100th!

My blog has finally made it to it's 100th post today!! :) And after a lot of thought, tweets and discussion over how special I'm going to make this post, I decided to just go ahead the traditional way with taking you through my blogging journey and "how it all began". :D


I started blogging back in 2007, just when I stopped writing my personal journal (please don't go over my earlier posts now- they are way too kiddish and embarrass me sometimes but i choose not to delete them- they remind me of what I was like earlier! :P). I wasn't all that regular then and hadn't discovered too many bloggers too. In 2008, though, when I started getting a fair number of hits on my blog and stumbled upon so many other bloggers, I was amazed. My very first blog friends were RJ, Sakhi, Scorpria, Reema and Nikhil. I had a ball interacting with these new blog friends of mine on comment boxes. We tagged each other, awarded each other, had each other on our blog rolls. It was a nice new world we had created and I loved dwelling in it. Soon, these conversations would flow over to Gtalk; I still remember having a conference chat with RJ and Sakhi with both of them pulling my legs to no limit. Those were the days!


As time went by, people got busy; some quit their blogs and some went on long breaks. I started missing our little conversations but neither they nor I could help it. I do wish I could go back to that time again sometimes when I go over my blog roll.


A lot of my non-blogger friends ask me why I blog and I don't really have a perfect answer to that. A few of them are under the impression that people who blog don't have enough friends and that's SO not true! I think it maybe out of the need of sharing your thoughts across to people. With a personal diary, you can't possibly reach out to anyone. Blogging has created a whole new way of communication! When you blog, you completely open yourselves to people. It makes you feel good about yourself too, in a way, and you realise there are so many others out there just like you. It's sort-of like a platform to share ideas, to vent out your thoughts and your creative self.

I've had my share of bad online experiences- like there was this one time when a guy added me on hi5 (I was sixteen then; hi5 is as dead as orkut now!), we moved over to yahoo chat later, and the first time we chat, he tells me he's sitting in a cab right below my house! Turned out, he knew me all along somehow but had decided not to tell me lest I'd keep away (which I did, later! I didn't like the idea of him coming all the way to my house though he knew me, or whatever!). Another instance was of someone who had threatened to get cops to my place by tracking down my IP and what not, just because a person in our mutual friend list abused him for some reason!


Unlike social networking sites though, blogging is not something you can fake. And like Scorpria puts it in her post, it's so much more easier to trust blog friends than people on social networking sites. A blog is a reflection of a person's thoughts, and who can possibly fake that all the time? It's all about following your instincts. And trust me, I'd have missed out on a lot of wonderful people had I not taken a few risks there! :)


Sakhi and I bonded so well that we went on to exchange our phone numbers, postal addresses, landed at each others' places (we live in two different states) and met each others' families too! The thought that she could be fake never occurred to me even once for some reason. You always KNOW whom to trust somehow. 

Now, there are blog portals that help you discover some great blogs; blog camps that let you add faces to them! :)

Poonam, another awesome blogger, started a blogging contest a couple of years back called the Avant Garde Bloggies Awards. It turned out to be really big and helped discover some of the BEST blogs around!


It's feels great to be a part of something so wonderful! Cheers to all the bloggers out there! Keep posting! And I also hope you keep visiting, reading, and commenting :P


Ciao! :)

Bombay comes to a standstill...

11/07/2006: Seven bomb blasts at seven railway stations in the city.

12/07/2006: Bombay back on track.

26/11/2008: Terror attack in South Bombay.

27/11/2008: Bombay back on it's feet.

03/05/2009: The railway motormen go on strike.

4/05/2009: Lakhs stay at home; companies, dabbawallahs and train-sellers suffer losses; Kasab's sentence gets delayed; buses go packed; cabbies make money; roadways get jammed; college exams are to be postponed.

...The city that never sleeps almost caught a wink.

Local trains = The Bombay Life-Line!

Exam Hall Confessions.

It's that time of the year again and unlike last time, the tension's building up, which is good- it's making me study if nothing else!

I'm really tensed this time around though, and I've stopped indulging in unfair  practices long since I had made a fool of myself a couple of times! :D

This one time, in my first year of degree college or so, I had an "invisible" pen. The pen was visible but what you wrote with it wasn't. You could write with it on a blank piece of paper and all that you've written would be visible only once you flash some light on it by switching on a button that was right on the lid of the pen. After mugging up some formulae, I still wasn't confident of remembering all of those and wrote them on a blank paper with that magical pen "just in case". I folded it and kept it in my pencil box. The next day, I carried the paper with me in the examination hall and I was prepared to tell whoever asked that it was for rough work!! Right after I got my question paper, I opened that folded sheet of paper and switched on the little button on my magical pen. And the light just wouldn't come on!! The battery had run out! I felt so silly I didn't know whether to laugh or to panic :D Thankfully, I could recall all those formulae when I needed to and could do without that sheet of paper!

There was another instance where we had all decided that whoever gets the answers to all the objectives would text them to everyone else. Five minutes into the exam, all of our cell phones vibrated and we looked at each other in bewilderment wondering how someone got them all so fast. It was only when we read the message that we realised it was from Vodafone! :D I laughed and continued attempting everything else. At the end of it, I couldn't get two of the objectives. I had my friend sitting just in the next row in the same line as me such that we were adjacent to each other but were at two arms distance. I thought of asking her but didn't know how to. Finally, something struck me- I wrote those two question numbers on an eraser with a pencil and decided to pass it on to her.  I asked the supervisor if I could give it to her (Yes! Pretending to be TOO honest and all that! :D) and she allowed me to. That friend of mine took it and kept it on her desk, too busy to realise that she hadn't asked for it and that it meant she had to figure out why I passed it on. I smiled at myself, amused, and that's when she realised what she had done and burst out laughing having made a fool of me without realising it! I couldn't help but join her and the supervisor caught us laughing and asked us to share the joke. We apologised saying it was nothing and continued to write silently. She didn't know the answers to those questions as well, so in the end, we just left them, submitted our answer sheets and left the hall laughing like crazy!

So, I've never really managed to "copy"! :D Luck is never in my favour when I try  something like that so I left those practices long back and I got through all of those exams anyway.

Trying to study this time again and hope to pass without having to attempt any of those stunts.. wish me luck! :)

The "Fairer" Sex?

I've been facing some sort of a writer's block lately, but I finally got something to blog about today when I stepped out with my best friend to get her arms waxed - for the first time! :D And no, I'm not going to take you through the whole process of how it goes!! *Sheesh* This gets far more serious than that.


So, after entering a parlour and she bleeding while getting waxed by the lady there, we decided to try another one instead which was a mile away. We walked our way in the hot sun and finally got to this place we were recommended to by a friend (our hairstylist). The lady at the parlour asked my friend (let's call her Susan) to go inside one of the rooms there and get seated. Susan, after mustering a lot of courage walked into the room looking like a goat on it's way to a butcher-shop just about to get slaughtered. After she screamt in pain and finished her business, she came out hurling curses at the lady and swore on her life never to go back again (we are going back in a couple of weeks :P).


Anyway, this brought us to one question, why don't men wax their faces instead of shaving off their beards? And then why is it called the "stubble look" when they get lazy to do so? It's not only about the notion that girls are supposed to be "prim and proper" (of course, who's to say what's proper in the first place!), why do girls have to go through such pain time and again? 


Why are they supposed to be slim and fair while men can hog all they want to and still be called "healthy"? Why are they supposed to have the perfectly shaped eyebrows, manicured nails, a clear skin and beautiful hair? Is beauty (in case of women) only skin deep? And then why do they take the effort? 



Why does a working woman, after devoting 9 hours at work, still be supposed to work in the kitchen till the wee hours of the night after her husband goes to bed and snores to glory?


Why is a woman supposed to know how to sit "properly" and "behave" while a man can sit as he wants to?


Why is a woman treated like dirt when she becomes a victim of rapes and assaults? 


Why has nature too been unfair on women? Why does a woman have to go through feeling sticky every month and tolerate that torture? Why does a man, after an act of sexual intercourse walk away feeling satisfied while his partner endures 9 months of agonizing pain in giving birth? And then, why are men made physically more stronger when women need that strength more?


We have come to an age of boob jobs and size zeroes, of laser treatments, fairness creams, nose jobs and the like and those advertisements have always targeted women (the mens' fairness cream ads that have just started flaring is an exception).


Then again, why is it called the "fairer" sex when everything about it is so unfair?

"Dancing Queen" :)

As many of you know, I've been taking dancing lessons for quite sometime now, I finally completed Level 1 of Jive-Salsa-Waltz. That's one thing I look forward to every Sunday, and even though I suck at it, I love it!! :D And yes, whenever I tell people I'm learning Salsa, they ask me who my partner is and if he is hot/cute :D :D So, before you ask, we don't have fixed partners and can't choose them ourselves. The instructors tell us to change partners for every step, so they choose who we dance with!

This Sunday we had our last session (of Level 1) and had to come all decked up in formal wear. I asked Aditi to record bits of each dance form.

So, here they are:

Jive

Salsa

Waltz

Dancing is really fun and refreshing! Taking a 2-month break to start Level 2 now. Can't wait!! :)

Congratulations!

I dreamt of walking down that aisle,
with you by my side.
I dreamt of holding you close,
and in your arms I died.


I dreamt of a little house,
that held me and you.
I dreamt of taking those vows.
I dreamt of you.


But the years flew by,
and I moved on.
Time changed me as a person, 
and you drifted away thereon.


Now, when I look back,
I just can't believe,
how silly I was back then,
how I dreamt of thee!


I know that there's someone,
who's made for me.
And that you and I,
can never be.


Wishing you the very best,
in the life that's new.
I've come too far now,
I ain't dreaming of you.

"Committed." - The Whys and Hows.

Good conversations always make good blog posts! :D The other day, Harish and I were talking about relationships and why people get into them. It was more on a marital level but I'll start with the basics.


So why do people get into a relationship?


Supriya Thanawala's "One can be fun" article in the Valentines Day edition of the HT Brunch also stated that one should get into a relationship solely for love and not for anything else. She says it's better to accept loneliness than get into a bad relationship. But trust me, 9 out of 10 relationships have different reasons of existence. The biggest of them all is fear and insecurity. Fear of ending up alone, and insecurity of oneself. And why does this fear exist? Because how much ever we deny it, most of us are afraid of being with ourselves. Ask yourself who you are  when you look at yourself in the mirror today. We are not comfortable being with ourselves, it scares us and we need someone to lean on. We are insecure or unsure about our own decisions; WE DON'T LOVE OURSELF.


That's also one of the reasons why abusive relationships exist, and also why people don't separate after infidelity crops up in the relationship. I think this is also why most men involved in rape cases have their wives supporting them. 


Another kind of relationships are rebound relationships which occur when you separate from someone and just need a companion. These don't last too long and one of the parties ends up getting hurt.


As far as marriages are concerned, most people rush into them as a result of their own insecurities and fear of loneliness again. And then there are those few far between that can't control their libidos and considering premarital sex is a taboo in Indian society, opt for a wedlock.


So what does one do? How does one overcome his/her insecurities? (That's one question I'm waiting to answer myself!) 


“You must love yourself before you love another. By accepting yourself and fully being what you are, your simple presence can make others happy.” - Anonymous

How does one love his/herself? 


For one, you can start by getting rid of the notion that loneliness implies unhappiness. Start doing things you truly love, and if you don't know what they are, try random things and you'll eventually know what you love doing. It may be a hobby or a profession. Once you've found it, you've found something you can do all your life and never get bored. Spend more time with yourself: read a book, pamper yourself, go for a massage at one of the best spas in the city, make a play-list of your favourite songs and carry it with you, go for a walk, go trekking, click pictures, cook yourself a lavish meal, enrol yourself for a workshop that you find interesting. Enjoy your life while being true to your conscience. Once you begin, the list is endless.


"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance." - Oscar Wilde 


Of course, it's easier said than done but it's worth it in the long run. And then, once you've found your love, you'll really know it! :) 


Never do anything that makes you unhappy.


Now..why does this post sound like I'm lecturing you? me is off :P


P.S: Thanks Harish for being there all throughout! You've been an amazing friend. :) 


The image has been Googled for.

Bombay belongs to?

The ever-crowded local trains,

Streets and pavements filled with people,

Crammed little boxes for homes,

And several homeless trying to survive,

Heavy rains and guaranteed floods,

Endless traffic and the resulting pollution,

MNS riots and Sena bandhs,

Terror attacks and bomb blasts,

...and yet something pulls you here.

Chai tapris and vada pavs,

The ever smiling chacha in irani hotels,

Needless to mention- their brun muska and chai,

The hardworking dabba wallahs,

making sure we get to eat on time,

Countless sea faces,

And the pani puri stalls on the shores,

Roadside chaat and chataai pav-bhaaji,

Dreams and desires in the eyes of people, 

The warmth in their smiles,

Religion-language-caste no bar,

Their welcoming nature,

That "Chalta hai" attitude,

A hand to hold and a shoulder to cry on,

Unity in calamity,

And, no matter WHAT,

...Bombay lives ON!

Bombay for Marathis, or Bombay for India? Neither!!

Bombay for everyone, Bombay for the world. :)


Image Courtesy: Shreyansh Mazumdar, and some Googled for.

10 things about me!

A tag after ages! Reema tagged me to do this one and honestly, it took a long time for me to think of ten things about myself! Strange how little we know about ourselves than we think we do. Okay, so here I go!

1. I have an odd quirk of counting all the numbers on my bus ticket as soon as I buy one. It was part of a game we used to play when we were 15. Ever since, I've not been able to break the habit; never felt the need to either!

2. I hate my hair. But, I've found a permanent solution to making it look good. Scared of change though.

3. I'm a hard core chai addict. Ever ready for Ginger chai!

4. I sing and dance when I'm alone or in a huge crowd (so that I know no one's watching! :D). Lately, I've started to LOVE dancing though owing to my Jive-Salsa-Waltz classes! :) Music and me are inseparable. :)

5. I like to read, write and paint!

6. I love my freedom too much. Stop me from doing something and you lose me then and there.

7. Not very expressive in person; shy of expression.

8. Twitter addict! :P

9. Love watching F.R.I.E.N.D.S, HIMYM, and plays! :)

10. Good conversations excite me. I can chatter away endlessly with some people, and can be very quiet with some.

Finally, I'm done. I could think of more things about myself towards the end, but I had reached the limit. :P I pass on this tag to Sakhi (my all-time favourite bakra :P), Nikhil (you really need to start blogging again!), Aditi & Scorpria (both of you as well!), Calvin (you're welcome! :P), Neha (my new Twitter fraand) and I guess that's about it!

Gmail's Buzzing!

Lately, there has been a lot of talk over whether the new Google Buzz will take over Twitter. Google has tried to ape something that may or may not work wonders. Well, Buzz does have its plus sides. We know that everyone who has an internet connection HAS a Gmail account. When one asks for an e-mail id these days, it's assumed that the person will give out his Gmail. Buzz gets enabled in your inbox automatically, and that gives easy access to it. You can link any number of sites to your Buzz, and it will automatically post updates from those sites onto your Buzz, so that people who follow you can see those. Your Google Talk chat status messages get updated there too (unless you remove that option from the list). It's a very useful social media tool. It can also help you discover a lot of people since almost all of us have Gmail accounts. People have started creating their Google profiles too, thanks to Buzz. A lot of them didn't even know a Google profile existed.

There are a lot of snags though. For one thing, it crams up your inbox. You get a mail for every Buzz that mentions you. If it weren't for Gmail filters, I'd have probably turned off Buzz and never used it again. Moreover, when Buzz is enabled for the first time, it automatically adds people to your follow list! So, if there's someone in your Gmail that you'd rather not have a conversation with, unfollowing him explicitly later makes him/her actually get the point! :D There is no "Reply" button. You have to type the person's email address in order to reply to him! And though Buzz posts my Twitter feeds, they aren't real time. So I had someone actually asking me why I was making pots somewhere in South Bombay at 3 am in the morning. It also does not post ALL of them. And, like it is on Facebook, you can only "like" an update, not "dislike" it.

Google Buzz vs. Twitter

I'd say Twitter rules any day. Google Buzz lacks a lot of features: Retweets (re-posting updates that you like so your followers can read them), lists(categorising people you follow so that you can keep a track of their updates better), direct messages (private messages, but here you've got Gmail too so it's okay), Favorites (you can "like" an update but you can't sort those updates you liked), a "Reply" button (:D), attractive profile backgrounds and a lot more.

So, Buzz still has a long way to go if it has to match Twitter. But yes, great job Google! Atleast we have more people using Buzz than Wave.

Buzzing OFF now! :P

Happy Buzzing, Tweeting, Waving, Facebook-ing ..gosh, so much to keep track of now!

P.S: My first "tech" review post :P