Need your help fellow bloggers!

Hello my fellow bloggers!

I recently attempted to write a blog on growing safety concerns for women in India. It was part of a competition and although the deadline was just in 12 hours, I thought of challenging myself. I wrote a piece, but you all are the real judges.

I would be obliged if you click on the link, like it and leave a comment on how you like (or dislike) it.

🙂 It’s important to me, so please visit the like and LIKE it.

https://www.facebook.com/events/183605251839824/permalink/185323025001380/

Thanks a lot..!!

God Bless.

When I stumbled upon an absurd blog.

Generally when I have time on my hand, I pick a recent viewer of my blog, read his or her blog, then pick a viewer of his or her blog and then read his or her blog. And the chain reaction continues.

At times I am in the mood of poetry or intense stuff so I don’t visit blogs after 3 or 4 links (one to another and another from that and then another from that). But when I am sort of jolly or have got time to cut, I hunt for weird tags and see what people post using those tags.

Till I few days back, I thought the blogs with teenagers posting what they’re wearing to school today were funny. Well…. funny because I start thinking of my teenage days and wondered if I was so conscious about my dressing or if I did bother to announce of internet what I am wearing everyday. C’mon I am no Sarah Jessica Parker who makes a fashion statement with every attire and nor am I Heidi Klum type that people would be interested to know what I wear.

So I used to find such blogs funny. Not because I doubt they’re enthusiasm or confidence. But because I know what is it like to be in that age.

Then I came across a blog and I had the following series of reactions –

Disgust
Shock
Disbelief
Amazed
Wonder
Laugh
Mock

The blog featured a gentleman’s poop pattern.

Everyday he clicked a photo of his excreta and blogged about it. Everyday he would be shitting and praying let today be a pretty poop day.

Initially I was disgusted. Genuinely because I see such shit (literally too) on the streets in India. Then I was shocked – how can someone be so desperate to start a blog that he just started posting the most absurd thing! Then came a disbelief that no maybe this man is disturbed. Or is craving for attention. But then it occurred. Day after day with no likes and mostly no followers or regular readers, this man is continuing with his daily post. The act was repulsive.

I was amazed how he got this brilliant idea of posting his daily essential activity and letting the world know about it. Then I wondered, has he no common sense? No inner voice telling him – Dude have you taken a look at your blog?

I wondered from when he was, where he lived, laughed about his daily routine and finally decided to mock it.

I am sorry mister, even if you ever stumble across my blog and read this post about you, I am not going to apologize for a single word I wrote here. You really should have a look at your blog – maybe from an outsider point of view.

Yes, a lot of us have great ideas while sitting on the potty seat, but really taking pictures and posting it? Have you really lost it?

Anyways, this brings me to the end of it. I really can’t give more attention of words to this potty genius. I hope you readers never stumble across his blog, and if you do, please guide him to this post.

Peace.

Month of March : “In Print”

Month of March

Week 1

Cover Page :

Cover Story :

Week 2

Cover Page :

Cover Story :

Week 3

Cover Page :

Cover Story :

Week 4

Cover Page :

Cover Story :

Overwhelming joy of seeing my name IN PRINT.

Thank you MONTH OF MARCH.

Season of (19) Awards… yipppeeeee…!!

A series of awards here…..WATCH OUT…. 😀

Leibster Award from My Rabbit Hole Trips – a very sincere gesture, which I truly appreciate.

Questions I got to answer –

1. Where in the world is Carmen San Diego? not in my pocket 😀
2. What is your favorite day of the year? the days I get a genuine appreciation
3. What is your personal theme song? “I like to move it move it”
4. If I have 10 cookies, and you take 3, what do you have? a sharing friend
5. You are stranded in space, what is your one item you must have with you? clothes
6. You just stole Trump’s hair, where do you hide it? I would not steal
7. Why do you put up with me? I am improving my toleration skills 😉
8.  Clowns? Scary, or cool? Funny 😀
9.  This fairytale will describe your life… none
10.  If you were a superhero, who would you be? superwoman – who else 😉
11. If you could have plastic surgery, what would you have done and why? remove my second degree burn marks from my legs

Leibster Award from Angie

Questions for me –

1. What was the most interesting place you’ve been to? Why? Airports – they’re the best

2. If you could have dinner with anyone, who would it be? What would you ask him/her? Angelina Jolie – how do you manage those bunch of kids, career and husband?

3. What’s your favorite dessert? Can you make it? Chocolate Mousse – yes

4. Have you ever lived outside your country? Where and how long? I have lived only in 2 countries – I consider both my homes equally

5. What’s your dream job? Being a writer. I am almost there. Blog – done, Newspaper- done. Now a novel.

6. What’s the most embarrassing thing that happened to you? My brother pulled down my pajamas – he is 9 yrs younger to me 

7. Best book you’ve read so far. Sidney Sheldon, Dan Brown

8. 3 things you can’t live without. Water, Air, Light

9. What’s the most bizarre food you’ve eaten? a local dish of Kerala – don’t know its name

10. What are you scared of? My father’s disappointment in me

11. Happiest moment in your life so far. Writing as a free lancer for a leading daily newspaper in Middle East

Leibster Award from Elaine White

Questions to be answered:

1. Do you have a light side or a dark side? I am 50 shades of rainbow colors
2. Who is your intended audience and why should they read your blog? Youth and women. They both are the most imp sector of any society
3. What’s the most amusing thing that’s happened to you? Being nominated for a local pageant 
4. If your life were made into a movie, who do you picture playing you? Priyanka Chopra
5. Vanilla or Chocolate? Chocolate 
6. Do you have any deep dark secrets you would admit to your readers? I have but I won’t 😉
7. Who is your favourite book character? Any detective is my favorite book character
8. What is the strangest thing you’ve ever done in your life? I rather not say 😀
9. Do you prefer films or books? Meaningful books and entertaining films
10. What’s your favourite colour? White
11. If you could have any pet in the world, fantasy or real, what would it be? Anything – I love animals

Another Leibster from ramblingsofabipolarwoman

 

Very Inspiring Blog Award from a rambler , svkishere, Ruby, Eva, Sonu, Leanna Harrow, notes-to-ponder, Emily,  Martina and from Desiree (I love your boys btw)

 

Sunshine Award from Imthatkay and Lilyluna

Versatile Blog Award from Ruby. Check about the blog here…

Beautiful Blogger award from PrimalNights

Last but not the least -> my first ever Dragon’s Loyalty Award from Ajay.

**

Leibster (4), Inspiring (10), Sunshine (2), Beautiful (1), Versatile (1) and Dragon’s Loyalty (1) Blog award – 19 awards mentioned and acknowledged in this post……!!!

I am humbled by these gestures and really smiling with all the teeth I got beaming like a tube-light. 🙂 

I really hope I can keep writing, keep inspiring and keep reaching out to all other bloggers out there! Cheers.

Reaching out through blogs : My article in the leading newspaper of Middle-East

Since I started working as a part-time free-lance writer for Gulf Times, life seems to have taken an exciting new turn..

After the article for working women in Qatar, I have now written about bloggers in Qatar. In this country, blogging is still not considered as a “cool” or beneficial way of social interaction and with my article I try to clear those myths and misconceptions.

Read it here –

http://www.gulf-times.com/technology/233/details/344940/reaching-out-through-blogs

Although Gulf Times did not include photos of all the amazing bloggers I got in touch with, I will attach their photos here as a token of thanks for their contribution.

 

# all photos belong to the rightful owners

I do not know how to do it in Gangam Style.

Till commencement of February 2013, I pronounced the singer of world famous record breaking Gangam Style as Pee-eS-whY, presuming its a band.

Because now a days, western music influence is so much, every now and then I hear a new name. And, I detest learning a new band’s or singers’ name after their albums feature top lists worldwide. Blaming the youth of today trying to ape the western culture, I move on with my life, not caring enough to listen to a Justin Bieber song. Okay agreed, they have a talent, thanks to a dozen artists they manage to look good, and owing to a million advertising and marketing strategies their albums hit it off. But then I thought why Indian people ignore the talent India already has.

Eventually, over past few years, it sinked in that rappers like Yo Yo Honey Singh ans singers like Himesh Reshammiya and Mika have taken oven the main stream music in India. Very rarely soothing music of A R Rahman falls on one’s ears. And after Slumdog Millionaire and Jai Ho with the Pussycat Dolls, I just accepted that no more can I chose to what I want to listen. I gave in to the trend and my playlist started featuring Eminem, Chris Brown, Rihanna, Beyonce, Wiz Khalifa and I haven’t looked back since then.

But in my heart I always wanted eastern music to be more popular. Then suddenly on a fine 2012 morning my Facebook feed was full of a Korean singer. I looked up to heaven and smiled, I dint mean that eastern too. 😉

Owing to my initial hostility towards change, non acceptance of trends and an oath to discard all YouTube links on FB newsfeed, I did not watch Mr P-S-Y till late December. Even then, it was my Times of India headlines which shouted out the broken world records and Guinness Book acclaim, that I finally Google’d “Ga” which automatically predicted to be Gangam Style and took me to the *dreaded* page of our talented singer Psy.

My first response to that now-opened-link was, “my my really 1 billion views”. Then came a moment of truth, a certain odd thousand people had disliked the video. I knew it even before watching, I will be belonging to this category.

As much as I expected, my facial expression remained still all throughout the 4 minute video. Maybe my brows lifted a bit when Psy started doing his signature step, but only to wonder why was this so famous.

I then opened a few old videos of Govinda dancing and found those more entertaining than the Korean award winning track. Even when our Shakti Kapoor or Mammootty dance, they create a stir across nation. 😉

So it left me puzzled. Why do a billion people like it and I don’t…!!!  End of this was, I shut the YouTube tab and declared, I am different from a billion people. Ha!

# writing this post reminded me of the Kolavari song, but that will feature in another post. 

# all South Koreans are my brothers and sisters and I love them dearly.
# People who like bands- yay woohoo, dont mind dude.
# People who like Bieber- I am sorry, I have nothing more to say. You like Bieber for God’s sake, what CAN I possibly say.

Forbes talk about Gangam Style

For my friends who like PSY :

Cheers!

Alert : you’ve got mail.

Dear you,

I saw what you did there. And I saw you thought about me too.

And yet you chose to ignore me.

Now you think you can ignore me? Can you? Oh well, give it a try.

You thought it will be so easy to forget what you did there, you didn’t realize – I see what you see. In fact, I see things you choose to ignore. But guess what, unlike you, I don’t pretend to forget things.

Even the other day when Bob asked you to help him move his furniture, you said you and Sheila had a dinner night with her parents. And you were just sitting and watching “Mad Men” on your laptop. Well played, huh?

And you remember the time Sheila asked you to get dinner, because she was running late. You told her you are eating out with colleagues, while it was just you and Phill and some pep talk.

And let me remind you how you gave an excuse to bail out of parent-teacher meeting at Sam’s school. Not to forget the late night bar visits when you tall home you’re working late.

Well, let me tell you, I remember all that. And all that will turn around one day to bite you from behind. That time don’t cry out to me.

Actually I know you will cry out to me. And guess what I will tell you that time, “you deserved it”.

Yours faithfully,

Conscience.

Are you one amongst them?

Often, we make choices; a few unsure ones too.

The ones we don’t know where it leads to.

The ones which may be deciding a course of our lives. Or may turn our careers in 180 degrees.

The ones we later – either boast or regret.

.

But my question is, are you one amongst them? Are you in the rat race? Did you take the road less traveled? Or are you aping someone else’s decisions too? Or someone else making your decisions?

Population status of this planet is soaring as I type this, what I wonder is, am I one in a million or just, you know, one in a million?

How do you know? How do I know?

Then I think of our unsung heroes, the ones who died fighting for a cause, the ones who did not get the media/critic acclaim. Or the ones who got an Oscar/Nobel Prize after their death. Weren’t they one in a million? 

What parameter judges our performance? How do we really stand out? If 10,000 people know what we do? Or If we do what those 10,000 people want/expect us to do?

.

Million dollar question. 

Are you one in a million? Or just someone in the crowd who will die in nonentity?

Levels of excitement

This post will start with a journey through pictures in order to reveal the different levels of excitement buid up in me; courtesy my blogs sakshivashist.wordpress.com and cruisingthroughmylife.wordpress.com

   

   

                

Yes…I was absolutely out of words and speechless after I got my “1000 total likes” star, that I decided to print_screen all the previous accolades and copy paste them after editing- upload them here and then it finally started to sink in.

WOW!!!!

I mean, seriously, till an year back I was saying to myself- who has time and patience to blog. And now I don’t miss out on replying to even one comment. It is now a habit to check for pending comments and reply to them before 3 days (at the max).

And I have 2 freaking blogs!!!! Its a double trouble – as I say to my friends. 😉

But yes, apart from becoming an ardent fan of blogging, I have started pursuing others to start blogging too. 😀

Thank you all the people out there who ever visited my blog- or passed by it by just clicking on a “Follow” or “Like” button. It gives me a reason to wake up in the morning and gives me a reason to sleep at night.

I can tell, many people clicked on “Like” without even reading my poetry or understanding it or connecting with my random musings, but I sincerely feel it gives me a boost to reach out to more people, write of more worthy things, make memories and be more expressive and yet never run out on things to talk about. 😉

That is all. I rest my case.

Forever,

the.New.Chatterbox.in.BlogTown

Certain memories are etched in your mind. Aren’t they?

Memories.

We are all here to make them.

We are all here to preserve them.

And still, its hard to keep track of all good/bad incidents in our lives.

For a certain-some-time, you feel “Yes, I will remember this for the rest of my life”. And 3 years hence, its hard to recollect the events of the same day.

THAT is the beauty of our mind. It follows a FIFO algorithm. We make space for more memories and older ones are pushed behind. FIFO or the First In First Out algorithm is described as

The idea is obvious from the name – the operating system keeps track of all the pages in memory in a queue, with the most recent arrival at the back, and the earliest arrival in front. When a page needs to be replaced, the page at the front of the queue (the oldest page) is selected.

For the same purpose, I keep this blog. So that my memories are not lost in page replacement algorithm of my “genius” mind 😉

This picture alone reminds me of a million memories I made in the December of 2011. And the best thing, the pic din’t need any sort of editing.

#Happy.Times

I love Sidney Sheldon

Sidney Sheldon (SS). I love him. I absolutely do. He is the only author, whose ALL novels I have read. He published them in this order.

The Naked Face (1970)
The Other Side of Midnight (1973)
A Stranger in the Mirror (1976)
Bloodline (1977)
Rage of Angels (1980)
Master of the Game (1982)
If Tomorrow Comes (1985)
Windmills of the Gods (1987)
The Sands of Time (1988)
Memories of Midnight (1990)
The Doomsday Conspiracy (1991)
The Stars Shine Down (1992)
Nothing Lasts Forever (1994)
Morning, Noon and Night (1995)
The Best Laid Plans (1997)
Tell Me Your Dreams (1998)
The Sky Is Falling (2001)
Are You Afraid of the Dark? (2004)

I read them considering how I could beg-borrow-buy. I don’t remember exactly when I read my first SS novel but I remember first one was Master of the Game. 

I have met many people who say SS novels are for kids and they lack a certain taste which epics or classic fictions have. I believe- To each its own. If people can appreciate Harry Potter series, Twilight Series and 50 Shades of Grey series, C’mon SS series was good enough too. 

The story build up, the plot, the characterization, the minute description of each and every turn on the road and peck on the cheek in fact elates the quality of his novels. It keeps you hooked on to the book till you know what is going to happen Agreed, sometimes it becomes predictable, but hey! you can’t  judge him for that. All authors become predictable if they write many many many novels. (Dan Brown is an exception I feel).

So as a tribute to one of my all-time-favorite authors, I write this post and shamelessly fearlessly say that I can read his books over and over again. For people who act as book critics and yet secretly are charmed by Christian Grey or Edward Cullen, you just CANNOT judge me!!!!

A look at Blog Stats *wide smile*

Its 2013.

A look at my current STATS 😉

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Blog 1 : cruisingthroughmylife.wordpress.com

Posts : 34
Tags : 260
Comments : 642
Views : 5670
Followers : 1121

Country Views :

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Blog number 2 – sakshivashist.wordpress.com

Posts : 57
Tags : 222
Comments : 713
Views : 6364
Followers : 985

Country Views :

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#dated 17th Dec’12

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Points to be noted :

1. The world painted in ORANGE looks cooool 😀

2. Whatever be the stats – I am so so glad I got such a positive response. 

3. Thankful to WordPress for creating such an awesome site!!! 😉

Liebster Blog Award !!!!!!

😀 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀

It looks like the season of awards! I got nominated for Liebster Blog award

Thank you Alison and Don!

From what I read on their blog, this is how it works :

The Liebster Blog award began in Germany for inspiring/interesting blogs that have fewer than 200 followers. To accept the award you are asked to answer the five questions, and nominate three to five blogs that you think are worthy of the award and ask them your own questions.

The questions Alison and Don posed are:

1. What are you passionate about? (Apart from skating Morozombie)

Photography! Really started enjoying it since last few months..

2. What tourist attraction would you avoid like the plague?

Marina Beach in Chennai-India

3. What are the top three things you want to have, do, achieve, or see before you die?

Sky diving, getting a tattoo, a month in Europe

4. Do you think you would ever consider becoming a nomad, and why?

Yes! Because it is an option to run away from responsibilities, relations, feelings and settling down to a place with a person. No liabilities and no strings attached!

5. Chocolate, vanilla or strawberry?

Chocolate plus Vanilla.

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So, I nominate the following people :

1. http://anjaanrahgir.wordpress.com/

2. http://stuffmybrainthinks.wordpress.com/

3. http://daydreamerdreams.wordpress.com/

4. http://vigilkumar.wordpress.com/

 

And my questions to them are :

1. Favorite day of the week and WHY?

2. Choose between Lion and Tiger, give a reason for your choice!

3. When did you last ride a bicycle?

4. Name of the people on your Speed Dial (on mobile).

5. Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt? and Why?

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Congratulations to the nominees! Have a great time!

Blog of the year 2012 :D

I am grateful to Justine  to find my blog worthy of the “Blog of the Year 2012”. I feel joyous and proud in accepting it!

CONGRATULATIONS to you Justine and THANK YOU to pass the award on to me!

Here are the rules to accept this award:

1 Select the blog(s) you think deserve the ‘Blog of the Year 2012’ Award
2 Write a blog post and tell us about the blog(s) you have chosen – there’s no minimum or maximum number of blogs required – and ‘present’ them with their award.
3 Please include a link back to this page ‘Blog of the Year 2012’ Award – and include these ‘rules’ in your post (please don’t alter the rules or the badges!)
4 Let the blog(s) you have chosen know that you have given them this award and share the ‘rules’ with them
5 You can now also join our Facebook page – click the link here ‘Blog of the Year 2012’ Award and then you can share your blog with an even wider audience
6 As a winner of the award – please add a link back to the blog that presented you with the award – and then proudly display the award on your blog and sidebar … and start collecting stars…

I would like to nominate the following blog for the Blog of the Year 2012:

http://thinkingandexperiencing.wordpress.com/

I recently found Nishi01’s blog and was intrigued by it. She is an amazing writer and I am glad I stumbled across her blog!

Congrats to you!

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Bloggers Please use this URL to display in your side bar:

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2 Reality Blog Awards in a week *wink wink*

Nope! You cannot wipe the smirk off my face.. You can try, but you WILL fail 😉

I thought not checking my blog for 2 days was OKAY, not that many comments or likes or activity will be there! But I was taken by a surprise! These two wonderful people Soumya and the Muzer nominated me for Reality Blog Award! 😀

First of all, CONGRATULATIONS to them! And a big THANK YOU.

Reality Award Blog!

THE REALITY BLOG AWARD!

Below are the rules for the REALITY blog award:

1. Answer the 5 questions

2. Nominate 8 other bloggers

 

Questions:

1. If you could change one thing, what would you change?

the ability to eat chocolates and cheese and junk food, without getting fat.

2. If you could repeat an age, what would it be?

my 10th standard

3. What one thing really scares you?

disappointing my father!

4. What is one dream you have not completed, and do you think you’ll be able to complete it?

studying in the US

5. If you could be someone else for one day, who would it be?

Narendra Modi or Priyanka Chopra

 

My nominees are :

http://author4u.wordpress.com/

http://mylifeisdrama.wordpress.com/

http://pseudomonaz.wordpress.com/

http://ididnthavemyglasseson.wordpress.com/

Well rules are meant to be broken, so only 4 nominations! 😉

Enjoy everyone and Congratulations to the nominees, I love your work!