What you see (in the ad) is what you get

Saw this billboard advertisement for the Deccan Chronicle (DC) newspaper on
Cathedral road, on my way to work.

AD

BC

sometimes

two letters

denotes

an era

The ad, as you can see, is a play on their acronym (DC). But I fail to figure out what the newspaper has to do with either AD or BC or an era.

As I mentioned in one post earlier, calling the DC a newspaper would be an insult to actual newspapers like The Hindu, that do a great job of reporting news and educating the readers.
The DC on the other hand is for those that love to get the latest gossip on movie stars and
the likes of Paris Hilton, Britney Spears et al. Its just a tabloid, if you will.

However, this post is not about the DC's quality (or actually the lack of it). This post is about
the copy of their advertisement itself, which gives a fair indication of what you will get in the
newspaper.

I am no grammar expert, but somehow the wordings of the advertisement don't sound
correct to me. Is "sometimes two letters denotes an era" grammatically correct ?
I would think it should be "sometimes two letters denote an era".

But, even if they have it wrong, it would not come as a surprise to me because that is exactly
the way their newspaper reads - shoddy English, grammatical mistakes all over the place,
sentences that abruptly end without completion and so on. Sometimes I wonder whether they
actually have someone proof-reading the contents before it goes to press.

I would have expected them to be careful atleast while advertising. Maybe its an in-house
advertisement. I don't think a professional advertising agency would have made this mistake.

Inspite of all this, DC sales are soaring in Chennai, atleast if I am to believe their claims.
Not surprising given that they price the paper at Rs1.50 (some months ago it was only
1 Rupee). Add to it our interest in gossip, movie news and Page3 personalities. And at the
end of the month, it fetches more when you sell off the old newspapers to the recycler.

After all, we Indians love anything that is VFM (Value For Money).

A new mobile operator in town ?

A college-mate had come to Chennai from the US on vacation. Since it was years since we
had seen each other, we decided to go out for dinner and spend some time catching up on
old times, current lives, future plans etc.

Ofcourse with the all-pervasive presence of mobile phones, it was tough keeping the conversation on track. Every now and then he or his wife would get a call on their mobile
and till they were done talking to who ever was calling, the conversation would cease. By
the time they finished the call, we were not even sure where we had left off.

Having come to Chennai after a long time, there were many friends / relatives that wanted
to meet them or talk to them. So, they could be excused for letting the cellphone be an interruption in a meeting between friends.

However, what I found surprising was that the cellphone conversations were not really
smooth. My friend found it tough to hear the other party and there were lots of "Hello.
Hello. Can you hear me ?" kind of talk thrown in every few seconds.

Given that we had atleast 5 mobile operators in Chennai and the fact that we were in the
heart of the city, I was wondering why the reception was not good. I was curious to know
which mobile operator they were attached to, and asked them.

His wife replied that they were using the pre-paid card of SuryaCell.

I was like, "Who the heck is SuryaCell ?"

I know of Aircel, Airtel, Hutch, BSNL and Reliance operating here. But never heard of any provider called SuryaCell.

Seeing the blank expression on my face, she clarified.
"Its Aircell, which is endorsed by Surya (Tamil cine actor) and billboards of which are all over the city. I am a big fan of Surya and since he endorses Aircel, I prefer to call it as SuryaCell".

She said that when they had to choose a pre-paid card from the 5 available service providers, she did not even give it a thought and straightaway chose Aircel. Only because it was endorsed by her favourite movie star.

Hmmm. Looks like its money well spent by Aircell on Surya. They can atleast bank on his female fans (for all I know, even male fans) to plump for their service. Bad reception or other service issues be damned.