Last Friday, I &mdash; and 17 other unwary souls &mdash; got a bit plastered.

The test of wines

Business Standard

What you need to flaunt this season are touchscreen phones that are smart and sassy.

It's the way you talk

She loves her brands but doesn&rsquo;t mind strutting around in high street wear fashion too. A singer by profession (she also collaborated with international band INXS for one of her numbers), Sona Mohapatra is busy performing all over the world. She&rsquo;s in New York at the moment for her shows (it&rsquo;s also where she recorded her music video) and accompanying her are some of her favourite things.

Bold designs

Healthcare reform was at the centre of the electoral debates in the United States. It is a live issue in most developed countries. Europe is looking at new healthcare models. Japan is opening up to generics. Yet India &mdash; where healthcare is still an out-of-pocket (OOP) expense for the vast majority of citizens &mdash; is not part of the debate. Should we be looking at free healthcare for all or affordable healthcare? Should we be controlling the price of drugs or offering direct subsidy? Is public-private partnership the way forward? The Indian healthcare system currently combines the worst features of the public and private models &mdash; the public health system is in a poor state and private care is unregulated and high cost.

Unhealthy India

Driving across three capitals in Fiat diesels.

Diesel March

Over the last year or so, it&rsquo;s been easy for me to recommend a car to those who are ready to spend Rs 11-12 lakh. I tell them to go for the Honda Civic &mdash; a &ldquo;be wary about speed-breakers&rdquo; caution was all that was needed before another Civic hit the road. Not anymore.

Curious case of the Civic

The World Cup started close on the heels of the Tal Memorial. The 128-player tennis-style KO sees the prize money increase in every round and the winner gets a spot in the Candidates. It is a fair system but it is also a lottery since the mini-matches are short. Each match consists of two games at normal controls &ndash; that is, 90 mins for the first 40 moves, followed by 30 minutes till finish and an increment of 30 secs/ move. Tiebreaks consist of paired active games and then, blitz if required. Only the final round features four normal games.

CHESS 615

A new &ldquo;old&rdquo; Royal Enfield is born. We ride the Enfield Classic.

Gunning forward

Abu Dhabi could well be the major draw in Asia for its focus on promoting art and culture.

A new city of art

What makes for a successfully curated show? For over a year now, I&rsquo;ve struggled to answer my own question. In the last fortnight, I seemed to have finally gleaned some worthwhile insights.

The Eureka moment

Compiling a bunch of unforgettables from Indian cinema is bound to create room for argument.

The indefinitive list

Even when as young as five, Om used to collect coal from the railway tracks and bring it home to be used as fuel. Once, Om and his friend found an egg. Om had never seen one but his friend explained that it was something edible. His mother would not let them enter the house with it but gave them an empty oil tin can and some wood. The boys lit a fire, boiled the egg in the tin can and then are it with relish. It was perhaps the first time little Om had tasted any kind of non-vegetarian food.

The hero within

The zeitgeist builds itself; being right up close to events, we see at first only the separate bricks. At some particular moment, however, a precipitating event suddenly converts the soup of soluble doubts to a crystal of certainty. Bricks become house.

Would be nice

T here&rsquo;s a reason that many writers have odd personalities: writing is such a solitary exercise that you can see why they might eventually go quite postal, or at least start wearing funny hats and divorcing their spouses. I love to look at the Guardian&rsquo;s online edition where they have a column called &lsquo;Writers&rsquo; rooms&rsquo;, which features a photograph of some one, well, writer&rsquo;s room, and a short write-up outlining the space and how the person uses it, according to their particular routines, eccentricities and superstitions. It makes me feel very well adjusted because I don&rsquo;t have, for instance, giant paper fish hanging from the ceiling, or a dessicated crocodile on the wall.

A stab at writing

If he was fiercely aggressive on the field, 29-year-old former hockey captain Viren Rasquinha, resting his hockey stick for the time being, is playing it cool now. He has swapped his sports gear for a business suit, reserved his on-field enterprise for round-table conferences, and as COO of Olympic Gold Quest (OGC), a specialised sports management company, Rasquinha has made a crossover few successful sportsmen at the peak of their career would consider making.

Corporate goal

Canary Wharf is London&rsquo;s Las Vegas Strip, not just a place to win (or lose) money, but a culinary destination that draws in chefs seeking a slice of the action.

Brand new bites

The exclusive, but expensive product promotion route found many takers in India this year.

India Inc wakes up to ad 'roadblocks'

Telecom industry may be hit by biggest customer churn ever, due to mobile number portability.

Call transfer: Users set to port number for new experience

With mobile phones and laptops boasting of embedded maps and GPS features, one would think that personal navigation devices (PND) would make a graceful exit from the market. On the contrary, PND manufacturers are betting on accelerating their reach in 2010, primarily backed by rising automobile sales. We are big fans of mobile phone-based navigation applications, but there is a lot to like about stand-alone navigation devices. These dedicated gadgets typically offer better display screens and simplified maps that are easier to use while on the move and don&rsquo;t require you to choose between making a call and accessing location information.

Directions from above

Exactly ten days ago, Google gave a sneak preview of the latest software from its stable &mdash; the Chrome operating system. True, it will still take a year before the Chrome OS appears on netbooks (with memory chips, not hard disk drives according to Google).

Will Chrome glitter in India?

The premium brand banks on them to boost market share. Till a few months back, Hindustan Unilever was banking on renowned Indian hair stylists to co-create Sunsilk, its premium shampoo brand. The fast-moving consumer goods major has now set its sights higher and has just requisitioned the services of seven global hair experts to give consumers salon-quality products.

Sunsilk's new gambit

- Find Specials News, Features, Analysis and more at Business Standard. Full coverage of Goafest 2014

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