About blogging delays…

I was offline for the last two weeks. I live in a part of town (in Pune, India) that is newly developing. All the residential phone lines in our area have been down for so many days. Broadband didn’t work. Roads are dug up by any tom, dick, and harry, for whatever reason, and no one knows why. Some cables were seemingly affected, and that brought all the phone lines down. The telephone repairmen working at the spot looked either like gangsters trying to hide some loot, or a group of men squatting to urinate at a wall. This is the developing India. Sigh!

The comments and responses on this blog during and after the prolonged delays have humbled me. When I started this blog, I never knew and never expected to make so many friends or develop such a readership. I am still taken aback by the entire experience. One of my blogger friends even traced me, got my cell phone number, and called me up to ask what’s the matter, and that (s)he didn’t want to lose a friend like me. Experiences and comments like these make one realize that one is not alone in this world. There are people who care about the same things you do, who think in a similar fashion, who value similar things like you, and that the world is not such a hopeless place after all. I cannot express how humbled I am at all the emails and comments I received.

I am trying my best to put my life in order, such that I will be able to devote some more time to blogging. I have been dragged into several things on the personal front, and dealing with all of them at the same time has been a challenge. But the wonderful experience of blogging - the interaction I’ve been having with you folks - educated, intelligent, sensitive, and insightful - is a rewarding experience that I don’t wish to sacrifice. So I am myself waiting to get active in the blogosphere again. The only request is to be patient with me.

At the same time, I am also missing out on reading your wonderful blog posts. I cannot tell you how many times I think of some of your posts while sleeping at night, and either have a good laugh or empathize with your feelings, or be enriched by your knowledgeable posts. I am looking forward to getting back to reading your blogs and learning from them. You folks make life worthwhile. I mean it.

This post is not composed, orchestrated, or edited. The backspace or arrow keys haven’t been used. It is coming straight from the heart, as they say, and there is no filter. Forgive me if it is not as structured as my usual posts. I know you will. Thank you.

Resuming Soon…

This blog has been inactive and dormant for quite some time due to personal reasons. I hope to resume in a week or two. Thanks for all the comments and patience. And a very happy new year to all my readers!

A Busy Week

Dear readers, this past week has been very hectic and I’ve mostly been offline. My gratitude to all the comments, and apologies for the delay in my response. I hope I will be able to spend more time posting, responding, and visiting your wonderful blogs in the coming week!

Thanks for bearing with me.

Intellectual Blogger Award Update

As Paul points out, the Intellectual Blogger Award is gaining traction thanks to the gracious and kind support of remarkably intelligent bloggers. I thought it would be a good idea to maintain a list of the awardees at a central place for reference. This list would be like an Intellectual Bookshelf - a rich and varied source of great ideas, when you’re hungry for food for thought.

So I have updated the Intellectual Blogger Award page to list all the awardees. I once again thank everyone for their support in taking this forward.

The Writing Meme

Nita has kindly tagged me for listing strengths of a writer that I aspire to have. I read a few excellent writers who’ve contributed to this before, like Suburban Life, The Individual Voice, Joe Felso, MariaCristina, and of course, Rambodoc. I liked MariaCristina’s way of listing each strength along with an example. All these writers excel at their craft, leaving me dumbfounded. So as Nita suggested, I will start by blanking out previous insights and starting afresh.

• English is my second-language. I couldn’t write basic, decent English till I was 17 years old. The Wren and Martin grammar they taught us in school was an insipid, laborious, meaningless exercise. It was several years later that I discovered The Elements of Style, and entered the world of English writing. If anyone asks me which is the one book to read about English writing, that is it. This “little book” can be read here for free.
• Be intimately knowledgeable of William Safire’s Rules for Writers.
• Read. After you’ve read, study it as a writer. Reading as a reader is different from reading as a writer. You cannot write unless you read. You cannot write well unless you study writing as a writer. Over time, you won’t need to read twice.
  I learnt the above by applying film appreciation skills to the art of writing. Watching movies doesn’t make anyone a better actor or director or script-writer. Only if you watch the movie from a script-writer’s perspective will you learn about the art of script-writing.
• Honesty, passion, sincerity, and practice. I need not say more.
• Voltaire said “If you wish to converse with me, define your terms”. We may not want to be as unreasonable as that in our daily lives, so let’s just say “If you wish me to read your writing, you better be able to back up your words with definitions”. There is a difference between ‘knowing’ the meaning of words to be able to make good conversation, and knowing the meaning of words you use to write.
• I meet two kinds of people. On one hand are passionate lovers of words and language. They are finicky about whether they prefer Oxford or Merriam Webster. On the other hand are those who respond “whatever”, when you painstakingly explain the precise meaning of your interpretation of a word. If you wish to improve vocabulary, subscribe to A.Word.A.Day - I joined in 1995.
  If you wish to write well, overcome inertia and proactively refer the dictionary and thesaurus. In the pre-Internet era, we used to have these huge reference books by our side to refer when we were writing. Now, it’s so simple!
• Writing is 99% thinking and 1% typing (or penning). What this means is that you can engage in the act of ‘writing’ when your commuting, or having a shower, or lying in bed. I often think of topics, structure, elements of the content, and the key message, while I’m away from the computer. When I do get a chance to type, it is just a matter of crystallizing what you’ve already thought through.
• If the 1% typing takes 99% of the time, you need to learn typing. I learnt typing on a physical typewriter in my 10th grade, when I decided on IT as my career. Then I improved my speed using typing tutor software. It has paid handsome rewards. I’ve met people who fumble at the keyboard and proudly talk about how their hands can’t keep pace with their fast-thinking minds. I wondered why their smart minds never gave priority to improving their typing skills.
  Improving your typing speed helps you write faster and better, since you are not distracted with typing and can let your mind flow freely, while your hands automatically type it for you.
• Be comfortable. Do not confuse external environmental factors with your ability to write. Have you slept well? Is the background noise or lack of sufficient light hampering you? Don’t get frustrated and give up. The negativity may be an external influence, not an innate inability.
• I initially used to have trouble imagining my reader while I was writing. Then I learnt to write ‘to myself’. I no longer visualize or imagine a reader, I write as if it is for me to read.
• Use the right tools to improve your efficiency. Choose the chair, keyboard, mouse, and screen according to your ergonomics. I use the Opera browser as its inbuilt shortcuts help me tremendously in referencing and researching while writing. Select your tools as per your convenience and use them efficiently.
• If you’re Indian, you might want to check this presentation I’d made about avoiding common English errors. People from the same culture where English is a second language tend to make similar mistakes. This essentially works like a meme. A typical Indian example is ‘updation’, which can be commonly found in Indian English, but is not an English word.

The above are factors that help me to write better. It is a never-ending road, so I too need to revisit each of the above regularly. As Nita correctly and graciously pointed out, I’ve a desire to learn about the craft of writing and am still learning.

To take this further, I’ll tag Asuph, hoping that his blog gets well soon!

(Image Credits: Details of a Waterman 42 Safety Pen, public domain.)

Weekend Flea Market 5-Oct-07

An assortment of stuff I came across in cyberspace, offered second hand, for anyone who may be interested.

• If you haven’t read it already, Thomas Friedman’s penultimate op-ed 9/11 Is Over, is a must-read.
• China has now started blocking all RSS feeds as well.
• A woman has been sentenced to death by stoning in Iran for committing adultery. Kamangir and a group of Iranian bloggers are trying to stop that from happening.
• Microsoft launches HealthVault, an online repository where consumers can store medical information for free in an encrypted database. For once, Microsoft beats Google to something!
• Ashok talked about “Collective Intelligence” in the comments discussion on my post “Runaway Train“. Techcrunch reveals that a new site, CrowdChess, has launched. You log on and sign up for a game. Each side is made up of teams of dozens, hundreds or even thousands of people. Anyone on a team can suggest the next move, and the move that gets the most votes is the one that is played out. Like Erick, I too wonder if any number of amateurs can ever beat a grandmaster in this scenario! What do you think?
• MMP has his own insightful analysis of why he blogs. He has developed an interesting universal model that shows how we all live in blogging CAVES. Check it out.
• Check out Ashok’s take on the various categories of Indian bloggers to have a healthy laugh at The Blogosphere Zoopedia.
• A US Senate Judiciary Committee has passed the Free Flow of Information Act. There is still a long way to go and final outcome seems uncertain at this stage. See Are Blogging Journalists Shielded? for background information.
• The Economist paints a sordid and bleak picture of the challenges involved in revamping Mumbai. A must-read if you care about Mumbai.
• Financial Times puts Rahul Gandhi’s first populist action after ascending to the Congress secretaryship as the backdrop to describe how political short-termism is hampering retail reforms.
• I had pondered on a few questions regarding cricket’s status in India in my 10 Thoughts on T20 World Cup Win post. Social psychologist Ashis Nandy has some interesting answers in his interview with Outlook magazine. He says there are only three areas of our life—cricket, cinema (Bollywood) and crime that recognize capability wholeheartedly and unconditionally.
• I have written about the contempt of court ruling regarding Justice Sabharwal. Vinod Mehta brings greater clarity to the issue and wisely cautions that if the media and the judiciary engage in a war, the only winners will be the politicians.
• To bring this potpourri full circle back to the US, Rajinder Puri takes on a lot of controversial issues in his take on the decline of the US. Some of his comments resonate with Shefaly’s comments in the discussion on Right To Free Speech: What does it mean?.

3rd Intellectual Blogger Award…

It has been a long time since I nominated The Intellectual Blogger Award, after Ergo and Nita. Being a newbie, I decided to take time to discover new blogs, and will continue to do so.

However, without further delay, let me talk about Paul’s Cafe Philos.

Strictly speaking, Cafe Philos violates one of the rules of the award - that you cannot nominate group blogs. However, in this case, Paul spearheads the blog virtually single-handedly almost 99% percent of the time, so this rule is waived.

Paul Sunstone writes sensitively, intelligently, and independently, on a variety of topics. He makes me think.

At the same time, he is one of the most prolific bloggers I know. It can be difficult to keep pace with his posts.

Another recently launched feature of his blog is his weekly editorial picks. His pace of writing posts is matched only by his voracious reading.

So, I am very happy to present The Intellectual Blogger Award to Cafe Philos! Congratulations, Paul!

Getting back from a hiatus

Dear readers, I’ve been offline for the past few days, savoring India’s performance in the 20-20 World Cup, while attempting to escape the insane noise pollution, traffic congestion, and air pollution as a result of the Ganesha Festival in Pune.

Please bear with me, while I get my bearings in cyberspace again, after an eventful sequence of days.

At the moment, I’m just glad that both the Ganesh Festival, and the cricket team’s victory parade, passed off peacefully. There were no terrorist strikes, despite both being good targets, as might be seen by the six bombs found in Mumbai.

PS: I’ve decided to do away with Technorati tags now that WordPress natively supports them. And I’m also doing away with those social bookmarking icons, since I don’t think anyone really uses them.

Birthday and Feedback Time!

I share the exact same birthday as Lance Armstrong - today. And I would like to take this opportunity to invite feedback from my readers. I liked the way Paul did it recently.

To paraphrase him, I need to learn, and request both constructive criticism as well as feedback on things that I do well (if there are any!). Where do I need to improve? Of course, you can email me your feedback at mahendrap [at] gmail [dot] com.

I started blogging just when I was in the midst of a very hectic life, having a regular IT job, a baby daughter, and a fledgling restaurant. (Incidentally, did anyone notice my daughter’s photographs I posted recently?) At the time, it seemed too much to take on at one time. But, I persisted, and trudged along. It is 5 months now that I’ve been blogging.

If I observe differences between my earliest posts and recent ones, I observe that I am posting less frequently with each post packing more substance and content. Each post taking up more time and effort, in order to make it a “worthwhile” post. I liken this to the development of Western Classical music. The compulsion to improve upon earlier art works is age-old in history. Haydn composed over 100 symphonies, Mozart 41, Beethoven 9, and so on. Each subsequent symphony being more complex than the one earlier.

Is this trend undesirable? Are small posts worthwhile?

In the course of 5 months, I have shared my passions, my life, my interests, and my life. I’ve shared poetry, sketches, entrepreneurship, and travelogues, apart from my amateur opinions on current affairs, politics, science and technology.

Many of my beloved readers have offered me encouragement and feedback as an ongoing process. I would like to take this opportunity to thank you from the bottom of my heart. I don’t think I wish to gain wide popularity (somewhere, I know that’s not going to happen), and am happy with a select, sustained readership. Like in my personal life, I prefer few close friends (readers)!

My blogging life in the past five months have taught me several things. I may once write about them separately. What I’m glad about is that it has brought me a circle of friends whom I could never have found otherwise. This is what I’m celebrating on this birthday!

Technorati Tags: blogging, personal, birthday

Share this post :

Google Reader does evil; dumps Opera

One of the most favorite (and certainly my personal favorite) RSS readers is Google Reader. In cut-throat competition with Bloglines, Google introduced Search functionality in Google Reader yesterday. Read TechCrunch’s take here.

Unfortunately, this has made Google Reader stop working with my favorite browser, Opera. Here’s how it looks in Opera v9.23:

Now, despite Opera being the most W3C compliant browser, it has the lowest market share, and hence has historically had problems with various Google services. This, despite the fact that Opera is the closest browser to Google’s approach towards features and functionality. And this, despite the fact, that the folks behind IE, Firefox, Opera, and Google Reader, announced in April this year, that the browser wars are over.

As of this writing, there is no response yet from Google to this issue being reported in the Google Reader forums.

I sincerely continue to hope that Google - a company that has grown phenomenally by focusing on the W3C-regulated Internet rather than a proprietary OS - respects the most W3C compliant browser in the market. Google’s motto may be “Do No Evil”, but it’s doing the exact opposite!

Update 7th Sep 2007: Google has fixed the problem. Cheers! I Glllooove you, Google!

Technorati Tags: google, opera, w3c, internet, browser, rss

Share this post :