Blogging: Why?

Why have you stopped blogging?

My blog is 5 whole years old, and most of people who started blogging with me, have fallen silent. The ones that are still writing, my God, are you inspired to write!. But where is everyone else? I hear you saying that you got busy or some such, but I guess the idea of blogging is no longer sexy. Right now, the buzz is about twitter. Btw Mr. Twitter: you are cool. I like to tweet, but I want 1400 characters. 140 wont do.

Anyway, back to blogging, I had stuff to talk about in my blog. For 4 good years. Actually, the stuff I wanted to talk about, kept changing. Initially I was this young fellow who thought swearing was cool. Trust me, it is not. It so is not. I guess I learned my way out of it, by cracking stupid jokes. I donno man, for some reason girls like my blog. It is not a girly blog or anything and if it was anything it was MCPish. But girls loved it. I know! Girls are stupid, aren't they? ;)

And now I only write for the elite and the elderly. I am irregular and write stuff that only I seem to think is relevant. I am not getting any readers, much less comments. I know, I have even started cribbing.

I am lost now. Blogging no longer excites me as the way it used to. I seem to have lost the purpose of blogging. But wait, was there a ever a purpose to blogging?

PS: I am also sharing this article with the whole of India

The late baggage

I no longer think I am 3 years old, may be 3 and a half?

Even though you may not be wondering why would anyone be worried about aging at such a young age, (and even if you are not wondering here is the cue) there was a very specific incident that I am unable to take my mind off.

Well, I did a bit of traveling in the last couple of months. Sleepless nights, and sleepy bus travels, and peanuts from chicks on board were part of my daily life. Daytimes and nighttimes were needless details of timezones for I slept whenever I was sleepy and worked whenever I could.

In one specific flight I decided to travel with some extra baggage even though I usually traveled very light. This flight had a stopover at one of the mid west cities (I think I have stopped over all cities in the US by now). The stop over added a boring 4 hours to the entire travel duration and I was getting tired when I finally deplaned. Now, all I had to do was to grab my baggage from the carousal and head home.

The carousal was circular and made of metal plates that slide over one another. Bags are always thrown onto the carousal with the wheels on top. These observations and many more about the people standing around were made by yours truly as I had nothing to do while I was waiting forever to get my bag.

Only after a full 20 mins and after everyone else had left the baggage claim area, I came out of my denial and realized my bag was lost and I had to log a complaint with the airliner company. I talked to the person in charge of lost bags, and he walked up to the carousal to make sure it wasn't there. We walked all the way back to the office and he asked me to fill out a form.

After all this, he suddenly realized that there were some bags that came a couple of hours before and he asked me to check those. It did not make sense to me because how can my bags arrive before I did? But with no expectations I searched through the bags and tada! there it was. Apparently, my bag found an earlier flight from the stop over point.

He then happened to mentions "Sir, your was the first and only bag to arrive early for your flight". I thanked him for this most valuable information that I got after finding my bag.

Suddenly something struck me. No matter how early the bag arrived, I still got it at the last, after everyone else, after going through all the pain of waiting at the carousal and at the baggage claim. It seemed to tell me something about life, maybe there are many things in life that are like this bag, that, no matter how hard I try, how early it comes, how near it is, I will get it only when I am supposed to get it.

I do not usually entertain such "fate" ideas, but it did give me a different perspective. I realized there is no point in crying over something that I do not get, and I should probably not be dissapointed at some wasted effort, and I should not be too adamant on trying to get things "my way".. it might just be too hard to against realities of life. I guess I try my best at getting something and not fret about it if it is fruitless.

I guess more than I finding the bag, the bag arrived before me and was waiting for me, right there, to get picked up. Funny perspective... isnt it?

This is why I think I am getting older.

Am I really needlessly pusillanimous?

OK people. I am back for real. I have made another resolve on December 27th, to write in my blog regularly. I am speechless at the faith some of the readers have had in me over the last couple of years. Quite a loyal crowd I have.

I must declare it openly, that about 90% of my readers are females. I know! And they email me regularly asking me when they can see me. I know! Which is not surprising, considering how handsome I look. I know! But then that only explains half of it. About half of them have seen how handsome I am and the other half is just dying to see me. I know!

Please wait. There are ways to see me. I will show myself when you have proven yourself.

When I started writing this, then could not really start it. I cracked my knuckles, sipped some coffee. Then chewed the gum and sipped the coffee again -- I tell you, coffee flavored gum is not a great idea. Then thought about something... but nothing seemed worthy of writing, then I realized... "Dude, you are being needlessly pusillanimous!" And tada!

Terrible norm

In a sudden departure from the terrible norm that this blog has been witnessing, I shall begin blogging regularly. :-)

PS: I just could not stand of what blogging has been redefined as of late. A good friend of mine (cannot afford to say the name) has takes her everyday intakes as something blog worthy. Good Lord!

Of the 63 arts that I learned and how my mom tricked me into this...

I was born a boy. I assure you. And then they realized they needed some help in the house hold. This need for household help was the reason why I know so many un-male things.

Well, when I used to be a young lad, I used to be very naughty (I know it falls flat when I say it like that but the point of this blog is my mom and not me). Since it is mostly useless asking my dad for anything because he would immediately ask me to do "loud reading" of "The Hindu" if I am bored.

So, "mummy mummy, enakku bore adikudhu" I would go to her. One day, when I did that, she had a meal to cook for me, because soon I would go her and say "mummy mummy enakku pasikudhu"... anyway, she showed me an interesting thing. She took an appalam, and showed it over the flame, and the appalam got cooked right in front of my eyes, and gave it to me to eat. Well, I was not really hungry and I was bored now, so I asked her for another of that and this time I wanted to do it myself... This is how that terrible accident happened! My mom taught me how to cook! It has been wonderful though, I immediately became the "sutta appalam expert" of the house, and could do it with super ease.

Then slowly I graduated to cutting veggies for her, and then grating cocunut, making coffee and it was eternity before she let me "cook" my own "potato curry". Man did I suck at that at first.

I cannot blame my mom for everything. Learning to stitch was entirely my fault. Well then, can you keep a complex mechanical contraption complete with turning wheels and gears and everything and expect a kid to not touch it? We had a brand new "Usha sewing machine" at home and a handkerchief was the first dress that I stitched for myself. :-) I stiched a pillow cover and restitched/adjusted stuff for the people of the household, but then my mom was also too eager to try it, and she started to use it, unfortunately completely arresting the weaving capabilities of yours truly.

By this time my mom had realized that I was attracted to mechanical devices and so when it was the next pongal, is when the true evil came out of my mom. She called me to the kitchen and then talking about something nonsensical topic, put a small kolam with the rice flour. Man was I stunned by the design she just with her hand and with that flour-roller. Mrs. Evil then send, "your hands are too tiny, you will be able to do it easily when you are grown up", not once did I think if I had any promise of a career in drawing kolams in my "grown up" years and actually took offence at that. In the next few days the whole house would have eloborate kolams drawn on every room, and I became the official for that as well.

I will continue on how I was tricked into becoming an expert in assembling DIY furniture, hanging a ceiling fans, fixing blown fuses, bulbs, fixing plumbing problems, bicycle problems, carburator problems. Actually coming to think about it, my dad might also have been a co-conspirator!

But my mom is solely to be blamed for teaching me music! God! why do I know that? Why cannot I be ignorant like normal people?

The 700 Billion dollar question

To the best of my knowledge, I am going to explain the current situation.

The stock market suddenly plunged at the gloomy prospect of the credit crunch bringing the entire US economy to a grinding halt. We see a lot of "greed" being quoted as the reason for this problem. I am not going to into the details of explaining the greed, but the big picture is that, someone started lending money to a class of people labeled "sub-prime market". And now, many of them are defaulting. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two companies which sold mortgage backed securities. In lay man's these two companies offered "insurance" to the banks for each of the home loans. Now, when many people defaulted, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae went belly up to begin with. Next in line are the other companies that invested in secondary mortgage market.

But, the government saved freddie mac and Fannie mae. An important point to note here is, these two organizations could have gone under, just like any other company, but the government saved to avoid a ripple effect through the mortage market. (please correct me if I am wrong here).

Soon after that, Lehman brothers filed for bankruptcy and followed by many financial institutions including Meryl Lynch, Morgan Stanley and WaMu. Now, I hear there is something the government can do, to solve a problem called credit crunch. The banks loan amongst themselves for their day-to-day activities and apparently, since everybody is cash strapped, no bank is willing to give money on credit. So, the government is going to infuse into the system a sum of 700B and buy the bad debt from some of these companies.

From what I understand "buying bad debt" means, the government pays these companies the full value for all these assets which are valued at possibly 1% of these 700B. The good thing is, the banks are now freed to continue with their business, though it is not the end of the story...

This bill was voted down today, and I was very surprised that it was the republicans who did that. The republicans cannot all be characterized by the absolute lack of insight of people like Sarah Palin (see below) and I agree with the decision of the congress today.



Why should the tax payers money be given to banks to bolster "investor confidence"? Do you know, that if the 700B was equally split among all US taxpayers, each person would get more than $2000. What I don't understand is, why should the government buy bad debt from the banks? Why not buy it from people? Lets say government wants to improve the economy and so it agrees to pay 1 year's mortgage for everyone in the United states, wouldn't that also solve the same problem? The difference in the second method is that, the people will get to have their homes too!! But in the current situation, the banks just get the money for free.

I recently heard that people in finance sector earn about $150K annually on salaries, and about $300K in bonuses every year. How come the money market has been rewarding the financial sector so generously whereas all other sectors are being skinned? Apart from this, I have another minor annoyance as well. Apparently, all hell does not break lose if nobody saves these companies. There are a number of banks that do not hold mortgage based assets, example Bank of America. The world's largest bank Citigroup has mortgage based assets but it is not shaken because of many reasons and some of which are attributed to their global presence and diversification. The companies which were solely dependent on the mortgage markets (especially the five Wall street banks) are the ones that are affected now, so even if there is no Fed money pumped, the US economy will not grind to a halt as some have started predicting.

I don't know what will happen next, but I can take a guess. The 700B bill will be reduced to around 500B or small enough to just get as many votes to get it passed in the congress.

So, what do you think about this 700B bill?

Blogitaen!

It all started when I started speaking a newer form of Tanglish. Me and my friend were talking and he generally happened to mention that he already atetitaan (tanglish for saaptutaen, ate). Suddenly I realized (as always) that this was history in the making and it had to be documented.

Soon, I chatted with Archana about this history making and while we were chatting we came up with an even more brilliant idea of using our names as verbs. I decided that my name was going to be used to mean saving the world. So, hear ye! This is a valid sentence from now on, "Superman prataped!" would mean, he saved the world from doom. She immediately saw a lot of prospect in this, and also wanted her name to mean "something awesome". By now my dynamic vocabulary was tingling to form new sentences, so I asked her, what about "Superman, archana prataped!" (you should follow the sentences carefully...), which is when she noted that, she no longer wanted to be so close to my name and she became an adjective. And the sentence became "Archana Superman prataped!". Good for me, Superman is close! :p

Anyways, the pratap requires an adverb. So, I found a favorite victim "Dushti". Dushti means "spectacularly" and it is an adverb. So, the sentence goes, "Archana Superman dushti prataped!".

Which is when my archana friend Archana, declared that she had removed the link to my blog. I could not believe the ettappan Archana would remove a link to my blog that she added a couple of years back!

While I wonder if archana should mean ettapan, why don't you guys take up this tag?
1. Make a word out of your name, pick a part-of-speech
2. You don't have to pratap, but just dushti make an archana sentence! ;-)

I tag the ettapan Archana, Dushti and Rads!