Month of March : “In Print”

Month of March

Week 1

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Cover Story :

Week 2

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Week 3

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Week 4

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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.

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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

Women at Work – My article in Newspaper

As a free lancer, I published an article for Gulf Times the leading newspaper for Middle-East.

Please click on the link and view it :

http://www.gulf-times.com/culture/238/details/344654/women-at-work

# Feedback appreciated
#Happy.Women’s.Day

#Best.Friday.Ever

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!

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!!! 😉

Life b4 social networking

I worry.

At times, I worry a lot.

Most of the times, there is no solid reason to my worries.

Just the other day I was worrying, my kids will never know how life was without social networking!

So here is this post, for my future teenage son and daughter, how life used to be when I was a teenager.

• We had real friends, and we used to “ hang out” by cycling or playing in garden or gathering at someone’s place for a game of carom/ludo/snakes and ladder.
• Twitter was just the sound of birds!
• To share photographs of someone’s marriage or function or birthday, we used to click the photo with a camera -> get them printed -> arrange them in photo albums -> show to others when there happens another family gathering! Not as simple as click -> tag -> share.
• One was popular after an achievement in athletics or academics. Not getting nominated for an online contest started by a bunch of people. Or worse: best dressed, best smile, best hair competitions for people to feel better about themselves!
• Sending a mail to someone was a BIG deal. School curriculum taught us how to draft an e-mail and for many years we stuck to that code.
• One e-mail id was enough for one family. Later on (after a few more years) every application/forum/form required an alternate email id.
• Blogging did not exist till late 1990s and till 2009 it was limited to only a small group of people.
• Dating was generally face-to-face, not online.
• Bosses were treated as bosses and Subordinates were treated as subordinates  They met socially only on special occasions and family gatherings, not every day over internet after work hours!
• “Time pass” included reading newspapers (not e-newspapers), listening to radio, reading novels (not e-books), gardening etc. Ladies occasionally got together for buying vegetables or sharing recipes while their kids played. Men talked about politics or soccer games by actually physically sitting with other men.
• Acronyms and abbreviations were logical – nt abt nythin v cn mak wid a propr wrd.
• Long distance was tough! Colorful postcards, letters in envelopes and stamps of different countries/states were the trend.

There was no FB, no Twitter, no Gmail-YahooMail-Hotmail-RediffMail, No WordPress, No Instagram, No Tumblr, No Skype.

Basically, things were more REAL !!!