Nothing is permanent except change

How would otherwise anyone explain, that of all the people it would be me who would start up with twitter? I was one of it's biggest critiques yet thought of giving it another shot. So, even added it as a widget to the blog. Unbelievable !!

I had already written a post once on this blog critically arguing against the use of twitter but somehow realized that there are many things worth sharing online and it is one of the good ways to do it. One might not have enough time and energy to reflect their thoughts on every topic so this makes it easier to share content with like minded people without writing a complete post on it.

This is just an experiment just like this blog. I would like to see if an anonymous, non-celebrity like me could use and maintain such a thing :)

P.S: I think I got bored with all the election posts particularly seeing the indifference people share with the new government.

A chirp ... The Twitter

I work in the field of Research and Technology and it keeps amazing me with its wonders quite regularly. To some extent I can understand the mystery around new Technologies and its evolution but the human influence around it particularly in these times is something which fascinates me beyond limits.

One of the many children of modern Technology is Twitter. The place where it has reached today is pretty unbelievable. I wanted to praise and rant about it today at the same time.

Imagine a start-up with a few people you can count on your hands coming up with an initiative. The initiative is to allow people to broadcast 140 characters at a time on a website. It is a fairly simple thought and a pretty non-trivial idea (at least for me). It was a project named twttr. That was year 2006.

In about one year, the project turned into a full blown company called Twitter. A new term was conceived called microblogging to define its genre. Today, Twitter is one of the 10 most visited websites on Internet with more than 500 million users, generating revenue in the range of three digit million USDs and employing more than a 1000 people. This is year 2012. It is definitely a commendable feat without an iota of doubt. There are few companies I have seen or heard in my lifespan which has grown at this rate. You don't see such things happening every day in your life.

I personally cam to know about Twitter in 2007 and like many other ignorant people and investors rejected it completely at that time, I did the same. I has just finished my Master's Degree and started working. I still remember very clearly a photo of about 6-7 people grinning away as the team behind this venture on a website. I tried to explore it, learn its working and idea and found the whole thing a waste of time. I said to myself that who the hell in this world would be interested and have the time to know what others are doing in real time. Time, proved me otherwise.

I feel dragged on opposite ends when thinking about the use of this free online service. At one end of the spectrum, I feel that it is quite useful in communicating new ideas, links, news with people. It is a fast way to spread the word among your group. It is a good way for celebrities/organizations to keep in touch with their fans and for the fans to follow them. It serves as a good platform to promote yourself, your product, your ideas etc. 

There is absolutely no doubt that the features offered by this online service can be useful to many but then after reaching a point, I feel dragged by the negativity of this service and drag me into thinking many questions without satisfying answers. 

1. One of the biggest angst I have with Twitter is that I lost a lot of good bloggers whom I followed left blogging completely and started twitting. They started writing smart ass one liners and all the good content they could have generated never came up. It might be possible for a teenager to keep updating themselves every minute on their phone or tablet but for a working person like me is just not possible. You loose interest since you fall back on the tweets and then at one point give up forever.

2. I can accept that maybe for some people, keeping track of what their favorite celebrity/organization is doing. I can even accept that they need to know when and where they are going, when they are eating, when they visit the loo etc but does it really make sense to know what your best pal is doing by the minute? Does it not generate the need to show-off and materialize everything around you? Does it not generate a plastic life? Does it not generate a wannabe like culture? I read a study recently which showed that more than 50% of the content on Twitter is pointless babble!

3. Then it invites all the money sharks. Market researchers start hunting for the latest trends generated by the content on Twitter. To some extent that is good from technology point of view to understand the desires, needs and the thoughts of the society but then again after reaching a point it again starts becoming fake. Questions come up like whether the content generated is authentic? Was it generated by real and active accounts or just bogus ids? Were those people even sensible enough or just simple dumb? You or your product get paid more just because you have a long list of followers? Who checks how many of them are authentic and not just one time clicks? Does it not create an environment of more unreliability and non-trust around?

I can go on and on but I don't feel like doing it since it will not change anything. Maybe these and even more points must have discussed before by many other people but I had to take it out personally somewhere and what better place than my blog.  

Unsatisfied temptations

There has not been a post on this blog since the last one month. I thought no one would give a damn and frankly speaking who would care if there is a post on an anonymous blog or not. But I received a couple of comments on my last post checking up on my status. It felt nice. It felt being acknowledged. I thank them for giving me some motivation to continue with this blog.

Actually, life suddenly has changed gears in the last couple of months. Life is going at a pace like never before. It has been quite overwhelming for me and to some extent exhausting. I feel like taking a break from life and cut myself from it for at least a week. But since that seems like a distant dream right now, I tried to get some comfort in browsing through some of my travel pics. It also gave me the idea to write a post on my travel to Antalya in Turkey.

I happened to travel to Antalya in around mid of October, 2010. It was an interesting trip from a different perspective. Antalya is one of the biggest tourist places in Turkey. It has a rich history behind its name since it has seen many different kind of rulers. The Roman Empire, then the Byzantine Empire and then the Seljuk Turks, all have taken pride to rule Antalya. It is in fact a beautiful city along the Mediterranean cost of south Turkey. But as luck would have it, I was there to attend a 4 day business meeting and not for vacation.

I would have liked to visit this place for a holiday but accepting the facts of day long meetings at beach resorts was like teasing me to the core. It was like giving lolly to a kid and then asking him to just keep holding it in his hands. Anyways, I accepted the facts and tried to console myself that at least the meeting is scheduled in a nice city. My work place also complimented us by booking us a nice Resort for the stay. My work place has never ever booked such a fancy place of stay ever. Even I was a bit taken aback when I arrived there. Here are a couple of pics from the Resort. 

The morning view from the lobby with the sea in the background. Fancy, eh ?

Below is the view from the pool side to the balcony of my room. I was quite looking forward to use all the facilities at the hotel.

But that was a myth since in reality, all I used at the Resort was their Restaurant for the breakfast and dinner. The day meetings were so long that it used to get dark by the time we came back to the Resort.

I used to be left only with enough energy after the day, that I could have my dinner and pull myself to the balcony of my room and then enjoy these views and envy the people who came to this place for vacations.

So by the end of the trip, number of facilities used at the Resort - Zero. Number of times going to the beach - One. Amount of time spent at the beach - 2 mins. Days spent at the Resort - 4. It was really a tease.

Anyways, not giving up on my hopes, I tried to wrap up the meeting on the final day quite quickly and then tried to utilize that time for some sight seeing since our flight back to Germany was in the evening. I even managed to ask some Turkish colleagues from the meeting to come with us since they were also not locals but from Istanbul. We thought it would be handy to keep local people with us for guidance and sight seeing. It turned out otherwise.

So, after receiving high recommendations to visit the Manavgat Waterfalls from our local hosts, we decided to go there. It was around 70 kms from our Resort. Personally speaking, I was quite excited about the idea and was thinking something along the lines of Niagara Falls. It took some time for us to reach that place in our rental car driving through the country side. Finally, on arriving at the Falls, there was no limit to my disappointment. The reason can be easily chalked out by the picture of the Falls below.

I tried to calm myself by have the local chai at the Restaurant beside the Falls. The fresh cool breeze and the tea brew helped me get back to my senses and get excited for our next destination of the day.

Expecting our next destination to be more exciting than the waterfalls, we headed to a place called Aspendos. This was actually a local heritage site from the time of the Romans. Our local hosts advertised this place as a Roman Amphitheater built on a large scale perfectly preserved till date. I dont know why but again the combination of Roman and Amphitheater built a picture of Colosseum in my mind before even visiting that place. It actually turned out a bit smaller in proportion to my expectations.

But it was still not bad. It was impressive. A lot was truly intact but to some extent, not very well restored or maintained. Still the view from the top gave me a satisfying view and convinced me that it was worth coming here.

Below is the close up picture of the wall on the right side of the picture above. It always fascinated me how large the Roman Empire was over the years and then eventually fell apart. Later, these places taken over by Empires of different culture and religions but many of them still surviving the wrath of time.

As per the guide book we received at the entry gate, there were many other related sites of history around the Amphitheater. We decided to check it out but it turned out a big disappointment. There was not much to see to say the least. The picture below is of the stadium of those times. Now, a lot of imaginative effort had to be put to work to actually see stadium there.

The picture below is of the Basilica which was again a total ruin. There was no ceiling and even the walls were hardly standing.

My favorite of them all was the picture below of the Market Place as mentioned in the Tour Guide. Me and my colleague had a good laugh trying to figure out the real market scene incorporating the structures with the Roman time. Our imaginations went quite wild after some time so we decided to check out the last exhibit.

This last exhibit was a ruin of the famous aqueducts which the Romans were quite fond of building. I think that the aqueducts were quite and essential and remarkable feature of the Roman architecture. Not much was left of it but still one could make out a lot from the picture below.

After all the efforts and time put into visiting this place, it was worth to take home a souvenir from this place as in the picture below.

So, the trip was a success from the work point of view but a disaster from a sight seeing point of view. There are so many good places to see there but due to lack of time and bad judgement ended up missing them completely. But, there is always a next time. 

I was planning to skip this travel post on this blog since it was not one of the best ones but still it might remind me of my first visit to Antalya years later when I read this post again. Also, this post will serve as a reminder to me to fulfill the temptations left unsatisfied in a future visit. Antalya, I will come again. This time with my own money and time.

The Blogmother

If there was a kind of medal to be won on the topic of How to alienate people and make enemies, then I guess I could easily win a gold medal there. It is not that I took any tips from the Simon Pegg (from Shaun of the Dead fame) movie on the same topic. But somehow this is how I feel sometimes. And this is because I speak the truth which is not very well received by people. People tend to like a more sugar coated talk especially when it is concerning them. Moreover, I can confess that sometimes I do not openly appreciate someone directly on his/her face even when they deserve it. I say to myself this is how they are supposed to be thus no need for any appreciation. But when it comes to criticizing, I tend to be pretty vocal about it. I know it is wrong and I keep trying myself to be more user-friendly.

Last week was my blog’s one year anniversary. I had never imagined in my wildest dreams that I could maintain it for so long. I really thank all the people from the bottom of my heart who had been visiting, commenting and giving me feedback on the blog. It feels great to connect to like-minded people. 

Just like followers of a faith have a Godfather and a Godmother in the world, I also have a self appointed Blogfather and Blogmother in the Blogosphere. I am not a big celebration guy but on the occasion of completing one year of blogging, I would like to dedicate this post to The Blogmother. I feel that this thing had been long due for her.

It was a warm summer evening …. (a Sheldon Cooper start-up) ….not circa 600 B.C in ancient Greece but of August 2005 in modern day Germany. An intern starting his stint at a big name in the IT industry near Stuttgart. Far away from home, in a new town with no family or friends, trying to adjust in the new culture of a foreign land. With a new laptop bought by the first salary of his internship, he started spending his late evenings with his much prized but a little overpriced possession. After reading about Blogosphere in a lecture he attended a few months back at the university, he started exploring the Indian Blog scene after his dinner every night just to catch up on what is going in India. After reading a few blogs by people unknown to him, he came across an Indian blogger sitting far away in another foreign land of Singapore. He found some of the posts interesting on that blog. That interest made him read even the older posts on the blog and he started from post number 1. That was year 2005 and now it is 2012 and this guy is still a regular on that blog. I am sure some of you might have guessed the blogger by now and for the rest, that Blogmother is none other than Sayesha. If you read blogs regularly and still asking who Sayesha, then my friend it is the right time to switch off that PC or laptop or mac or tablet or whatever you use to browse the net and give it a proper burial. Google it, and the first link will take you there.

Initially, when I started following her blog, I never used to comment. I don’t know why. Then sometimes when I wanted to comment, the blog used to block anonymous comments. Then, after a long hide and seek, I started commenting occasionally on a few posts now and then but always as an anonymous user. It was only after I finally made my own blog last year that I started commented with a name tag. But even those anonymous comments were never nasty. I am not that kind of a person or stalker. I never sent an email or contacted her to just send even 2 lines of appreciation but kept enjoying all the blog posts all these years. I sometimes feel a little guilty for not appreciating something one deserved all this time. But what can I say, this is just being me. I also believe that subah ka bhoola agar shaam ko ghar aa jaye to use bhoola nahin kehte.

It had been a long journey following The Blogmother, right from when she was a student, her college life with awesome friends, then leaving the engineering job and taking a break from it to find her true calling, finally being an editor, then starting the married life with a great partner and now being an actual mother with some tussle with destiny and the almighty for her kiddo. It had been truly a roller coaster ride.

Also, it is not just by chance or for any other reason that I have been following her blog for all these years. There are a few characteristics which I admire or like to see in blogs which her blogs fulfilled. That is another reason for this long admiration. Here is a small list for the reasons:

• Frequent Posts: I think the initial hook to the blog was because of the regular posts. A post almost everyday and at least 8 out of 10 of them entertaining.
• Never a depressing post: I don’t know how can someone do it but I don’t remember any post all these years which even gave a hint of depression on her part. Even the initial posts about her kiddo’s struggle were written in high spirits.
• No affiliations to any sites: I had never ever seen her endorsing any external website or promoting her own blog on other websites. The success of her blog is by true word of mouth and therefore a genuine fan following.
• No advertisements: Since day one, I don’t think I had ever seen a flashy commercial or an annoying advertisement on the blog with an aim to make money out of it.
• No unnecessary photos: There is hardly any norm she follows on her blog which other blog gurus suggest. There is never a random picture on every post like many bloggers post.
• No tweeter: Down to earth blogging without getting the celebrity status to her head. Therefore, not getting into tweeting and posting smart-ass comments every few minutes.
• Direct from heart: And last but not the least is that each post seems to be directly from the heart, genuine writing and not forced one. Not writing about a topic just because it is top on the tweet.

It is not that I don’t read blogs which does not fulfill my above mentioned criteria, but they are just things I look forward in blogs.

Moreover, there can be only one Blogmother. My best wishes to her blog and family.

And a little happy birthday this novice blog ! :)

 

Some jibber jabber and Hunger Games

Many of my friends are of the opinion that I have a decent sense of humor. To the extent, that some of them even asked me to perform standup at couple of informal get-together parties. More than by choice, I do it for being socially accepted. If I talk about serious matters, people think I am boring and anti social. So, I have given up discussing serious matters amongst majority of my friend circle. Of course, there are a few people with whom I share my thoughts on serious matters and always eager to hear their feedback but I can count such people on my fingers. I never try too hard to be humorous but just say my mind aloud about everyday things. And these days, you don't even need to try. Like they say, the satire writes by itself. Another thing I have noticed is that with age, sarcasm has developed upon me automatically. Maybe that is another sign of getting old.

The humor and sarcasm is hardly visible in my posts because here I write what keeps going in my head and which is tough to share with others. This can also explain why most of my blog readers are some random Russian spam algorithms rather than real human beings. On top of that, being anonymous saves me from the prejudices people build up according to someone's social background, education, culture, religion etc.

I have also noticed that blogs with humor are popular by many folds than blogs of any other genre. I myself follow some of those bloggers. I admire their sense of humor but sometimes, some bloggers just try too hard and it is a big turn off. I have noticed that some just pick up the most tweeted subjects/topics of the week/month and try to write up something around it, without having any clue about the topic in the first place. The beauty of such posts is that there cannot be any solid critic around it. The author just gets away saying that it was a light post and not to be taken literally. Anyways, it’s a free world and everyone can have his or her opinion.

So, after enough random beating around the bush, let me come to the post I wanted to write. A couple of weeks back; I saw the most talked about movie of this year so far, “The Hunger Games”. I mean, it was everywhere in news, blogs, twitter and had a lot of hype built around it. It was quite remarkable to see how the marketing team of the movie promoted the film. Even I decided to go and check it out. It turned out to be an OK movie. I hardly found it living up the expectations or maybe it was a movie more for the teenagers. It was a sci-fi movie in which somewhere in future, a competition is organized. From each district/town of a country, two teenagers are picked by lucky draw to participate in this competition. The competition is a no-holds-barred survival contest in which the last living survivor is the winner and allowed to go back home. The goal of this competition? -  To please and entertain the elites living in the capital city. That was all in the story.

But, it gave me a kind of an unsettling feeling after the movie. It made me feel, are we not living already in a toned down version of the “Hunger Games” era? I found some striking similarities between both worlds. Of course, the movie portrays a more extreme scenario. But, just think of it in today’s time. We have these mega sports events around us, not matter which country or continent. In the US we have all these national leagues, NFL for football, NBA for basketball, NHL for ice hockey, MLB for baseball etc. In Europe, we have this out of the world UEFA Champions League where the footballers are sometimes even portrayed as gladiators in the media. I am not even getting into each country’s football league clubs. Even India is catching up with its IPL for cricket. Of course, these events do not involve matters of life and death but is the idea and goal not the same? To please the crowd, just like that in the movie? 

I was quite baffled when I thought about the similarities after watching the movie. After picking up the players in the movie, they are groomed and trained for the event. The big players of sporting events after being picked up by clubs also do the same. The players are then presented in the best possible way to the audience to attract their attention. The sporting clubs do the same by making videos of those players to create a fan following. When the players in the movie perform well, they get perks from sponsors. The same happen with clubs when players are offered big perks when they outperform themselves. I can go on and on presenting the similarities but let me stop here.

Also, only the people who can afford the tickets can go and watch these games. On TV, you have to pay membership fees to channels to see these events live. No doubt, all this has lead to improving the sporting levels. But there is a limit and after that, it is all show, entertainment and business. How else would you explain something like SuperBowl advertising? Sometimes, I feel that consciously or unconsciously these events and games keep us away from thinking about matters of real concern to us which could really help make the world a better place.

I would confess that I am also no saint. Sometimes, I also fall in the trap. I also start following these events. The reasons can be anything from peer pressure, society, keeping up with the world. But, time and again something get to my senses and show me the truth right in my face. It was this movie this time which made think again. With the growing number of haves and have-nots and that gap which is ever increasing, I won’t be surprised if I see “Hunger Games” in reality in this life.

Why do I blog ?

1. I don't have a life
2. I want to meet new people and make friends
3. I want a place to vent out all my emotions and use my blog as a punch bag
4. I am a sympathy seeker
5. I am a big critique and a highly opinionated person
6. I want to become famous and have a lot of fan following
7. I want to write be a an author and write a book
8. To sell point 4, I need to have point 3
9. I want to make a lot of money from point 5
10. I want to entertain people with my wit and wisdom

None of the above is true for me. Living since a long time now in a non English speaking country has made my English quite rusty. So, just wanted to brush it up ! :)

My affair with blogosphere

I remember getting the first taste of Blogosphere in 2005. Before that I was not such a big enthusiast of the Internet in India because it was pretty slow and expensive back then. I never had enough patience to wait for pages to load on the browser. But after coming to Germany, I became more net savvy. I had to. There was not way out. It was because of many reasons. It was the only cheap way of keeping in contact with friends and family back in India. Everything in this new world was online. Even to book slots on the washing machine at the university hostel was via the local intranet. So, there was virtually no escape from it.

One night while browsing through the internet in my hostel room, I came across my first blog by chance. I found it pretty interesting since the author had literally written snippets from his life, online. Initially I felt that it was quite bold to do such a thing since there might be many of his friends reading them. Through the blogroll and the comments, I explored even more interesting blogs. And ever since, there has been no looking back. I had a few favorites and used to visit them everyday. In those days we did not had fancy tools like google reader to keep track of all the blogs and so I used visit them exclusively. Not only did some of the blogs kept me updated about the latest trends back in India, many of them even fulfilled my appetite of humor. There are some seriously funny people out there in the blogging world.

I used to religiously follow some blogs and the authors also regularly updated them. I even saw some friendships being built by some bloggers and used to enjoy their interactions with each other again through blogs. Sometimes, I even used to envy them. I had mostly been a silent spectator of the blogosphere, hardly ever contributing. I used to refrain from commenting and even when I did once in a while, it used to be mostly anonymous. I think since most of those authors were students at that time or fresh our of college, it gave them more time to blog. After a span of about 6 years, there are only a few of those who still blog regularly but many of them have moved on. Some have families now so they are not able to spare time, some became famous and published books and moved on to twitter, some maybe due to lack of readers lost interest.

Sometimes, I am surprised on myself how close I feel to some bloggers even though I have never met them, nor do they know me. A few months back, my favorite blogger did not post for almost a month which was not normal as per the author's standards. It genuinely worried me in the beginning but later I thought, maybe the person had some better things to do. And it motivated me to finally start writing my own blog. I always thought of starting it but never really put in any efforts. But now that I have started writing, I think it is not easy. It can be very easy to start a blog but it can take a lot of patience and efforts to continue with it. But even though there are many who stopped blogging, there are many who started blogging, like me. And I think that is the best part of this blogosphere, that it is ever so dynamic. After starting this blog, I have started following more people and found some really nice ones. But sometimes I feel guilty and scared that maybe this might dilute my admiration and love for the old ones I still follow. I hope not !!