cotton candy and white noise

I am way behind on my reading. Also way behind on updating my blog. Also way behind on following some (most) of them. But first of all, I have for you this.

Today has been an absolutely delightful day. The weather outside was oh-so-perfect this morning. In fact, we’ve had pleasant weather for over two weeks now. But I’m not going to bore you with the details of the weather we experience on this side of the world.

I haven’t written in a while, that’s probably why I’m talking gibberish. Of late so many things have been happening around me. My friends are migrating. Most of them are married or getting married. Some of them have lil angels and dolls to play with. Some are expecting. Some others are changing jobs. I’m spending less and less time with my sister ‘cos she’s getting busier with her life. AND it’s frustrating to know that I’m getting no where. I promise I won’t sulk because none of this is life altering.

Here’s a little story for you.

A little girl lives with her 8-something-member family that serves as domestic help for a large house right next door. She sings her heart away every morning to the not-so-prefect tune of Dhoom machale. By the looks of her, I can bet she can’t be a year older than seven. I would even say she’s just about six. But you’ll never know how deceptive looks can be when children her age are malnourished. She’s probably older than that… I’m not going to venture into that subject though.

Coming back to the song she sings every morning. She probably knows only those two words, or she prefers to sing away only those two, but she definitely doesn’t feel the need to go any further. While I sit in my third floor balcony, the morning news on one hand and a mug of steaming hot tea on the other, she is already at work. She has to fill a large empty tub with water that she pumps out of a hand pump into a smaller manageable bucket. She carries this around to where the tub is kept, a few feet away, and pours into the tub which can hold about 400 liters. I can’t begin to imagine how many trips she would have to make to fill the tub which is little taller than she is.

All this I watch from my third floor apartment balcony and feel ashamed to wonder about the incomplete song. Why didn’t I ever ponder about her homework? Did she complete it? Isn’t she’s supposed to get ready to go to school in a couple of hours? Wouldn’t her school bus come over to pick her up soon? Why didn’t any of that thought enter my mind? Here I am wondering why she sings only two words of a song. The irony of it being, I conveniently considered her to continue her family tradition of performing menial work for well-off homes.

Oh did I mention she chirps away happily while doing her tasks? Not one morning have I seen her feel remorseful of what she did. That is unquestionably some lesson I must learn!

Not so long ago, with a little push from Times of India’s powerful campaign Teach India, I decided to do my bit to help the thousands of little girls like her to sing. Make noise. Or squeal in joy upon riding a merry-go-round in a school playground. Even if her school is run by an NGO and taught by an amateur like myself. TeachIndia isn’t a new concept, but I’m insanely excited about it.

So as soon as TOI contacts me with more information, I’m going to be spending 4 hours a week changing the face of our nation. Are you interested to give the country a little of what your parents gave you? Do you live in one of the metros with a little time to spare this 2008? I’m a Teach India volunteer! You could be too.

India is a unique song. But it desperately needs people like us to change the way the world hears it. Now, it wouldn’t hurt to shriek a little to help bring tens of thousands of voices together, would it?

While we’re on that topic, here’s a wonderful song for you. Added advantage if you understood Hindi. And this time, I promise to be back sooner to attend to those meme’s.

Happy National Day everybody!

Einstein has got to be kidding!

Whoever said “miracles don’t happen” has got to be an agnostic. I talked to a friend last week after almost two years. One of my best pals... I was literally elated to hear from him. It was a nostalgic moment for me to have had turned my grey matter over and mulled about the times the three of us wasted every Saturday evening hopelessly lying down on the beach, mostly discussing gadgets and sometimes futile gossip. When it’s about time to leave for our homes, almost always, our topic would take a damping change of course, to the subject of the supernatural; only because one of them would talk about his impending visit to the church the following morning. As if upon reflex, the other one would argue or cast a smirk for a response which would make the two of us upset. Not because we try to make him believe in the Supreme Being, but because he simply refused to believe in miracles, although he has witnessed several himself!

I strongly think that one should believe in miracles. Life is too short to prove every single thing that happens to you through the world of science. I have had many a miracle. And I prefer to call my miracles, God!

The fact that I’m back to blogging after a full 18 day slumber by itself is a miracle for someone that gives little attention to routine. Thank God for me, I still haven’t considered blogging mundane. A stress-buster it is for me. And how I discovered blogging itself is a miracle. :)

But why am I talking about miracles? Because they happen to us in the most bizarre ways at the most bizarre time.

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Nevertheless, since I’ve been away from blogging for quite a while now and now that it’s improbable that I might be blogging regularly, here’s a little poem (?? composition, if you will) in response to a prompt from Sunday Scribblings.

An endeavor for knowledge may sometimes lead to blissful ignorance
Echoes of crude words and ill manners fading through the years
Eccentricity could be a boon, quirkiness a bane, after downing a couple of beers
Knowing the density of the catastrophe
Knowing when not to talk
Knowing when to smile for an answer
Knowing when to respond with a mime
Promises chiseled into the sands of time
Some kept, some broken prematurely, some twisted to suit convenience
Sonnets and tales, never did they seem more delirious
Memories of painted nails and parting lips
Of pale pink, to hot pink, to shocking pink
Eighty can still be an immature age, or so she thinks
A surreal feeling of holding hands
Comforting the blistered palm and hardened heart
Wishful of breaking open the time-capsule
Desirous of traveling back to the good days
When her hands were steadier
When her memory never failed
When promises sounded like music
But then there’s hope, and then there’s hope

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Congratulations to the ladies from Sunday Scribblings on their 100th prompt. You have never ceased to inspire me.

For more posts on time machine, go here!

when love and hate collide

It is six O’ something clock in the evening. The air isn’t still. The water isn’t still. Neither are our hearts. The water brandishes in quick movements back and forth, the salt in the water reminding me of how deceptive looks can be. And the current! The invincible current, between us and the waves. There’s a bonding hormone; high levels of oxytocin; much like the current, and not necessarily in the water. The never-ending waves. Wishing and hoping that it will be never-ending for us too. The shore however doesn’t seem to care. Right now it appears to be busy fighting with the sea over which one should get a bigger helping of the waves.

I notice something on the horizon. A big red ball of a moon. Ever-so-slightly making its way above the ocean. Rising up steadily. It’s not so much the current I begin to think. Maybe it’s the moon, save the timeless continental drifts that’s working the waves too. It’s the moon fighting over the waves. It’s the moon permitting the waves to kiss the shore and return to Mother Ocean. Making it rise up and bend over. Rise up and bend over. And then, rise up, bend over, and crash into the shore. Is the moon letting the waves seduce the shore? Letting the waves mock at it?

Another Shakespeare in love. And now understandably, unmindful of a dozen pair of eyes watching us. Gliding through into a whole different cosmos. Barely two minutes pass by before someone scares the day-lights out of me, yanks me back to reality, and hands me a camera. I curse my ill-luck at being driven back to reality from my world. I cringe, as a war of embarrassments race through my nerves. The hair on my nape stand upright. ONE humble request for one last dance. One regretful denial. Living in a land of carnal needs and of rueful denial, I realize the two just don’t seem to co-exist! I curse my ill-luck again!

This is just one clandestine evening of desperate urgence. I dip my feet in the insistent lapping water. I assure the waves “It’s ok. I’m here.” They don’t seem to care though. The war continues. The ocean wants a bigger portion of the waves. But the shore invites them with the promise of sparking white sand. Mother Ocean finally wins, tearing out her waves away from the shore. They still claw their way forward but fall prey to the ocean again. She wins again. She wins yet again. She wins every single time! The waves fall into her arms and relax only for a brief second, before they crave for land.

A dogmatic thought crosses my mind. I quickly brush it aside, reminding myself yet again of the hardships it puts me through; and the hardships I put it through. The heart!

Love has a lot of reasons to be hated. It’s all about the time I tell myself. Now, how could it be the right time if it feels sooooooo wrong? I stop mulling over it anymore.

I dismiss the thought and continue to cruise the length of the beach. With each step, taking in the beauty of the sea. With each step, enjoying the therapeutic rarity of romance. With each step, the sounds of the guileless laughter of the boys fading into the distance…

--
PS: A work of fiction!

The End of Year Meme

A little too late for an end of year meme. But I kinda like this one from Devil’s. So I’m going to take it.

1. What did you do in 2007 that you’d never done before?
I traveled outside of India, missed two of my favorite festivals, missed my loved ones tones, learned a lot, cried a lot, laughed a lot, and cooked my own lunch for 3 months.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
No, and never will.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Three of ‘em! That’s a lot by my standards.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Thankfully No.

5. What countries did you visit?
I visited the United States twice. I hope the New Year will let me travel less to the US and more to other countries.

6. What would you like to have in 2008 that you lacked in 2007?
If I asked for it, would I get it?
A niece or nephew? (If my sister’s reading this one, she should start working on it!) :D
Actually, I want to be, and feel successful in everything. 2008 would probably be the year that helps kick-start it!?!

7. What dates from 2007 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
August 31st; my sister’s wedding. July 2nd and December 17th. (I have my own reasons)

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I’ve gained the confidence and trust of two of the most important people in my life. AND, a few from work. And it really feels good. Believe me :)

9. What was your biggest failure?
I can’t think of anything. I’ve just decided to stop experiencing vertigo. I don’t intend to!

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Absolutely! Falling sick is easy for me, and my cards read that 2008 is gonna be another year of ill health for me :(

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Books. Lotsa ‘em :)

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
No one.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
No one.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Traveling, books, sister’s wedding, and shoes, in that order!

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
About 2008. Seriously! Up until June of last year, everything was pretty mundane. I was disappointed in me. And since July, I can’t stop thinking about 2008 and all that I’m about to do this year :) Wish me luck!

16. What song will always remind you of 2007?
Umm… Forever and For Always?!? Shania Twain.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you: (a) happier or sadder? (b) thinner or fatter? (c) richer or poorer?
umm… that’s an easy one. I’m definitely much happier, unquestionably a lot fatter (cheesy smile) and yep, I’m Miss Richie Rich!

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
More reading, more traveling, more crushes(?!?), and probably feel more romantic :D

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
That’s easy too. I wish I were less stupid! :-/

20. How did you spend Christmas?
I don’t celebrate Christmas. But since I reached home on the eve of Christmas, Christmas day itself was pretty much spent sleeping through and trying to getting out of jet lag.

21. Did you fall in love in 2007?
Yeah, a handful of times. But sadly, it’s not getting carry-forwarded to 2008.

22. What was your favorite TV program?
Fortunately for me, I don’t watch TV. It’s not my thing.

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
Thankfully no. I can forgive people easily if it doesn’t mean too much to me.

24. What was the best book you read?
Rebecca!

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?
A lot more of Roxette!

26. What did you want and get?
Nothing.

27. What did you want and not get?
I wanted a music player. I’ll pick one up soon.

28. What was your favorite film of this year?
No favs. I’m not big on movies.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
My birthday morning was a big surprise. I wake up and come into the living room and there’s my sister and BIL with this cute cane chair as a birthday gift. :D But unfortunately, the rest of the day was pretty much boring. A hopeless total of three people called to wish me. I turned 26 and felt like an old hag. :P

30. What one thing made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
I worked very hard. Success sure tastes sweet.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2007?
Comfortable, Business casuals.

32. What kept you sane?
Blogging, Books, Music. Thank God for music!

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Antonio Banderas! Last year. This year. Next year. A.L.W.A.Y.S!

34. What political issue stirred you the most?
I don’t follow politics so much. But Bhutto’s assassination was pretty appalling.

35. Who did you miss?
Missing someone is the hardest thing for me. For everyone I guess. When you miss someone, it’s kinda difficult to mention how much you miss them, isn’t it? It’s equally difficult to mention names too. So I’ll let it remain a secret. :)

36. Who was the best new person you met?
Very many people. Elayaperumal being one of ‘em.

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2007.
Oh I got more than one:

Friends are the best things that can happen to us.
Hard work is scary.
Success is too sweet but it brings green-eyed monsters along with it.
And … Relationships are hard!!!

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
This one’s a song called Unwritten by Natasha Bedingfield. It pretty much describes this past year for me.

I am unwritten, can’t read my mind, I’m undefined
I’m just beginning, the pen’s in my hand, ending unplanned
Staring at the blank page, before you open the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find
Reaching for something in the distance, so close you can almost taste it

Release your inhibitions
Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else can speak the words on your lips.
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins

The rest is still unwritten!

The law of gears

As soon as you shift to a higher gear, the brakes will need immediate attention, and you will have to shift one gear down!

I wasn't sleeping when Chennai's traffic became this terrible all of a sudden, was I? :-/

But I've been definitely sleeping when Blogger introduced video within our blog posts, 'cos I saw it just today, actually just now!

A come back

I have got to apologize for being so quiet for such a long time; I’m sorry I’ve been away. And from those ultra sweet messages I kept receiving on email and on the comments box, I can see that you guys have missed me as much as I missed you. I’ve been kinda jobless and busy all at the same time for a coupla weeks. You ask me how that’s possible? Yup it is, especially in the IT trend where projects are highly unpredictable! My earlier project got completed about four weeks ago and I got shipped from my client location back to my head office (where I did nothing but wait for some other projects that were in the offing) with very little (or sometimes absolutely no) internet access. That was some terrible time!!!

That said, it wasn’t as if I was totally jobless either, because the “project in the offing” all of a sudden made its way right to my desk, and landed piping hot! As part of the kick-off for the new project, I, along with five others from my team, are now in New Jersey! It all happened soo fast, in a blink of the eye, that I didn’t even have the time to call my closest friends about my absence either. Picture this; getting stuff ready for my visa application, appearing for the visa interview in short notice, and two days later travel to the NJ without having time to plan a single damn thing, all this in just one week! :-/

Well, anyway, up until now, things are fine here. I’m loving the place I’m living in; a nice, neat, calm country side of NJ called Bridgewater. Work has been fine, and I’ve been doing well too (this is for those that emailed me and asked me if I was keeping well). I visited New York today (the first Saturday after I landed here) and a small temple quite close to the office on Friday evening.

I will be here for the next six weeks and will be back just in time for my sister’s wedding in the end of August. There’s lotsa pictures of the B-E-A-U-tiful NJ country, and a few pictures from NY too, but yaaawwn … that’s all for now … right now I’m going to sign-off!

I’m homesick already and wanna go home and be a part of the big wedding preps :(. Sigh!!!

You guys take good care and big hugs for a great weekend while I try to catch up on all those new posts from you. Adios!

Missed ya all! :)

>/||

A weekend of audio and video. Here are some pictures from the PodWorks unconference at Chennai.

Conference Venue: Tidel Park, Chennai

PodWorks @ TIdel Park, Chennai

A session is on.

The works!

The attendees.


Podcasting is all about money. Sunil Nair, CEO of Nautanki.tv talks about the much needed Vitamin M and how to monetize your podcasts.


A session on Adobe Premier, by far the most interesting session for me. Video editing didn't sound this simple to me earlier.


Organizers unwinding

Podworks.in is on!

The PodWorks unconference is on! I must mention that although I walked in a lil late, I don't seem to have missed much. For the last two hours, a lot of talking and interaction has happened. Right now, even as I'm entering this post, Karthik Kannan is giving the 120 200 odd participants a presentation on 'Quick and easy podcasting'. As it seems to me, using ODEO and recording a podcast is child's play. As Karthik was even presenting it, I had my microphone on and recorded a 59 second audio in studio.odeo.com. Ta daa:


powered by ODEO

As you can see, the recording is not so great. The ambiance noise added to it too. But far as I can see, this, and the fact that you can't edit the audio, seems to be the only disadvantage.

Also, with ODEO, the entire thing is over in very minimal time. In this case, 59 seconds + 30 seconds for saving the recording and another minute or two to ramble about it and publish the same on my blog.

PS: Just attending a wiki conference such as this and not being able to do it hands-on is such a BIG disadvantage. Sooo here goes a BIGGER thanks to my cousin M who lent me his laptop for a day.


Addendum (Saturday June 09, 7:59 PM)

The post-lunch sessions included one on the do's and dont'ts of recording for a podcast or taking an interview. Then, a presentation on Integrating a podcast into wordpress/blogger including tips to promote your podcast et al. I had to leave right when Sunil Nair, CEO of Nautanki.tv started giving us some heads-up on how to go about gaining some Vitamin M :-/

Hopefully, tomorrow I'll be there for the sessions on video podcasting or vodcast, without having to rush back on some other emergency. More updates and photos to follow.

Podworks.in

I'm attending Podworks, are you?



This is the first 'unconference' that I will be attending. Will keep you posted on any updates through and over the weekend. Meanwhile, if you're in Chennai this weekend, you could try and make it to the unconference that is held at Tidel Park, Taramani. Feel free to go to podworks.in and get a hang of what it is all about.

I'm surely looking forward to the experience!

It figures!

I love playing around with numbers. But it is one thing to be creating a 3000 hour project plan (in the middle of what you could call a million other insignificant things) and a totally different thing to be fooling around with the one of the zillion cool tools from Google.

About a month ago, a friend sent me this email (verbatim).

“I’m doing it again! Yes, marketing Google technology… now get your butt here right now and paste the 4 line code in your blog and watch magic happen.

The tool is amazing, belongs to Google and is free… need I say more? :-)”

From that email, as you can see, I understood absolutely nothing! But after reading those words “… watch magic happen…” you’re not left with much choice, are you? I cursed him under my breath for being his usual inexplicit self and tried to focus my peanut-sized brain on what exactly Analytics really was!

In simple words, it’s a site tracking tool! But oh, GoOgLe can’t ever be explained that simply can it?

But when I drilled into the tool, I found that it wasn’t any different from my project schedule, really! Try and average out the number of days to completion, resources, completion percentage, milestones, and a loads of other project-related tasks … to … the number of visitors per day, who visited your site, from where, how long did their visit last, most popular posts, goals (if you’ve set any) and a million other important stuff about your site as opposed to the load of totally trivial data that goes into my project plan (Phew! I pray my boss isn’t reading this!)

Anyway, here’s the summary page (you’re gonna have to click on each of those images to see it a bit more legibly)



With only a little more than 5% of my visitors returning to my page, it appears, my visitor loyalty is pretty low. :-/



See those top three references below? Thanks to Supernova, Mush, and Sunday Scribblings in that order. :)



This one’s interesting: Google actually gives you a list of search terms that led to your site. Apparently, the schnappi song has been the most popular search term. Check out the one highlighted in red. No seriously, what were they looking for? :-/



As you can see, I’m absolutely in love with this number crunching tool, simply because I keep finding newer and newer things about it everyday!

I’m not gonna tell you anymore about what Analytics can do for you on a click of the mouse. Like my friend said, you may want to get your butt there yourself! ;)

Ping it!

After an entry, letting the world know that you have just spoken can be a bit time consuming (and for people like me, a lot frustrating). PingGoat is a free pinging tool that scans your blog on a regular basis for updates and acts as a utility to notify all services that keep tracks of wedblogs.

And what’s more, you can also find our how much your blog is worth. PingGoat values my blog at $3.01 while Technorati thinks its worth $564.54.

So go on, Ping it! :)


PS: I stumbled upon Shankari's blog and could'nt resist reading her posts about one of the books she'd read. And after those exhaustive reviews, my next one has GOT TO BE Rebecca.

The Magic Number

I was elated when I logged in and found this figure this morning. In about a month and 7 days, my site counter shows 1000 visitors!!! That's good for a start, is it not?





Thanks you guys! Keep popping by, cheers!

My Blogging Personality

Found a link to Blogthings from a fellow blogger's archive; Dharmabum. Here's my blogging personality...

Your Blogging Type is Confident and Insightful

You've got a ton of brain power, and you leverage it into brilliant blog. Both creative and logical, you come up with amazing ideas and insights. A total perfectionist, you find yourself revising and rewriting posts a lot of the time. You blog for yourself - and you don't care how popular (or unpopular) your blog is!

What's Your Blogging Personality?

I must agree, the last bit is quite true!

Blogger Beta

I have started blogging only for three weeks now and it is wonderful to have discovered that I can now move my page to Google’s Blogger Beta. Much like all other Beta’s, it has its own hiccups, but there are loads of stuffs that no-good coders like me can make use of.

For a start, you don’t have to wait for eons for your post to get published. I have less than 20 posts online, and if I am saying that I have to wait for eons, you can imagine how impatient a woman I am. The time it takes to publish your post, depends on the size of your blog, and if you have a large one it makes matters even worse. Anyway, now with Blogger Beta, all you have to do is, write your post, and hit on the “Publish” button, and ta da your post is online in less than a few seconds.

But first things first, you need to use your Gmail account to sign in and move to Blogger Beta. Don’t have one? You need to create one! That’s one of the most admirable promotional efforts I’ve seen with Google. Any webpage associated with Google, needs you to access it using a Gmail account. Remarkable, ain’t it?

On the eBlogger home page, you need only click on the link that says, “Switch to Blogger Beta” and you can simply enter your Gmail account to sign-in.

This is how my Dashboard looked like, as soon as I moved my blog:

Under “Layout”, there is a whole new tab that says “Page Elements”. You can include, remove, and edit practically any part of your Blog by simply clicking on the appropriate Page Element. Here’s the best bit; you can also move the page elements around, the way you want them to arrange, add header, footer et al. ALL this, without having to touch any messy HTML code! Seriously!!

This is how I can now arrange my archives on the LHS:

Know what I mean?

Fiddle around, change fonts and colors, click on Save, and refresh you blog… all changes updated within a matter of seconds. No re-publishing and looking at that silly sun-like figure, showing the percentage of your changes in progress.

Starting November 8th, all new sign-ups are being created on the new version of Blogger in Beta. Check out its new features here.

I’m still fiddling around with it and if you encounter any problems/bugs with Blogger Beta, you can report via the Contact Form.

Happy Blogging!!