow, but we have to start thinking of a way to survive online. Profitably! I believe that in five years time, a majority of the population which reads publications such as mine will have access to devices which can access the internet anytime from virtually anwhere. We have to work out a way to copy certain publications across the world which derive a quarter of their revenues (and even more profit) from online ventures. Or else, we will die sooner or later.
Anybody have any idea, I really want to discuss this a bit, but sadly other than very few people (a couple of my senior editors) most people think of this as pfaff! "What is the internet!" they say, treating the internet as a secondary thing (even though the same people would die without Google). I don't think so, if you want to survive, nor should you!

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

I doth protest!

First Allnutt South, then Rud South. The weed plantation behind Muk East, nutured for a quarter of a century by successive generations of potheads also met the same fate. Then the right to smoke up and skip class for being stoned. Tradition is being killed by the current Nazi-inspired regime!
Along with three estemeed members of the class of 1975 Shashi (SUS President 1975), Chandan (SUS Chancellor 1975) and Swapan (Misguided Trotsky-ite 1975), I also add my voice to the masses of angry Stephanians (or Stevanians as we currently are I'm informed). How dare we lose the 'F' word!
What will poor Natwar Singh say! After all the man owes everything to college. (I wonder if college will get of the oily money?)
I don't have a link for the inside story, but I am - dunno - upset I presume!
PS : I assume, most of you from college got Nandy's letter, in case you didn't and want a copy, lemme know and I'll forward it to you!
PPS : Infosys has joined the blog bandwagon with their 'Think Flat' blog - aka : The Thomas L. Friedman fan-club blog!

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Zooooooom.....

One of the first tricks I learnt when driving was how to get a lot of tyre squeal from a standing start - simply put it involves clutching, slotting the car into first, pressing the accelerator all the way down and then dropping the clutch. Do it well, your car takes off from the line in a haze of burnt rubber. Do it badly, or if you get a car with a really bad clutch/gearbox combo, you stall! Of course, if you do it well, you just rev through the gear, trying to push the car all the way. Which isn't very far in a 800cc Alto. But, this weekend Double Daddy got himself the new Honda Civic for a tester. Sure, it was a automatic and I couldn't do the usual stunt, but one of the pleasures of Delhi are the roads - and thus the speeds you can hit. The new Civic is the first car built for the generation that has grown up on the PS and PS2 - Damn, I loved the digital speedo, and not just that, the car is absolutely wonderful by Indian standards.
Anyway, raving about the new Civic wasn't the point of this post.
There are times in your life when life drops the clutch and races through the gears and you're holding on to the steering wheel for dear life hoping that a blind turn doesn't come up on you too quickly and you lose control and crash. Thats what life feel like for me right now - professionally, personally and socially. Life unlike a car, doesn't have seatbelts, airbags or ABS so if you wipe out, you wipe out. I know a automotive anlogy is a slightly weird one, but I've been writing about cars for some time, so you'll have to excuse that. But, maybe this does feel a tad too Metaphysical.
Dump that!
Now I gotta get back to the race, and god I wish I'm like Fernando Alonso holding on!

Sunday, August 27, 2006

Delhi surprise!

Yesterday I discovered something which zapped me, Delhi has a rocking gig scene. Now, I will not compare it to either Bombay or Bangalore, because Bombay does have a very solid scene - Thursday nights at Zenzi or Seijo often had nice acts like Blackmarket (love Sonia's voice) as well as one of Bombay's myriad of nutty teen-angst filled heavy riff alternative bands. However, a classmate from college Adhi runs a company called Prospect which organises shows like this and it was a very nicely done show, and he told me that they'll be organising more. Quite nice!
Yesterday, at the Garden of Five Senses, a nice park developed by Delhi Tourism at Saidulajab (can't believe Delhi still has places still called that) behind Saket, well more accurately its off the Mehrauli-Badarpur road, the featured act, well the only act was this Cal band called Skinny Alley. They have a lot of original music and actually other than one Steely Dan cover, they played a two hour set of their two albums - you can download some of their MP3's over at their website. I liked them, despite missing the first half-hour but gut reaction was that these guys felt like the Indian Cranberries. OK, the lyrics were even more depressing, but still. But, they're worth a good listen, and yesterday's show was really nice other than the fact I caught up with tens of people I haven't met for years, including Adhi and Anup, another friend from college looking after Maxim India.
There are another couple of gigs today, one at Haze in the afternoon where Lou Majow is playing (and I haven't heard him before) which I might catch and HFT in TC tonight (who Sammy assures are damn good - Jazz Fusion he says), which I won't go for because its at TC and I have no reason to kill myself through oxygen deprivation. Anyway, thats enough for a Sunday morning post and I have 'Ultimate Power Ballads' blasting behind me for some strange reason - all the stuff I listened to while I was in Class 9-10-11-12. Damn, it feels weird when you listen to music you haven't heard in a decade - Poison, Scorpions, Whitesnake, Nazareth, Chicago, Heart... whoa!

Saturday, August 26, 2006

WTF?

Google Search really befuddles me sometimes. How am I the top site listed for this search? Amazing! (And by linking it, I'm just making the situation worse!) Anyone else have weird search stories?

Friday, August 25, 2006

Ek lakh ki gaddi chalega kya?

The problem with advertising in this country is that people end up promising the Moon, sometimes even Mars or Venus and all you get is a bottle of water from Mahim Creek which you are told is a 'miracle'. Anyway, businessmen are as bad usually, I meet many of them and they keep on saying that their new product or service will be over the top and you won't have to pay more than charanna for it. However, in a weird sort of way, I have to admire Ratan Tata for shooting off his mouth. One day the man decides that instead of dumping two-decade old trucks on Indian roads, he will make a car to broadbase his business and dramatically cut the risk from the cyclicity of the commercial vehicles business. And the Tata Indica range of vehicles, despite the rough edges, isn't a terribly awful vehicles and it gets the job done fairly well in the country.
But now, Mr Tata wants to give Indians a fully-functional passenger car for one lakh rupees. In the scale of the things, that works out to around $2100 for a brand-new car. Thanks to a fortunate accident, I've been on the automotive beat for about a five years, maybe a bit longer, anyway and while I think the idea is very nice, I'm still spectical about the vehicle. Its not that I think that a cheap car isn't possible - the Maruti 800 is possibly the cheapest production car in the world today, after the Trabant has (thankfully) gone out of production. But when Mr Tata promised the car, the world was quite a different place - and I'm not talking about the American misadventures in West Asia. I'm talking about the price of steel, plastics and rubber. OK, lets forget plastics and rubber - lets just look at steel (PDF). Steel prices have shot up dramatically, and steel still comprimses most of the cost of a car. Look at motorcycles, they can't get any cheaper than they are, any cheaper and the motorcycle companies will not be able to cover the cost of steel. And a car needs a lot more steel than a bike.
That is...
Unless Tata Motors changes the materials tradionally used in a car. If Boeing can build a new airplane out of advanced carbon-fibre composites, surely a car can be built by materials as strong but cheaper than steel. What we do know is that Tata Motors and GE Plastics have entered into a tie-up. However, what I am scared of, is that in an attempt to make a car they end end up making another Reva.
The Reva, while I admire Chetan Maini for his idea about the car is the flimsiest thing in the world. Most people who write paeans about the concept haven't obviously driven the car. Insulting the Reva would be calling it a glorified Golf cart, but when I was coming off Moolchand flyover once, the car which I had with me for a test-drive really felt that it was about to come apart at the grand speed of 70kmph. And since the car is all fibreglass, the sequence of events with a Blueline in Delhi would - Crash, Bang, Splat! Basically put, if Tata Motors wants to make me or anybody for that matter confident in the car they have to ensure that people don't feel unsafe driving ther car. The thing is while, I'll probably take a seat on a Boeing 787 in a jiffy (and most of the software running that plane would have been made in Noida and Bangalore), a car will have to inspire far more confidence.
See, today, the Maruti 800 would marginally fail, or at least come close to failing globally established safety norms. There is no doubt that road safety isn't a big concern in India, just yet (another post on the matter soon), but can you make a car secure for Rs 1,00,000/-? I honestly do not think you can.
Yet, before you get to safety, the car itself has to be built. I know that Tata Motors are extremely close to the design freeze stage, or they might have already frozen the design. Hundreds of likely set-ups have been spoken about, but likely the car will be a rear-engined, rear-wheeled drive unit. Being powered by a small Diesel engine, it will also probably be the car that will irritate you the most on the road because idiotic drivers will be driving on the wrong lane. Most people who buy the small car will be first time car drivers from lower-income groups, and I'm saying that they should not drive, but without enough driver education, Tata Motors is all set wreck havoc on our roads.
Which brings us to another aspect of the price, Tata Motors profitability. After all, the company is a large-cap blue-chip Indian company listed on the indices. Heck, it is a major member of the BSE Sensex 30. Regular small car margins for the manufacturers run at between 5-8 per cent of the cars value. Even though, the company believes that margins will be lower (Duh!) I frankly doubt they will make money at this pricepoint for a few years until, and this depends if the car is a roaring success, the company can take advantage of economies of scale But in case the one lakh sticker price is just the promotional price and the price gets raised after a month or so, Tata Motors shareholders need not worry, after all the company's share price has increased some ten times in three years. More important the company is massively expanding its dealer network over the next couple of years to reach even more people, so even if the car doesn't take off in cities, it has a ready market in non-top 25 towns.
But the crucial question is will people buy a cut-price vehicle? I don't know. All I do know, is cut-price doesn't always work, Indians, and this is borne out by auto sales look for value in vehicles. If a manufacturer can deliver compelling value for cheap - like the Bajaj CT100 motorcycle, people will buy. But if people perceive the Tata vehicle as a ultra-cheap car without any street credibility, there might be an issue. Look at computers, sales of Rs 10,000, naam-ke-vaaste Linux computers has been slow, despite the fact that people load pirated Windows on these machines. People want something close to decent functionality - so they are not averse to spending five-six thousand more. I agree with CK Prahalad when he argues that there is a fortune to be made at the bottom of the pyramid, its just that you can't give bottom-dwellers (bad pun) scraps from above. We aren't fish living in the ocean.
Anyhow, all the doubts and questions about the car will answered in 2008 when the next Auto Expo happens in Delhi. I'm fairly sure that Mister T will have his regular Auto-Expo whizz-bang with the one-lakh car, and we might also get a peek at the next generation Indica range. Anyway, lets see how it goes.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Farcical Sports

Sports officials have a knack of making the mundane interesting. Just one month after the World Cup had a series of officiating fiascos, and we still don't know if the ref or his assistants actually saw the Zidane incident, Cricket degenerates into a farce.
In the subcontinent, it has all become about racism. And this isn't a great time to be brown in the UK, you really gotta admit. So the ball-tampering incident, which is really a clash between two stubborn heads has become about something it should not be. Even though, I really do believe that Hair is an 'old guard' umpire who pines for the tradional days of the sport before us 'brownies' came and ruined it.
But, I do believe that people are choosing to read way too much into the incident. Cricket did not need this incident at all. Is the ICC stupid for letting man who is not respected by one side umpire a game? Yes, it is. At the end of the day, sports depends on the nuetrality and repect that the players have for officials. Anyhow, way too much has been written into the issue and I don't want any more. But, I wonder what will happen if the sub-continent decides to bid the ICC, Alvida!
Anyway, at least Golf celebrates a Black-Brown man!

Saturday, August 19, 2006

Yet another template change...

Blogger beta is refreshingly nice, template changing is amazingly idiot proof and doesn't require massive amounts of HTML knowledge. The one thing that rankles is the part that Adsense somehow seems to disappear, quite strange for a Google service. Talking about Google services, Writely, Google's online word-pro program has opened registrations again. I figure that I might actually like this service a lot, travelling journalist type that I am (even though I was threatened that my wings were going to fall off Icarus style by Bossman).
Anyway, cutting to the chase, third template in a fortnight, and I think it looks nice, what say you?

Coke-Pepsi ke baare mein!

Vanada Shiva, India's favourite anti-MNC activist after Prannoy Roy's sis-in-law and her cronies, a person who takes hipocrisy to previously unfathomable levsl wants Coke and Pepsi to leave India. I think its fairly ironic that people who want to take us back to stone ages in the developmental stakes use fax and email to contact people!
I just have one question, even though I don't particularly like Pepsi, what am I suppopsed to drink Jack Daniels with now? Water? Sorry, wrong answer, I think we should all drink cow pee. And what about that quintessential desi drink - Old Monk? How will I drink that without Coke?
Why? What have I done to you people? First, farmers use so much pesticides in their crops that the sugar they make is enough to kill my sperm count, but no, lets not deal with the problem, lets attack the MNC's for using the sugar. And lets get our mad Mallu Marxists who want to take Kerala from the 1970's to the 1950's on our side. And we'll pay some 1000 people to come on a rally with us.
I don't deny India has problems, for gods sake, I've been to some of those places. But, the solution isn't what you people are doing. To be fair, the solution that the Surdie and the Italian are proposing is also a 'Pie in the Sky' solution, but it is a bit better.

Friday, August 18, 2006

On Blogs!

This is just a quick note, because of moving back to Delhi I needed a new blog to put down the randomness of the capital city in and the Bombay blog obviously couldn't be modified for that. This blog will remain active, I'll make posts about life, work and other issues anytime I feel like ranting or I have the time to waste. Now, I have already gone about and done the hard work of of setting up a new blog, yet, here is the fun part. The blog is a public blog, though NOT on blogger because I thought I needed a new blogging tool. So, its not on Blogger, I can't tell you where it is, all I can do is say that hopefully it will be as irreverent and irrelevant as both the others.

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Back in Delhi

Its hot and dusty, no more wet and damp clothes. Back to my trusty old Alto and back to the headaches of driving through insane traffic and stupid Police checkposts and dealing with 16-year old parking attendants. There is the Metro instead of overcrowded trains, but I'm not taking the Metro right now. At a level it feels good to be back, however I'm still a bit iffy. Honestly, it is not as if I haven't been to Delhi in a while, I must have spent at least six weeks here over the last one year I was ostensibly in Bombay.
But, it feels different now that I have moved back here. Sure, fair enough I have moved from one crappy computer to another, but working here feels different. I actually miss my colleagues in Bombay and since almost no-one in Delhi office I left is still around its like moving into an all new office. Sure, the bosses who took my case every three minutes are still the same, but this still doesn't feel normal. I guess it will take a couple of weeks to get used to the new set-up and getting to grips with my new responsibilities. In the meantime, I will catch up with people I left behind and meet friends I haven't seen in a while.
Yup, its Delhi all right. And I already miss Bombay, and I'm not saying that because of the exciting nightlife I left behind.
PS : As a sign of a new start - I moved to the new Blogger Beta setup, haven't played around with it yet, but to please detractors like Shivam who hate certain colours, I will change it about a bit.

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Ramblings...

I haven't blogged here for a bit, been watching a lot of movies so I've been blogging over at the other blog. Anyway, might as well let the cat of the bag and admit that I am moving back to Delhi fairly soon. Now that the papers have been signed and sealed, it is more or less a done deal and I now move to endgame in Bombay. Not without getting drenched though!
Only around late last night did the constant barrage that pounded Bombay (and other parts of Gujarat and Maharashtra)for over 72 hours come to an end. In the list of things you have to do in life (Mine reads something like this - Sleep with a supermodel, eat eyeballs for breakfast, travel to North Korea, yada yada) I can now safely tick off 'Exeperience a Bombay Monsoon'. Not the most pleasant experience of my life, and one I would rather avoid. Y'see the city has most of its funds siphoned off by a bunch of idiotic politicians who use it to buy votes in their constituencies, Bombay's riches fund Maharashtra (and not Delhi's flyovers or Metro as people would like to believe - those are funded by Delhi's alcoholics) and whenever it floods this city collapses. Everyday when I travel down Hill Road to get to Bandra station it looks like a bloody war zone. I'm pretty sure the roads in Baghdad are in a better way and Doc assures me that the roads in Kabul are actually better, and the last I heard we weren't exactly in throes of a civil war. Last yaer, there is nothing any city could have done, but this year the situation could have been better.
Anyway, whenever the sky even piddles in Delhi the roads get jammed. Somehow, Cal seems to handle heavy rain the best. I've experience enough Calcutta Monsoons because of the fact that my mother used to pack me and my brother off to Cal for the summer holidays every year to my grandparents. Ingenious way of passing responsibility and getting us fat.
Anyway, I've been reading a lot about this Coke/Pepsi pesticide business (original report). And how the courts have demanded that the two companies reveal their ingredients - well, I'll tell you its lots and lots of Sugar and some fizzy water, so there. Anyway, much of the cola companies defence has been sending out their lap-dog (a guy with a grey mop in Delhi who claims to be a 'feted' adman) who goes around calling Sunita Narain of CSE names. Now, the Centre for Science and Environment and Sunita Narain are guilty of a lot of things like most enviromentalists by raising a hue and cry about the smallest of things. But, I do not for one second doubt her intentions and motives. I know Sunita, I have interviewed her twice and like many environmentalists, I might say some of her motives are misguided, though not dubious, until now. I respect her for what she has done, without the CSE, Delhi's transport system would not be CNG run today, and despite teething trouble in the beginning, today almost everyone realises the benefits of CNG over carcinogen spreading diesel fumes.
Why I think the current crisis is a bit dubious is because we are missing the real point here - a point I guess even the CSE is too scared to make for fear of upsetting the farmer lobby. I do not belive that Coke and Pepsi actively pour pesticide into their products. Which means that the groundwater in India is extremely polluted - and this problem is being garbed by an attack on those icons of Americana - Coke and Pepsi. Very few people have pointed this out - I'm glad Gautam Adhikari did mention this on Sunday as did this particular blog post. Wait a second, I drink water that has been through all sorts of treatment to remove microbes but has it removed chemicals, are we turning into freaks by drinking large amounts of chemicals over our lifetime and why on earth are we allowing farmers to indiscrimately use pesticides and weedicides. OK, in some parts of the country the farmers use it to kill themselves, but by not controlling the use of such products, the government is heading for biological disaster in a couple of decades.See, this is as crazy as activists from PETA attacking KFC (with semi-naked pictures of Pam Anderson or Pam Rock now) calling them cruel while not addressing the real problem of unhygenic chicken rasing.
And that is my only problem with activism, missing the point. I'm not a big fan of either drink, but Coke does go very well with Jack Daniels and Teachers and Old Monk and..... OK, Coca-Cola is a bloody good mixer. But that isn't the point. Anyways, till later.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

The perils of social networking.

I was quite surprised to see SM make a post on online social networking today, because I was just discussing the topic yesterday with my temporary roomie, Doc. I gave my own example, a few months ago, a friend in Delhi persuaded me to register on Orkut, the Google-promoted online social networking site. I was never a big fan of Orkut, but I usually always agree to friend requests and I have found many people after years, it is a rather boring thing beyond a point.
Now, Doc is one of those people who think the internet is basically an endless stream of bittorrent feeds and occasionally useful for checking email and he doesn't quite understand how I spend my entire day without downloading at least two movies. Well, the reason for that is that if I tried doing that my ancient computer system would crash and given that currently ten people share a 128 kbps network in office, I'll end up downloading a movie a month.
Now, how do you explain 'social networking' to such a person?
I tried by explaining that it is a way for people to find friends they haven't met for some time online, but a rather logical answer to that is that if you haven't met this person in years, do you really want to find them?

Me : "But, it is fun for a bit, however, the novelty does wear off."
Doc : "Dude, your life has to be seriously boring if you use this. I'm sure people also try to use Orkut to pick up women."
Me : "I'm sure they do, but it is pretty sad if they do that." (I read this today)
Doc : "Isn't that MySpace site facing problems of sexual predators?"
Me : "Yeah, it is, but I haven't seen that on Orkut."
Doc : "But, K, that still doesn't make the entire exercise worthwhile, does it? It is still a thing people with sad lives do for spare time."
Me : "Can't disagree with that."
Doc : "I mean, look at you, at your media parties you go have a couple of Black's and them talk through your a** for the next three hours and come back with fifty visiting cards in your pocket."
Me : "Now that you mention it, there isn't no Black Label online!"
Doc : "See...."


Doc was right, what is the point of all this online networking when you're fairly adept at doing it in the real world. I remember when I had done a story on the spread of MMOG's in India, a lot of people use the online medium to make friends because they are socially inept in the real world - but it is still quite sad if you try to get yourself laid that way. That doesn't mean I will remove my profile from Orkut, but really how useful is it?
Most of the people on my Orkut list already have all my contact details and are fairly close to me, the couple of people I have tracked down were decent friends, but not people I can't live without. The other problem as RKT (another friend) mentioned, was that these social networking sites are so transparent, you don't know what to do when someone you're not exactly enamoured of adds you to his/her list of 'friends'.
Anyway, it has been quite a while since I have linked to some cool things I've been seeing online, so here goes, some of these links are clearly marked as 'Not Safe For Work' (NSFW).
Tokyoblog - a journey through Japan based on 'reader assignments' and put down in graphic form.
I wish I had something to trade for these! This guy is trying to pull off the red paper clip gag with 120 'adult' DVD's.
Some interesting B&W photo studies of nudes. (NSFW)
Japanese artist Yuko Shimizu's portfolio is a very interesting watch.
Dadanoias, a girl in Barcelona blogs about her life and interests. (NSFW) Check out her Flickr set too, but be warned, don't open it at office.
Fluffy Lychees. (NSFW)
Shiri Zinn makes the most astounding and expensive sex toys in the world using some of the most exotic substances known to humankind. And people love her work.