A blogger's best friend..

Thats what my blog has become in 6 years to me. Thats right, today is exactly 6 years since I started writing my blog. That certainly means that there have been atleast 6 posts including this one, talking about how much my blog has come to mean to me. Good excuse to write a post at the least :-D.

Seriously though, I cannot believe that I'm still writing. I mean, ideally I did think and do think that I will be writing all my life, but the situations in life don't really give you that kind of a comfort level or that kind of a time. I've seen blogs and the associated bloggers disappear without a word suddenly because of life pressures and I don't really blame them. When I had Snugli, there were many points in time when I did wonder whether I was 'neglecting' her by dedicating a bit of time to my activities (especially blogging). But there's my duties as a mother to her, as a wife to my husband, as a daughter to my parents and then there is a duty to myself. To do the things I love to do :).

And I do love to write. The posts have been slow for the past couple of months, due to the little one that I'm carrying. Call it fatigue or maybe laziness, but to be honest, I don't mean to give up on the blog yet. Have no idea how tough it'll be after the delivery, but right now, I plan to make some time somehow :). So hopefully there will be a post next year celebrating the 7th birthday of the blog if it goes as well as it is going right now. And to add, I don't really have that many commentators pestering me to write, so that must prove that this is purely for myself and few of my family/friends who are regular visitors :).

Another hindrance to blogging is the evolution of day-to-day social networks like twitter and facebook. I'm still not on twitter, thank God (cannot afford to update yet another one), but I am on facebook and I have to admit that its easier to put up daily thoughts there, than create a post for it on the blog. Obviously there is no detail-oriented stuff as it is here in this blog, but its good for a quick quote or a quick link pointing to a news I thought was interesting. Yet for me personally, that can never take the place of this blog - even though for some people apparently it does. I have seen people update 10-20 status messages per day, upload irritating photos of what they cook daily or see daily or do every second of every minute of every hour of every day and people updating the damn thing when they are attending weddings (right now while attending someone else's wedding, but I'm sure the day will come when they'll be updating during their own as well :-p), or watching cricket or doing anything. And everytime I see this I feel like shouting at them to stop and to enjoy what's happening in actuality rather than striving to keep strangers "updated" (sadly some even consider strangers as very good friends :-p). But oh well, its their life, their choices.

Anyways, a very happy 6th birthday to my beloved blog. Hope you continue to exist as long as I do :).

The good twin ;-).

As I mentioned earlier, its the 5th birthday of my blog today :). And the gift is that I now have a copy of my blog (albeit private) on wordpress. Am yet to figure out how to setup the same theme and push all the photo-dependency from blogger to there. But one step at a time. Right now its a private blog, but if ever something happens to this blog here again, I'll take off and create the full fledged version there.

I said before that I was shocked to see all my posts gone. It was more than that, it was as if a part of me was torn apart. This shows you how much this blog has come to mean to me. I even declared that if I didn't recover the posts, I'd never blog again. But here I am :). I am so glad that all is well with my blog again (but that 1 post is still missing and google developers are yet to get back).

5 years. So many things have happened. Changes have come but some things have remained the same. My blog has become a companion whom I cannot afford to lose. Its not that I don't have any secrets from my blog, there are many things I don't write about here (there's still a part of me thats private and personal ;-) :-D). But for the most part, my blog is a reflection of my life. Its a day to day mirror, but remember even mirrors don't really show the true self of the person ;-) (the reflection is inverted duh!). Maybe there'll come a time when I'll open up more. Or maybe I'll become more close-mouthed about stuff (as if!). But what I do know is that I am going to be blogging for a long time.

Happy birthday blog, and here's to many more shared memories together :).

Rock bottom..

"Ya know I really thought I had hit rock bottom, but today it's like there's rock bottom, then 50 feet of crap, then me." - Rachel in Friends.

Strange how some quotes just seem to suit your life so aptly. In my earlier post I wrote how I was afraid to say "it can only get better from now on", but I have to admit, I thought it. Well, I thought wrong. On the fateful day of Feb 16th, I woke up to find that I have been locked out of my Google account (looks like it was hacked into). After some miserable hours I managed to get my password reset and login to the account, only to find out that my Orkut profile was deleted! The profile cannot be recovered and I have to create a new one :(. Still, the saving grace was that my blog was still there and nothing had happened to my photos or mails. Wrong! Next morning all the posts were gone, wiped out, deleted without trace from my blog.

I was shocked to say the least. I didn't have a backup of anything (had tried to do that earlier, but hadn't gotten any proper solution). I really thought Google was the big boss of everything and they'd have multiple back-ups of everything and nothing can ever vanish without their approval. Not so apparently :-\. Didn't know what to do at all. After one complete day of grovelling on the help forums, I found something out. If you subscribe to a blog on Google Reader, it usually has if not all, most of the posts in cache`, despite the fact that you are logging into the damn thing only after your posts have been deleted. I had posts from December 2006 to February 2010, but I started the blog in March 2005, so there were a lot of posts missing.

After about 5 days of to and fro on the forums (here's the discussion), there still wasn't any concrete solution. I was told that if I could produce the URLs of all the posts, they'd try and restore them. What the heck! I had about 300 posts then, how am I supposed to get all the URLs of those? I got around 200 URLs on the Google reader. I didn't know what to do about the rest. I remembered some of the missing posts, but didn't really remember the titles of the posts (blogger names the URL on the title). Tried searching in Google blogs, didn't work. After various permutations and combination, finally figured out a solution. If you search the blog name and say a month and a year, the search result usually shows the archived page of the month. If you click the "cached" version, then you get the old post. And so after searching for every single month and spending the entire day on the computer I finally had all the URLs of all the posts (you can see the entire list in the discussion above). Phew!

Again a week went by without a word. You cannot fathom the frustration that I went through. Yesterday they finally said they had restored all the posts as drafts and I had to publish them all to get the blog functioning as it was (one URL was wrong, so there's still that to be worked out). They still haven't told me how or why it happened and I'm totally clueless. Atleast its a learning, have the XML backup and am planning to have a backup blog on some other site. That'll be my birthday gift to my blog this year.

Coming to my wounds, I'm fine. Stitches have been taken out and also the surgical strip that was put in as a replacement. There is a 1.5 inch gash on my forehead and a 0.25 inch one on my lip but they are very much on the mend. Right now I'm sporting the healing Frankenstein monster look (which is wayyyyyyy more hipppppp than the Rohini Hattangadi look ;-) :-D), so even though I feel awkward going out anywhere, thats alright to some extent.

So all's well right? Beep wrong again! You know that last year my MBA plans got cancelled (to put it mildly)? I had transferred the application to this year and had hoped to get some financial assistance. Yesterday I got a mail from the coordinator telling me that times are tough and financial resources are limited, hence they'll not be able to give any financial aid to me. I somehow expected that (usually business schools don't really dole out dough), yet felt crushed. It feels like I'm down and being kicked again and again. I'm so sick and tired of being treated this way! And I know tomorrow the situation can be worse.

So bring it on God! I'll take it like a woman - I'll be depressed, I'll cry, then I'll show you my middle finger and I'll get over it!

The other blog..

First of all, yes, I am on vacation. No, I'm not logging in from where I am (then it wouldn't be a vacation, would it? :-p). I wrote the posts on Friday and set a publishing time, so that you guys wouldn't miss me ;-) (as if!), hehehee. Actually the reason is that I can pester you even when I am away. Double fun :-D.

Now coming to the title of the blog, no, I'm not starting another blog. I hardly find the time to update the one I have :-p. But my better-half (hey, i think I'm the better half here :-p), has decided to blog. Imagine my surprise and happiness when Sri told me about it. I thought my dream of him writing a series of mushy posts for me (like I did for him) was finally coming true. Alas (with a filmy style back-hand on my forehead), that was not to be..

He's writing a technical blog, here it is if you want to check it out - Bubhutsa. Don't worry if you don't understand half of the things he's talking about, I don't either :-D. I have just decided to assume that he's writing a mushy post for me in a code language ;-).

Hey, a girl can always hope ;-) :)).

Great blogs of fire!

Recently I updated my blog roll. Had an external tool for it all this while. Its been sometime since Blogger came up with its own widget, but well, it always felt a bit too tedious to again add all those blogs from the beginning. But I have been wanting to do it for quite a while and once I decided to do it, I was done in half an hour. But thats not really what I want to talk about. As I entered the URLs of all those blogs, I noticed how many have been idle, how many haven't been updated for a long, long time. And it somehow made me sad :(.

I know I haven't been reading all the blogs. But it somehow feels like friends are slowly becoming busier and busier until they don't have any time for you at all. And I don't know most of these people. But it felt like we were fellow travelers on the same train or something. They were constant companions of mine whenever I needed them. The worse thing is that all these days they have been gone and I haven't even noticed! Guess I got "busy" too. But if you are still reading my blog (I know atleast a couple of friends are), I promise I'll pop in more often if you just return to writing a couple of sentences once in a while :). I did notice that one of them is back for now, which is wonderful.

All these make me more glad that somehow I have never given up blogging. 4 years ago, I started this blog as a possibility, a place to put in my thoughts and maybe a place that will help me sort out things. And it has been that and more. Its been 4 years of growing up with the blog and coming to terms with responsibilities. I know that even if I am busy, even if I have a 100 things to do. I'll somehow make the time, put the effort to type in a few words now and then. I don't ever want to give up. I'll always return and hopefully always have something to say.

Happy birthday dear blog :). Hope you have a wonderful year full of many memorable posts ahead :).

Blogging is the best medicine?

Well, who'd have thunk it? An article from newsweek "My Shrink says ...Blog!" says blogging is therapy :-p.

Why do people write confessional blogs? It's a creative outlet. It's a forum to vent. It's an exercise in exhibitionism. To mental-health experts, though, it's more than that: a blog is medicine. Psychiatrists are starting to tout the therapeutic power of blogging, and many have begun incorporating it into patient treatment. A forthcoming study in the journal CyberPsychology & Behavior even suggests that bloggers might be happier than nonbloggers.

Mental-health experts say blogs are a step up from plain old diaries, chiefly because of the built-in audience. As kids, we learn that if we air our problems, we get help. We associate communication with consolation, particularly when the going gets tough. Blogging fulfills that primal need for sympathy. "Writing is an effort of the brain to communicate for comfort," says Harvard neurologist Alice Flaherty. "Diaries are a form of that communication, but removed. Blogging gets you closer to that sympathetic audience, and that's what makes it therapeutic." According to psychologist John Suler, the anonymity of blogging provides another therapeutic boost: it's high intimacy with low vulnerability. But blogger beware. "Revealing too much," says Suler, "can cause shame or guilt." So blog to your heart's content, but leave some things to the imagination.

Now I know why I feel so good when I blog :-D. Talking of which, looks like I missed a whole month of therapy this May when I didn't blog :-p ;-) :-D.

Teesri manzil!

When I first made you, you were tiny:



Then you grew up a bit:



Today you are 3 years old and I can't believe you have grown to what you are :).



Happy birthday blog! Hope you have a great day and a wonderful year ahead ;-) :).

And then there were three..

Today's post is special. Two reasons. One, this is the 200th post :). Two, today is our 3rd wedding anniversary :).

First the blog (not that its more important, just to get that out of the way ;-) :-D). 200 seems unbelievable. I know I don't write that frequently. I am certainly not one of those who update their blog daily. But I have made it a point to put up a post atleast once every 4-5 days. These days, even that is getting difficult. One reason is that the ideas all are scattered and I don't really get the time to group them together. And then even if I somehow manage that, I never have the time to type a big post. And to think, big posts used to be my specialities :-D. But nevertheless, I'm glad I have this space to vent out whatever I am feeling at that particular moment. I'm glad that my parents read it and I get ample (actually more than ample :-D) feedback. I'm glad that I have written for so long and hope to continue for as long as possible :).

Coming to the anniversary, I know I have always said that I didn't know how it'd be after I got married. But this time its different. Three years ago if you had asked me, what I expected after 3 years of marriage, this is exactly what I'd have predicted :). We wanted to have a baby after 2 years and at the third year be proud parents. And we have Snigdha :). She's simply a joy to be around. She is now about 1.5 months old and smiles/laughs unexpectedly now and then..




She gets startled at sounds and stares intently at faces..




She watches anything that moves (includes people moving from here to there) and its like Sri and I are reliving a part of our childhood that we ourselves don't remember ;-) :-D.




Many a time, I have wondered what goes on in that tiny head of hers. Is it just "wet" or "hungry" or is it a whole lot of things that she is not able to express? Its plain amazing to watch her grow. Whats more amazing is the fact that her stomach is only as big as my hand and still can cause so much havoc :-D. She has started to flail her arms and kick her legs vigorously. I'm sure in no time, she'll be turning over and then crawling all over the place! Sri and I are really happy to have her. Everything feels exactly right - right place and right time :).

And then there is Sri. The man never ceases to amaze me! In two years I have seen him grow as a husband. I have seen him adjust to my idiosyncrasies and learn to deal with my tantrums :-D. I have simply seen him being the gem he is all the time :). Now I'm seeing a whole new facet of the man - the father.




He's oh-so-patient with Snuggles (well, I can always argue that he's not the one feeding her :-D) and its indescribable to see him with her. I sometimes even get jealous of the attention he bestows upon her :-D :)). He holds her/rocks her cradle for hours and seemingly simply cannot get enough of her :). And it makes me all teary-eyed ;-). 3 years ago, I never imagined I'd still be feeling this way about him - all mushy and gooey inside whenever I see him :-D. I guess the love is still growing and going strong :).

As for me, you know me. I'm the same old me - mostly happy, getting frustrated now and then, but basically living in the moment, enjoying what life has given me so far and very very much in love with my family. Always and forever are big words, but I hope to be this way as long as I live..

To reduce some of the sappiness in the post and also to keep up with my trend of putting comics, here's a Calvin and Hobbes strip on marriage ;-) :-D (click for a larger version).



And here's another one, go Suzy!!

Award Shaward Hai rabba!

Timepass has honoured me with the "Power of Schmooze" (the meaning being power to network - hmm I don't really know that holds good with the one or two comments I get :-p) award :).




I would like to thank the various snacks/fruits/juices who have sacrificed themselves so that I could write a single post. I would also like to thank every cow, crow, frog that posed for my not-so-good photographs. It would be unfair if I don't thank my colleagues and boss who, though I was pouring precious work time on the improvement of this blog, never said a word against me. And how can I forget the strangers who became fodder for humour!

But seriously, thanks to Timepass, who thinks I deserve the award, thanks to Sri, mom and dad who have always encouraged (in fact, forced :-p) to write more :), the friends who regularly visit and leave comments and all the people who have dropped in from time to time just to keep me writing :). Thanks a lot :).

Lastly, I am the queen of the world!! :-D.

I have to pass the parcel, oops, award, so here goes :). I give the "Power of Schmooze" award to

• Gayathri


• Orchid


• Arjun


• Chitra


• Soumya


• Vanditha


• Thanu


"Oh, wow. This is the best drink of water after the longest drought of my life." - Steven Spielberg after winning the Oscar for "Schindler's List".

Blowing my own trumpet :-D.

A real quick update. I am feeling really proud and happy today. One of my blog posts is published in Vijay Times epaper's Jun 6th 2007 "Bloggers' park" section.

Here's the way to access it:

1) Go to Vijay Times Epaper.
2) Do not register but click on "Click here for FREE access to e-paper".
3) A pop-up window wil open with the day's online paper.
4) On the top right side there will be Edition and Date dropdowns.
5) Select date as Jun 6th 2007.
6) Scroll using "next" or "previous" to Page 6.
7) Scroll down a little to see the "Blogger's park" section and my post "The age of innocence" in it :). BTW the original post is here.

:-D. And thanks to Chitra for pinging and letting me know :).

You only blog twice (2 years) :-D

The Blog poem

There's a place on the web
Where I pen down my thoughts.
I write this, that and more
I type lots, lots and lots..

I write poems, I put pictures
I write huge posts on my travels
I write about my on-going life
As it slowly but surely unravels..

I started writing two years ago
I hope it goes on to three
Then to five, ten, fifteen, twenty
Until the ultimate end of me!

Beating the Beta :)

From the time I found out that I had the opportunity to shift to Blogger beta (not a great opportunity as such - if you have a gmail id you can shift :-p), I've been thinking about doing it. After all, I've wanted labels (or tags) for my posts for what seems forever. So much that I've thought about going for a third-party service for the same. I just never got around to doing it as it was a bit tedious. When I found out Blogger beta has them, I was really excited. But there were some problems and I had to fix them before I could "upgrade" :-D.

The first thing was the template of this blog. Nope, I was not going to change the template again. I am very happy with the current template and am going to stick to it for a long time (well, until I come up with a better one :-D). But I was worried that shifting might screw up something that was screwed up already. So I did change some of the template code, to fix the resolution issue. If you note the note in the right pane you can see "This blog is best viewed in IE 6.0, Netscape 7.2 or Mozilla 1.5.0.6 with a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels or higher." Yeah I fixed the problems and certified it in latest versions of IE, Netscape and Mozilla :)). The template was adapting to any resolution equal to or greater than 1024 x 768 pixels (optimum is when equal to) :)).

The next thing was that the known issues of blogger beta said that "Users who have switched to Blogger in beta will not be able to login to comment on blogs that have not switched" and also that "Users are seeing errors when posting comments with current Blogger accounts to blogs on the new version of Blogger in beta". So the 1st meant that I wouldn't be able to comment on other blogs who have not yet shifted to beta. That is still ok as I would be able to comment as anonymous or other. But the 2nd was a bigger problem as I don't have anonymous comments enabled. So others who comment (hardly comment ;-) :-D), won't be able to comment at all. The updates tell me that both issues are fixed. Even if there are problems, there is a workaround. What needs to be done is after typing the comment, click Preview button. Then click the "Publish the comment" link on the preview box and not the button on the leave your comment window :).

The third thing was that the shifting couldn't be undone. That is, once I shifted to Blogger beta, if something went wrong with the template, there was no way I could get back to normal blogger and continue normally. Naturally, I was a bit apprehensive. But after shifting, I found that I could keep my old template, but couldn't really take advantage of the new features of the beta in that case. The changes I had done previously to my template (for fixing it for higher resolutions) felt like a total waste of time. God!! I had to upgrade to a new template and modify it again to suit my template. Needless to say, it was a really tedious job, it took more than 5 hours yesterday. I had to fix every bit of code to make it look and work like it was doing previously. I again had to check the browser compatibility and make modifications + the resolutions too. Phew, finally I've brought the whole thing to a stage where I can say I'm happy with it. It still needs some modifications, mainly I have too many labels and I need a different format for them, but those are all negligible :). And I'm gonna take my own sweet time with those :).

So that was it. As of yesterday I have been in Blogger beta. I have already started labelling the posts (I don't have many anyways ;-) :-D) and am done with most :).

Before I sign off, a couple of quick updates on some of my previous posts:

1) James Polehinke, the lone survivor and the co-pilot of the Comair flight crash I posted on, is alive. But the poor guy had to have his leg amputated and still has many fractures (update here). It seems he doesn't even remember the crash..

2) Well, Popeye, Sri and me can eat spinach again after the no-spinach-days which I posted on. The US-wide ban on spinach has been lifted (update here).

And she scored a century!!

I thought I would:

• Write 100 lines of poetry :).


• Upload 100 photos for a single post :).


• Write exactly 100 words in a post ;-).


• Think of 100 excuses why not to write a post and list them all in a post :-D.


• Write "100" 100 times in a post ;-).


• Search for 100 synonyms for 100 and list them all :).


• List 100 favourite somethings in a post :).


• Made 100 sincere dedications :)


• Say 100 heart-felt thankyou-s :).


• Rename my blog as "100" and change the outlook ;-).


• Jump 100 times in the air and describe the experience in my blog :-D.


• Eat 100 chocolates in celebration (certainly not a good idea :-p).


• Light 100 candles in rememberence :).


• Play and listen to 100 songs :).


• Yell 100 Hurrays :-D.


• Not write a post for 100 days :-o.


• Make 100 faces at my computer :-D.


• Mail 100 friends/relatives ;-).


• Make 100 phone calls :).


• List 100 of my favourite posts ;-).

Uhh, wait, I only have 100 posts total in my blog :-D. Hehehehe :).

A toast to 100 posts completed and 100s of more posts to come :). Cheers!!

Singing:

Sau posts pehle mujhe tumse pyaar tha
mujhe tumse pyar tha
Aaj bhi hein aur kal bhi rahega :)

Blog Birthday and a makeover ;-)

When it was born last year i.e 8th March 2005, my blog didn't look like what it is currently. It looked like this:




In fact, till yesterday it looked like this:




So, for its birthday, I decided that I've had enough pink and lets go for a change again :-D. Hence the birthday gift to my blog this year is a makeover :-D. The first change was done on 28th June 2005 here. Then it was just a revamping of the pink. This time, well, you can see it is anything but pink :).




Oh man!! Can't believe its been an year of blogging. In one year, this blog has seen my confusion, my sadness and ofcourse my lots and lots of happiness. I still haven't completed 100 posts (I'm stuck at 77 and I'm not that avid a blogger :-D). Actually thought of completing 100 posts as a birthday gift, but when you want to write posts, the ideas don't ever occur. So lets say, I just washed my hands off the idea :-p.

The pink has been getting to me for sometime and have had this idea of a change since about a month. But I waited basically because I thought it's be a wonderful idea for the blog birthday :). I basically love the black and white combination. Add grey and you have a great one. I really don't know how I got the idea for the title though, it sort of just hit me. The first title my blog had was "Deep Thoughts" kinda based on the "Hitchhiker to the galaxy" by Doughlas Adams. Secondly "Dip Tea" as my friend Ranjini used to call me. Both were generally related to my name. But now its "Like Duck To Water" and I dunno why :-D. I guess the fact that I had all those duck photos surely helped in deciding the title. I am proud to say that they are all taken by yours truly :). I do hope you all like the way my blog looks as much as I do :).

Meanwhile, 1 year of blogging gone, wonder how many years it'll continue. Hope it does until my last breath.

"Dear blog, wishing you a healthy, wealthy (:-D), happy and a long life"....***

*** Sneaky me, the wish is indirectly for myself, kyun ki for the blog to be healthy, wealthy etc, I have to be exactly those and more ;-) :-D...

What you shouldn't blog...

Literally stumbled upon a whole controversy when I was just glancing at some blog. Before you read my instructions on what not to blog, first you require the prelude in chronological order. I suggest you read through all of these (I know its a bloody lot, but you really need the background before making assumptions). So here are the events:

• The beginning - an article carried by JAM Magazine about IIPM whose editor is Rashmi Bansal.


• Gaurav Sabnis, a regular blogger reads the above and writes a post, like we bloggers regularly tend to do ;-).


• Gaurav gets a legal notice!!


• It reaches up to the level of Gaurav's employer IBM and he decides to resign voluntarily!!


• Varna another blogger, mentions Gaurav's post and gets a legal notice!!


• It has become a bloggers vs. IIPM movement now :-D


• Latest update is that NDTV calls it "fascinating story, which has not just raised questions about claims made by private educational institutions but also about laws governing internet privacy. " :-o!!

Ok the history over. Now my post. Tips on what you shouldn't blog:

• Don't refer to a magazine article in any part of your post. You never know who might come up and sue you ;-).


• If some other blogger is posting references to a magazine article, please don't ever support him/her and mention him/her in your post. Oooooooooops looks like I'm doing exactly that!! Hellllllllllp, I might get a legal notice anytime!! For people who want to send legal notice, please post it as a comment to this post as I've not given my email Id anywhere on my blog :-p. Look at me being considerate :-D.


• If you don't support the blogger above and want to register and post, don't ever post like this stupid guy here :-p. "Mummy, Mummy, my school is very nice, I even got a chocolate" anyone?? Sheeeeeeeesh!!


• Well, looking at the points above, I think you shouldn't even blog at all!!


• Also, if you read all my points and still want to go ahead and post, then don't worry, 1000's of bloggers including me will support you :).

If you ask my personal opinion, I think the whole thing is silly. IIPM instead of neglecting the whole thing, negligently put its ass on fire by giving it importance. Now even TVs are picking up the story. Ab IIPM ka kya hoga? Tch tch tch!! Poor Rashmi , Gaurav and Varna are being attacked at personal level, which I think is absolutely shameful and so do 1000's of other bloggers who are supporting them. Go people!! You guys rock!!

But I sort of pity the poor students studying in the pitiful institute. I mean, it really shows how worried they are if they are willing to burn the one and only laptop given to them by the institute :-p (Me being devilish >:) ).............

Blogggggggggggggggging!!

God!! There were so many people writing about blogging that they started giving me an inferiority complex (Now I can't have that, can I? :-D). I see the "To blog or not to blog" title in every damn place. What's this (blog) world coming to?? :-D

First I read Maddox's post on blogging. I saw so many posts referring to it that I just had to read it. It says:

Blogger: Term used to describe anyone with enough time or narcissism to document every tedious bit of minutia filling their uneventful lives.

Yup people, as you can see my life is pretty uneventful ;-). And yup, I do have the time :-D.

Just when I thought people couldn't have a worse opinion on blogging, I read "Blogging is stupid; go be a human being" referred to by another blogger saying that he agrees!! (this guy agrees and he has been blogging for 3 years now! Contradictions or what! :-D). The article is by Heather Burns and this is what she has to say:

Blogs aren't just stupid, they are crippling our social skills, and there is nothing better than human interaction, trust me. Believe it or not, there is a world outside of the computer. No joke, it has trees, popcorn and drive-thru liquor stores

Yeah so true. I just went outside and saw that there are so many trees. Wow!! Till now I hadn't realized that the earth had trees!!

Am I taking it personally? Yes. Am I being defensive? Absolutely :). If bloggers and blogs are junk, then why the heck are these people giving opinions on junk??

If you ask me why I blog (I know you are not asking me :-p), I don't have a definite answer. Is it because I don't have any other better work to do? Is it because I think I have a webspace and I like to fill it up with junk? Is it because I am being
narcissistic? Or is it because I don't have any real friends and I have only my computer I can have a decent conversation with??

No, the answer probably lies in the fact that I love to write. Be it a small memory or a nice trip or a not-so-nice experience. Yes, I am aware that many people (most of them strangers) may stumble across my blog and read it. No, I am not writing my blog in such a way that'll compel them to read it. Its their wish and will. As for people I know, my family, friends and relatives know about my blog and they love that fact that I have the time and patience to write all about a few simple day-to-day happenings (If you are one of the family, friends and relatives and you think otherwise, then this is the time to contradict me :-D. Speak now or forever hold your peace :-D. Hehehehe :-D). I am living far away from most of them, so I love to let them know the tiny details of my life, be it boring, stupid or whatever!!

And yup, I have gone out, eaten popcorn, not driven through liquor stores till now (probably will be another experience to jot about :-D), but have seen trees, birds and flowers. Heck, thats what I blog about :-D.

Winds of change :-D

Had been wanting to change the template for God knows how many days. Didn't really want to go for the sample templates that blogger gives. After much and much experimentation, I'm finally satisfied with the results. Its again in my favourite pink, but I feel this is much softer and sober. That background pink was sorta gaudy and had started to grate on my nerves :-D I haven't created my own template, just modified Dan's pink Thisaway (Rose) into what I wanted :-D. Believe me, it took a LOT of modifications :) But it was fun :)

Ok Just to have a comparision here's the BEFORE look and feel:

Though the current one is the AFTER look, I'm uploading a photo anyways (who knows I might change it again tomorrow :-D):

I also changed the blog name. Again Deep Thoughts is good, but just felt like a change. Dip-tea is what one of my close friends Ranjini used to call me. Am stealing the idea from her and copy-righting it ;-)

Its as if changing the blog look has brought a fresh outlook to me :) Its really strange, but life's not so dull anymore :) I feel a lot more cheerful and happy. I sure am weird ;-)

So, how is the change? Feels lotsa better na? What d'ya say?

Point to ponder :)

Nope I'm not going to talk about Indo-Pak Cricket :-p No POINT in that ;-)

Read this recently in "Quotable Quotes" Reader's Digest April 2005, Indian edition:

"If you read someone else's diary, you deserve what you get" - David Sedaris.

:)) But does this apply to blogs too? Hmmmmmmmmm...

Diaries are extremely private. So much that if I have a diary, I wouldn't even let the person closest to me, read it. But weblogs aren't private at all. You can probably remain anonymous and maintain your privacy in a way, but they are public. Any person can read your blog and even comment on it. There is absolutely no question of privacy.

So would you write in a blog what you'd write in a diary? Probably not ;-) But I have been pretty open in my blog. This was proved when one of my closest friends (Hey Vandu, that's you :-D) called me up just to make sure I was ok. This after reading my Love Foolosophy sigh sigh sigh!!! and Forms of loneliness :( posts. I was really so embarrassed {smiles sheepishly} :-D Nothing actually to be embarassed about though :)) I can't really complain because I was the one who mailed them all declaring that I have started blogging :-p

Anyways I like the way that I've been blogging and as long as its that way, I'm gonna keep on doing it my way :)

8th March 2005 - The First Blog :)

Finally!!! I started my blogging today. It feels totally strange to put your thoughts on a space where any Tom, Dick or Harry and Tina, Sally or Mary (why leave out the women?) can see it... I guess that means I can't put my really private thoughts here :-D.

Actually I thought I'll start blogging on my 25th birthday, but still 5 months to go for that and I just couldn't wait :))).

For a start, thought I'll put my picture here...this one was taken about 2 years ago in Ooty :).