Write Well, Live Well...

Friends,

How many of you write for your livelihood? Very few, I know. How many of you would like to write for your livelihood? At least quite a few, I know. But even if most of you doesn't earn by writing, I am sure you all might have felt the need to improve your skill to write without spelling or grammatical errors and with proper punctuation.

Good writing skill can be a strong tool to take forward your career, education and even your social standing. Drafting a good letter or writing a proper report can make careers. Better performance in exams can be achieved by good written communication skills. Writing skills can earn you good contacts, improve your relations and can be your way to the top of the social ladder.

To clear any doubts on the assumption that the people who write better can earn better, Grammarly, a website that offer Grammar Checker solutions, has conducted a study and made their findings into this interesting infographic. They conducted the study by inspecting the writings of 448 freelance professionals- rated by their employers from 4 to 5 stars, in eight catagories on Elance, the online staffing platform.

If we check the results, it is evident that the writers who are better with thir grammer, spelling and punctuation are the ones at the top of the ladder. Huffington Post was quick to acknowledge their effort. I hope these findings will motivate you all to improve your writing skills. Better writing skills can be the ace up your sleeve.

Regards,
Harish

My thanks to Grammarly, for sharing this infographic with me and for their offer to donate $10 on my behalf to Reading is Fundamental, the charity that promotes literacy, for this blog post.

Exploiting Bloggers..

Recently many corporations has found out about the potential of blogs in promoting their products. Blogs can be effective in sending a message out and enhancing the brand value by mouth to mouth publicity. So many of them organizes meets and contests for bloggers, making them write posts about their products. The publicity that blogs   give for their products may be worth thousands or even millions, but mostly what the blogger gets is a pittance. A lunch for a meet or a consolation price. I have seen many sites offering money for writing about products. Most of them are American and European sites. In India, this trend has not caught up yet it seems. Though I have seen many who condemns it, I personally feel there is nothing wrong in doing it provided it is mentioned in the post that the blogger has received a remuneration for his service. But I had received some offers by mail where the promoters wants it cheap. I will reproduce one such email conversation below. I wanted to get the promoter's final response before posting it, but I don't think he will reply me. If any reply come I will update it later. 

The First Mail:

Hi Harish,

This is about the bollywood film brought about by ***** – the first ever bollywood film auditioned on facebook. You have been approached because your blog fits into our consideration set of auto / gadget / film / youth category. We would like to reach out to our target audience through your blog.

This is an example of how everyday people like you and me were given an opportunity to star alongside one of the bollywood heart throbs – ***** . Shooting of this project is complete and the film is scheduled to release within the next 1 month.

If you are interested in covering the story, please get in touch with me. We would provide images and teaser videos to go along with the content. We could also discuss benefits for you and your readers.

Regards,

******.  

My Reply:

Hi *****,

Thanks for considering my blog for your requirement. If what I know is

right, this is not a regular feature film, right? It is a short movie.

If I am promoting it in my blog what is in it for me?

Harish

His Reply:

Hi Harish,

Yes, it is a short film, first of its kind in Bollywood.

What’s in it for you? 

 ****’s PR mechanism is working full time to ensure that the ******* gets a super duper release. This film is a world’s first, first time that a bollywood film was auditioned on faceboook, first time that many aspiring middle class youth got an opportunity to act in mainstream cinema and experience the whole process of movie-making first-hand – this campaign will not only help ***** to promote the contest and itself but it will also help you to get a better visibility and search ranking.

As a token of appreciation we would like to offer merchandise like T-shirts for you and your readers. Additionally, we can offer limited number of premiere passes for you (depending on availability) and first hand updates, pics and the rest!

Please note that we will also be releasing an official trailer for the movie in the coming weeks.

Regards,

****** 

My Reply ( The Final One):

Hi *****, 

I have a problem in doing it. One thing is that it is backed by ***** and ******, heavy duty PR works spending lakhs of rupees are going on and you want me to put a promotion in my blog free of cost. I am not interested in your T shirts or passes. Second thing is your assurance that I will get more visibility and search ranking which is just a hoax. If I want more visits, I have lot more better options than this. 

You guys are exploiting bloggers by luring them into doing thousands of rupees worth of promotional activities for a pittance.

I would have done a free promotion if a groundbreaking movie was made by a bunch of struggling movie aspirants with no money to spare for  promotion. Just out of my passion for movies... But not for a big corporation trying to promote its business using its brand ambassador. Definitely not for free. 

Get me an offer that I cannot resist or count me out...

I am still waiting for his reply.... 

How to be a successful blogger a la Govind Tiwari...

I was checking news today when I came upon this Indian blog that hit the bull's eye by becoming an overnight sensation on Twitter and Facebook. He is even featured on leading newspapers as a human interest story. So how did Govind Tiwari managed to be a mini celebrity? What are the techniques adopted by this blogger to get an enormous traffic hike in just days?

For answers have a look at his blog govindtiwari.blogspot.com and you will come to know that for getting attention in today's world you need not do any hard work. What you need is a blog with a really freaky template, some of your crazy, in literal sense, photos, basic knowledge in photoshop to screw them up, a demo version video making software, an absence of imagination or a sense of aesthetics and lot of love, for yourself...!

I have been wasting my time, thinking of interesting topics to write in this space, of new words and of making situations just to show them off, of how to promote it so that some unsuspecting reader finds me and read what I have to say. This guy, like that Brahman, who challenged the circus performer, who jumped through a ring of fire, to jump without ring or even fire like he did, became the winning horse on whom no one cared to bet.

Wishing Govind Tiwari best of luck in future endeavors and a happy blogging life...

Reading in Bangalore...

I have always been passionate about reading, which is evident if you have been visiting this place often. I should thank my parents and relatives who have brought me up by supporting this passion. If I get a book about anything, I will sit in a corner and devour it without caring a hoot about the world. In my childhood it was those Malayalam children's weeklies like Balarama, Poompatta and many of them like Chandamama that I used to satisfy my pang for the written word. In fifth class, I joined in two libraries near my home and serious reading began.

And what a coincidence! Now after decades, in Bangalore I have joined two fantastic libraries and am juggling my spare time between the books supplied by them. Both are professionally managed ones with an impressive catalog.

Before joining them, I had been getting my regular supply of books from peddlers on street. You can buy two books for Rs 140, and if after reading, when returned you can get half your money back or one book of your choice. Bargain was ok, but quality of books are really bad and the choice is limited to popular ones, which I do not have much interest in reading.

Then I happened to see the site of Librarywaala, and checked out the plans. I just tried to join and left half way. You have give some personal details and can join by paying through net banking. I just gave the details and left it there. Next week someone called from their office and they had a new year offer. So I opted for a 3 book plan per month and joined. Mr Manjunath came all the way (around 80 kms up and down) to my office to collect the payment and  deliver the first set of books. And from then on I am regularly getting 3 books every month delivered at my home. Service is good, you can order by internet, no fuss... The collection is also quite good. I especially love the non-fiction segment. They have a variety there! Fiction is also good, but limited to popular ones. I cannot get much of Camus, Kundera or Marquez there.  

Then I discovered that there was another library just behind my home. It is called Just Books. They too have a site and you can order books and get door delivery, but for preferred memberships only. I took a membership for unlimited number of books for Rs 150. The main attraction is the kiosk on the entrance where you can place your book and membership card and issue or return your books. You can search for titles and if they are not available in that branch, it can be ordered from any other branch, where it may be available. Here, non fiction department is not so strong, but fiction part is impressive. You name it and it is there. 

So things are going pretty strong in the reading front and you can see the result in blog. 

Life Of Pi: A Bizarre Recommendation

Recommendations find me in very bizarre ways..

I have an interest in quite a wide variety of things, so I always hunt for recommendations- from friends, media, reviews. And some times I get a recommendation out of blue. Many times it works and sometimes not.

Some weeks back I happened to visit a blog in which the blogger wrote a post on feeding her dog. She wanted to know what was the natural food that was to be given. I replied it does not matter because domestication of dog is not a natural process. Hunting is what the natural mode of life sustaining to dog. 

Her reply was that, she took great care of dog, it was comfortable in her home and never wanted to go away. The logic sounds solid, but my doubt was, whether another option is given to dog,? Did it knew it can be free and hunt like his other cousins living in forest? And I mentioned the Jack London's novel Call of the wild, that chronicles the transformation of a dog to a wild hound when it gets a chance to come out of its comfortable human company. 

May be she was a bit irritated, and closed the matter commenting that she believed dogs, and other animals of course, are better protected with humans and they do not have to suffer for food like when in a jungle and she got her opinion from reading Life of Pi, a novel by Yann Martel. 

Now when came across this novel, I remembered this incident and decided to read it. And I am glad I did it. It is a wonderful piece of fiction, kind of Robinson Crusoe meets Panchatantra tales. 

Yann Martel is a Spanish writer, who came to India, to sustain himself as it is cheap here and also to get some inspiration, to write a good novel. He found it in Pondicherry, a former french colony, now a union territory surrounded by Tamil Nadu state. 

Pi, or Piscine Molitor Patel is a sixteen year old boy, the son of a zoo keeper. Political turmoil in the country makes the family decide to sell the animals and settle in Canada. On the way to Canada, the ship in which they travels, sinks. All family is killed except Pi, who escapes on a life boat along with an oddly named Bengal Tiger, Richard Parker! Pi stays in the boat and survives the six month journey with the help of lessons learned about animal behavior in his zoo. No one believes his story when he reaches back to civilization.      

The novel falls flat in the first couple of chapters. The obsession of Pi with all three religoins of the subcontinent reminded me of that scene in Manmohan Desai's epic masala movie Amar, Akbar, Anthony were all three siblings belonging to different religions, unknowingly donates blood to their long lost mother. (The scene shows three of them lying on bed and a tube circulates blood from all three simultaneously into the arteries of the old lady!) The balancing acts gets mushy. Another turn off was the long passages where author tries to justify zoos. Can you imagine Moby Dick starting with Ishmael defending whale hunting?

But once the boat sinks, the story starts floating. The suspense builds up, narrative becomes tight and you can feel the saltiness and heat in the middle of Pacific ocean. Richard Parker steals the show with its antics. The battle for superiority between animals is portrayed with much sincerity.

The notable point of the story is the transformation of the boy. A strict vegetarian by birth, he is forced to eat fish and turtles. The remorse that he feels when he kills a fish the first time just disappears moments later. Later it is also revealed that he ate a small portion of human meat too, of another stowaway, with same intentions, whom he meets mid-sea and whom Richard Parker polishes off.   

After reading the book I feel that my Blogger friend has misread it. The story shows that man is just a civilized animal, who can turn around to his basic instincts once the need arise. Another point is when Richer Parker exits into a jungle after the journey, without even acknowledging the presence of Pi, his tamer (which is strikingly similar to the way in which Buck, the dog in Call of the wild, exits into wild.. So the initial passages justifying zoo life gets contradictory and may be author included it there for irony. Then it is the master stroke of the book!

An introduction..

Yesterday my uncle, my mother's eldest brother, took to blogging. You can read it here. I would like to just give an introduction to my readers, (well, although I am very much inexperianced compared to him in worldly matters, I have a few intelligent readers with me, who are my strength) and I find it my duty not only as a devoted nephew, but also as a concerned human being, to give an introduction to this new blog from a very experianced veteran, so that every one can benefit from the pearls of wisdom shared in it. 

Mr A P Kesavan Namboodiri, a teacher in his early days, took to entrepreneurship and business. Two plus decades of successful business and conventional agriculture later, he literally struck gold with nature. A radical change in the paradigm shifted his attention to nature based agriculture and then into natural living. Now he spends his time succesfully tending to his acres of land which is just left in the hands of nature to be cultivated, livestock that supplements the mutually beneficial living and in giving awareness to the world about this one and only way left for human survival. He has given classes in places throughout Kerala, some of which are aired in radio and several television channels, on his green way of living. He gives as much importance to his action as his words and the result is to been seen in his life- a very healthy and wholesome physical, mental, family, social, economic and spiritual life, emphasising the importance of a balanced living.

Kindly lent an ear to the blog, and give the valuable suggestions, making it a bilateral conversation so that it becomes mutually beneficial.

Thanks...

Oh, My Blog...!

Stagnation is gripping me strong these days (only on blogging front, personal front is non existant, career front is good, but not great as I hoped and want it to be, definitely not stagnant, with some strong choices to make soon!). I can sense it when I do not have any thing to post on, despite of lot of things- good and bad, happening left, right and around me. You can judge it when you see me posting on a movie that I watched months ago, or when I go on rambling on some random absurd stuff trying to appear funny or when "Blog" appears in the title of the post. These are all ploys to convince myself and readers that ammunition is still far from exhausted. It may be just a passing phase or may be the death bell of Conscientious Reflections.

It is not the want of subject, as our politicians, national and international, are giving enough fuel for thought, along with all stupid celebrities, news reporters, social midgets, and of course Wikileaks filling in. (You can sense my frustration when all I could come up about Wikileaks is an unwitty pun connecting it with a tap leak! Gross.) It may be the inability to give form to the thoughts, impatience to give time for ideas to germinate or even plain laziness of thought. A Blogger's Block as one of my good friend aptly coined it some time back.

Planning to watch some exciting and unique movies today. Let me see if they can unclog the block.

Till I come up with anything good enjoy this awesome track "Bang and Blame"...

In the beginning was the 3G...

While looking at the profile of a fellow Indi blogger, I noticed that a recent post by him has won an absurd lot of votes, and many previous posts that I personally enjoyed and would have voted twice if the rules permitted where lying very low in the vine... Then I did some research, and found the reason, it was a post for the TATA Docomo 3G Life Blogger contest. Hm.. great idea, contest posts gets more votes, meaning, more visitors as opposed to other ones.. Thus I, who never contested with fellow bloggers, is up to enter this thing... if I lose I will end up with some visitors, if I win there will be some prize.. What is it?.. Rs 50,000! That is a nasty lot of money for a blog post.. Fellow contestents beware, I have entered the arena!!!!!

In the beginning was the 3G, and 3G was with God and 3G was God... Now you might have got a rough idea how much big this 3G thing is... 3G is coming to India powered by TATA Docomo... They have even booked his flight ticket in advance. Before 3G, obviously there was 2G, who came on Economy class of Air India and there was 1G, who was  called by friends, Romans and countrymen as G affectionately, (also may be because then they did not knew he will begot 2G), came in a ship that delivered rotten sheep skin from Ghana to a Nawab. (Why would a Nawab require rotton sheep skin from Ghana is still a mystery and historians are on the work...) This pretty much sums up the history part.

This 3G guy, will come to India and change our life, like how Coca Cola came and changed our life. (I am not sure how. I will find out and tell you another time, we should not miss our focus.) 3G life is going to be awesome, you can download lot of movies pretty fast.. (that is what they give in the contest page, in a blink of an eye, they wrote.) You can make lot of money bootlegging them and selling underground... And it seems marriages will  happen by video conferencing..(again from the same page). They did not write anything about the things after that... No, no, not that! I meant shopping for furniture, arranging kitchen. There was something about cars in that page, which I cannot recollect. Hm.. then.. Actually... Finally... So there are many benifits and our life won't be the same...

I am sure you are not satisfied with the advantages of 3G para, but thing is that I am not able to google, to collect more info, because I don't have internet connection right now and I am typing on Word... you know...! I will add them when I upload this thing on blog later when I manage to get somewhere there is connection. (If I does not forget it by then.) But in next segment I will tell you what 3G has done to other countries...

3G was in Dubai when they made Al Bhurj, the tallest building on the planet. There are unconfirmed reports that he was present in France while Eiffel tower was being erected.  Some secret CIA dossiers suggests his presence even when they were building Statue of Liberty... All the US presidents till George W Bush have sighted 3G in their dreams and Nixon was so scared that he wired the Watergate complex, resulting in that scandel... what was its name? I forgot!

3G gives colour to the butterflies, scent to the flowers, depth to the ocean, height to Everest, vastness to the sky... 3G is responsible for sun rising in East and setting in West, for the universe standing in the space and not falling down, for tides, black holes and tiny spot on moon... In short 3G is just second to Chuck Norris.... I think this para makes up to all that goof ups happened initially...

So guys, it is your duty to vote me and get me my 50,000... I am also ready to deal in a profit sharing basis with individual voters, commision agents are welcome to make a bulk quantity of people vote for me and earn some percentage of prize money...  

The Centurion: 100th post.

I am now typing the hundredth post of Conscientious Reflections...

100 posts, 2 years and one month...  25 months .. averages one post per week... not bad, is it?

It all started in September 2008, as a personal diary, the name was different then, one which more suited my state of mind and intention at that point of time... 

In 2008, I never intended visitors to come in. Of course I was a bit shy, that some strangers would attempt to read my ramblings and rants... 

Only a privileged few used to drop in.. as I used to update the status with a link of post in Orkut and then Facebook and twitter later on...

You can see that if you check the comments in the blog, barring one or two odd comments, the initial posts, many of them my personal favorites, never attracted much comments.

Friends and relatives who stumbles upon them leaves their comments in Orkut or other sites... 

That time there was no interaction with other bloggers too. 

From last April 2010, more visitors started coming in. And that was the time I had my first follower... 

That was the time I started visiting other bloggers, putting comments there and following some of the most ingenious writers I had ever read...

They in turn had been kind enough to drop in and comment and give valuable suggestions... 

And I feel now I feel responsible for writing good... yes, that is the difference that I feel these days from those times when I used to write for my own sake.

I think I would just mention  some posts that are more popular and those are my favorites below:

Most popular post in terms of visits:

A Team : The Movie from past: This was my appreciation of a popular action movie, that was violent and humorous at the same time... as per Google Analytics, it is the most viewed page, most of the visitors coming from google search... 

Most popular post in terms of comments:

The last man on earth to watch inception: An appreciation of the movie block buster Inception got most number of comments.. and still I am getting a few of them...

My personal favorites:

Yossarian's struggles: About the book Catch 22. I loved the book. So I was intending to go overboard with it. I wanted to compare it with some other similar works I read at that time, and it was a post that took  more time and energy..  

Incredible life and death of my talkative middle finger: An attempt at fiction for the first time in years, this absurd story was conceptualized in a sleepless night. Started drafting it next day, stopped in between disheartened and again worked on it after a month and some how done with it. It came out the way I intended  it to be I feel...

Caught in the web: Attack of Micro blogs

The final installment in Caught in the web trilogy.

Continued from Caught in the web: Rise of Social networking

So by the end of 2008 I had just joined Facebook,where I was alone, started a blog in Blogger, the one that you are reading now, and was using orkut as the main link to connect with the virtual world... In orkut usage, I had by the time totally stopped using communities, where previously I used to socialize a lot and where I got a few good contacts too. Another couple of sites that I didn't mention before which I had joined, but never used much were job sites. I had account in Naukri, Monster and Times jobs. Never came to any use. And also a profile in Bharatmatrimony.com thanks to my sister, in which I did not had any hand!

Blogging was the most challenging endeavor... You need to find a subject which is the most toughest process, develop it into atleast some 100 words, tell it in such a way that people will connect with it and ultimately typing it without much spelling and grammatical errors... phew... But the satisfaction when you get a comment on blog is just awesome. Even if it is just a review on a book, when a comment comes that someone I never knew will read this book after reading my review is a sign of some personal achievement. Initially for around a year, very few people used to visit. These days it is picking up. I have joined some sites were you can promote the blog and interact with fellow bloggers, like Blogger, Indiblogger.in, blogadda, networked blogs, entrecard, were you can get to meet and read some fabulous people around the world who want to announce their voices to the world...

The only temporary stoppage in blogging was caused by a new inventive site that allowed to blog spontaneously, in small sentences of 140 characters... Yes, Twitter... I joined twitter around middle of 2009, and got hooked soon, although initially I was alone there too. I liked twitter because unleashing yourself was too much easy there.. no need of thinking and planning your words, just put out what is in your mind and forget it... yes that was the problem, tweets are like those droplets of mist in the daybreak, no life..... How many of you cares for those tweets you made a year back or even a week back? All those tiny part of your mind, let alone, orphaned in the twitterverse... it was a painful thought for me.. these days I have reduced microblogging... may be just to promote my macro blog... or to reply some friend's tweet, or to catch up with some friends... 

So after the realization I came back to macro blogging with a bang..... And as I knew when I made my Facebook account way back in 2008 Jan, by 2009 end it was surpassing Orkut.. Lot of my friends came to Facebook and lot of time and energy and money were spent in virtual farming and killing people, thanks to addicting Zynga games Farmville and Mafia Wars, for some time... Then life became normal again...These days Facebook even serves the purpose of twitter, but with lesser restrictions and more flexibility, like "like" and a facility to comment... my only regret is that there is no Unlike option there. It would have been great. 

The last social networking site that I joined is shelfari.com, a quiet cool place were you can discuss on my favorite subject, with lots and lots of equally fanatics... BOOKS. Now this is the place to be if you are a book lover... a great, understanding, supportive community.

There are few more sites that has to be atleast honorarily mentioned here... how can they be avoided when these sites occupy 80% of internet? hm... porn sites. I would just mention hereby that like any young guy I too had my share of adventures with them, but as the time passes, was able to come out of it unscathed. 

Last decade internet had been a major changing factor, in the life of many people around the world, changing it for good or bad... Like any inventions this too has its downside. I believe three terms will explain atleast most of it: Spam, Scam and Stalking. Spam can be avoided or neglected although it irritates like any thing. As for scam, I genuinely feel that if some one was cheated in scams, they probably deserve it. Finally about stalking, in my case there was only one incident where one person, with a female fake profile tried to abuse me in Orkut. Months later he tried to contact me with his real profile. I could find out this was same guy by the same wordings he used in the scraps that he send me. Now if some one I know hates me and wants to stalk me it is the problem of his mind, not mine, he has to deal with it. Hope he gets the will to do that...

This story never ends... more sites and new adventures are being loaded day in day out... waiting with anticipation and praying those novel things not turn up like Chatroulette.com were perverts all over the world are on the vigil 24X7 for the unsuspecting visitor, to scare the hell out off with naked genitals.

There ends my trilogy of Caught in the web. Hope I did not crash land it the way they did it with The Matrix trilogy, some how trying to end the sucker...

Caught in the web: Rise of Social networking

Continued from Caught in the web: Part 1

So till 2005 my time with internet was spent only by checking emails, forwarding funny pictures and other stuff to friends and then in late 2004 some downloads... mostly songs, old hindi tracks, ghazals, and ebooks from esnips and of course a few comic strips. I was crazy about comic strips like Hagar the Horrible and Garefield, who shared an uncanny resemblance with a good buddy... 

Then I was introduced to social networking sites by a friend, the first one being a very non popular site whose name I forgot... me.com or something like that. It was a very short lived amusement and I was feeling kind of bored with it... Life went on with more downloading and more forwarded mails, which I never used to open and just forwarded like that to all friends. 

Google was the emerging giant then, which revolutionized searching the web and giving a new word to the netizen's vocabulary "Googling"... so when they started a new email service Gmail, which was kind of unlimited service, a new trend then, all of the friends switched to it...again I kept my loyalty to Rediff. Then another new concept Orkut came into existence. Initially I was apprehensive of it, may be due to the disinterest caused by my association with that I-Forgot-the-name social networking site. My friends recommended it a lot but I kept my resistance, later I bend only when they made an orkut account for me... they set the profile for me and even helping in searching some old high school and higher secondary school friends whose existence I had forgotten by then. Thus started orkutting that was valuable in getting in touch with scores of old contacts, otherwise whose memories would have slowly moved into oblivion. Those days emails took a backseat and only those mails were checked which were personal and important. Orkutting and downloading songs and books were the internetting pastime. Later if we were able to organize a get together of high school friends and made it a reasonable success, it was all courtesy Orkut.

Another two sites that came into forefront at that period were  wikipedia and youtube... former was an information revolution and latter, a visual revolution. The success of these sites was phenomenal... Facebook was also making it big, but outside India. In India, it was all orkut for another couple of years, probably till 2008. I decided to make my entry into blogger world in 2006. It was a fascinating thing then. A platform for  showing off all your creativity, a vent for all the crazy things that goes through your mind.... I realised the potential but inspite of making a profile in blogger and starting a blog I never continued it. Later in 2007 I started a few blogs, in which I reviewed movies, books and things like that but that also stopped by 2008. 

I also joined Facebook by 2008 starting, but I was alone then. And bored, none of my friends were around. So I went to Orkut again for two more years. These years, 2008, 09 and 10 saw a large number of social networking sites and communities developing and prospering... but I believe all were short lived...and in 2009 I took to blogging seriously... micro and macro ways...In 2008 another thing I did was chatting. Yes, I was too late getting in it. I opened a Gmail account, which is a spammer's paradise right now filled with disgusting ads of machines to increase size of private body parts, power enhancing drugs, multinational companies announcing me winner of lotteries (Now do any one sensible will believe microsoft or Yahoo will have any interest to invest their hard earned money into lottery business?) and millionaires in Nigeria ready to give me a part of their black money. And I still find it difficult to chat with strangers... I feel kind of cheating them and at the same time feel cheated too.

Coming up next: Micro and macro blogging

Caught in the web- Part 1

This post and the upcoming ones are dedicated to all those poor social networking websites where I never joined in spite of many friends sending invites and also to those ones where I joined and never cared to go back... like ibibo, friendster, shtyle, indyarocks (who cares?)....

It is around 16 years since I have first heard about Internet, and 12 years since I am using it... So in this occasion I will just try to recap my tryst with internet... 

It all started when I first saw an article in Reader's digest way back in 1994, I was a small kid then, about internet and its scope in revolutionizing the world. I thought "Whoa! What an idea sirjee!". Then I was doing a one month beginner's course in Computers and floppy disks and DOS were the in thing... It was the era of COBOL, BASIC, Fortran... After many years in Higher secondary, we got another class on Windows, a very primitive version, I forgot which, may be Windows 1990 BC...

The very first time I logged on was probably 1998/99, in Dharwad when I, with some friends went to a newly opened internet cafe and opened a Hotmail account. It was an accomplishment.. But I didnt knew what next! I remember one friend who opened his email account and was proudly telling us to note it down. He also gave us his password. He didn't knew it is supposed to be a secret. My friends used to open account in every free email sites, like yahoo, usa.net and many more. I stayed loyal with hotmail for another 2 years. Then Rediff became the new rage... It looked cool compared to any other email providers then. I opened an account in rediff that I uses still. Never ever I touched Yahoo or any others that had better options then and I even hated chatting at that time. 

I was never a regular internet user then, may be once in two weeks or one month. There were times when I never browsed for 3 months or so. After studies, internet was really a useful thing because, it was comfortable to send resumes, keeping in touch with friends...And the way I used internet was again revolutionized in 2005.

Coming up next: Social networking and chatting

Guest blogging: an invite.

My dear friends and followers, thanks for the kind support that you have been showering on me by visiting and reading this small blog. In return I have decided to give you a chance to feature on our blog. As a guest. So if you feel like contributing a post please feel free to mail your guest post to my e mail id harishpi81@gmail.com

Why no posts from long time?

Dont feel like posting any thing! Plain laziness!!!!!!

Hmmmmm..............

I dont have anything to say now!

Sorry

Umpteenth Personal Diary in Net.....

Dear friend who came this far to read this insignificant post,

Thank you.

I know there are umpteen number of people writing their personal diaries as blogs. What makes my jotters any different from them, or from your personal life... or from any normal average soul ever to walk on this planet earth?...

I am not an adventurer, nor am I a Casanova... I don't travel too far or wide.... I live my life, as any other mortal around me, savoring life as good or bad as it is, as sweet or bitter as it is, displaying my fixed set of emotions, whenever and wherever I feel they are appropriate.....

So think my dear reader, why should you take this trouble... come all the way through the cyber jungle and read this uttering....?

I will tell you why....

• Because although the emotions displayed by each soul in this universe are same and identical, the proportion of this unique mixture is varied.... and there fore each person has a unique mind set
• Because like architects who with a piece of rock with them goes on to make sculptures that are unique, we too molds our life according to our mind set as we wants....

Feeling bored.....

I promise to come up with some thing more better and worthy in next post....