Every Swedish blog today will write about the same thing... snow

I broke my own record. I started writing a post 4 times in a row, and left it midway. Which is the maximum number of times I have done this in a row. The earlier count was 3. I know, I am rambling, but allow me the liberty, otherwise the number will go to 5.

I am a bit pissed. Maybe that’s an understatement, but I am not in the mood for extreme statements, otherwise this post will tend to move towards profanities which are better left out of a blog. Don’t ask me why, there’s never one single reason for such mood swings. And I am too lazy to write all of them down. Oh, maybe I can tell you one of the better ones. It is minus 22 degrees today. And as I am not big on winter sports (the maximum participation it inspires from me is watching the winter Olympics on TV), this is not such good news for me. Especially because I still have to go to work, and the dogs and sled that I keep for such occasions was lent to Santa in December and he never returned it. And in this weather even Stockholm’s super duper hi-tech transport system has given in. Nothing, nothing survives minus 24 degrees and such incessant snow. Maybe polar bears do.. and sometimes I feel that God made this side of the world for them. It is certainly not for us humans. We seem to be fooling ourselves by living here with artificially heated rooms and imported frozen food. And getting super depressed because its such a pain to go out. Yes, you are right, I AM in a mighty sour mood.

I amused myself with watching numerous sitcoms on TV. My favorites actually, when you are pissed I guess that is the only consolation. 2 and a half men, How I met your mother, FRIENDS, SCRUBS and the like... I was never keen on TV, till I landed in this polar bear country. Here you have to be big on TV. Else you die. And I so want to live. I am tending to take the way of the abominably irritating NRI (Non resident Indian, for the uninitiated, don’t even make me go into the puns for that) and feel like starting every other sentence in a conversation with the typical Indian accent (you know what I am talking about if you have ever watched Russel Peters), the irritating drawl and “You know, in India...” Never done that till now, but now I really feel like it. “You know, in India” when we feel suffocated we can put on a t-shirt over the shorts and take the bike and go out for a long ride. Or go for a walk. Or sit at the outdoor Café sipping some cool lemonade. “You know, in India” we can start a conversation with the person standing next to you at a traffic crossing and not be considered weird. Or start humming loudly in the middle of nowhere and be considered very positively cheerful. Wear a bright red shirt and bright blue shorts and sit in a café and not be considered abnormal. If you didn’t notice I am bitching about Sweden. I think it is a first on this blog, I usually am all praises about this adopted country. But today I am getting a pleasure out of bitching. Always wondered about what pleasure the girls derived out of having those crazy bitching sessions in school. Now I know.

Lately there has been a trend of some Sweden lovers attacking blogs which do not speak highly of the country. Lost in Translation and HairySwede are some blogs which have faced these attacks. Of course, my blog is not half as famous as them so maybe I am safe, if not, a message to the all Sweden lovers (:goes down on his knees:), I love Sweden and Swedes, but please pardon me for finding it difficult to love the minus 22 degrees (:sob:) and being captivated in my apartment for so many days. I am in awe of you because you guys have managed to spend a lifetime here. Quoting LostInTranslation words about the Canadians, maybe you guys are not afraid of the winter, the winter is afraid of you. But me, this lost Indian guy, who is more used to the plus 50 degrees of Delhi, Nagpur and Jamshedpur, finds it just a wee bit uncomfortable when the needle dips below minus 22.

I just reread the post and it sounds horrible. Yes, I was right, I AM in a crappy mood. I have a good mind to scrap this post and not put it up. But its probably much less crazier than the other ones, and then again, who cares :). Talking of crazy, and keeping up with my tradition of recommending good blogs, here are two other good crazy ones I bumped across. In case you have assimilated the craziness of my blog and want to move one notch up, this should be able to satiate your appetite for craziness. And would give you another glimpse of an impossible life of a non-swede in Sweden.

And yes, you will notice, that nearly all Swedish blogs today will write about the same thing... snow :)

1. Lost in Translation
2. A Swedish American in Sweden

Happy reading!

Geeks and Muggles

It might seem funny to you, but I was always an aspirant geek while growing up. Maybe it had to do with being the son of two professors who were both PhD and research scientists by the time I was born. Or maybe it had to do with being born in an engineering city, where the highest accolade anybody could have was the Bachelor of Engineering degree. Maybe it was in my genes, or maybe I picked it up somewhere. And although I was absolutely not geek material, I was much better at football, cricket, dramatics, biking, debating, trekking and the like.. the aspiration somehow was always geekdom. And geekdom always evaded me. Until, of course, now. And once I am here, its not what I thought it would be. Its not as interesting, not as inspiring, not as motivating.. certainly not sustainable, and absolutely not “me”.

The other day a colleague of mine asked me to organize a session where I could share the technical aspects of the work we do for the client, the colleague was more into the “creative” side of things. So I had the session and somewhere midway, I realized just what I had become. A person who was crazily passionate about each miniscule technical detail of what we are doing, where we are doing things, and how we are executing our plans. Even when I was not responsible or in anyway linked to those plans. To the extent that I tended to get carried away into the details. To the extent that I was explaining ERP tools, ERP basic concepts, and implementation and rollout projects in East European countries. And I knew that I had arrived. To geekdom. To geekiness. I had finally become the complete geek.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not a software developer. Nor am I a subject matter expert. I am not the type who mumbles Javascript and ABAP code in his sleep. It’s worse. I am a consultant. Or rather a consultant involved in selling consulting services. In fancy terms they call it IT Business Development. And the part of my job I cherish most, is the exposure to technology it gives me. Not just to one software, not just to one module of an ERP system, but to a multitude of technology, software, hardware as well as services. And fortunately or unfortunately, it always amazes and thrills me. It makes me dig in deeper into the geekological aspects of things. And its amazing when I can use the knowledge to the benefit of the clients, or my own organization. Its kinda addictive, I tend to get carried away. Till I reach a point when I find myself passionately explaining all the geek stuff to an outsider, who probably finds it the most boring thing on earth. And it suddenly hits me. This has now become my whole life. This geeky stuff, that I aspired for, has become my whole life. The basketball, the volleyball, the trekking, the traveling, the biking and the blogging… all have taken a bow and moved to the sidelines. And geekiness prevails and encompasses everything in my life. I talk mergers, acquisitions, and the future of BI Frontend over coffee, and customization of enterprise portals and splitting of superdome servers over dinner. Its all done in a very “fun” way, over football at O’Learys and over fancy dinner tables at Beirut Café. But its still geek talk.

And I wonder, that in spite of the thrill and the kick I derive out of it, in spite of the adrenalin rush the latest server release or the development drop gives to me, is this what I was meant to do? Pardon my self questioning spree, I have always suffered from the Self Questioning Syndrome, somehow it has done me a lot of good in life. And the answer, surprisingly is no.

They say that there are the idealistic notions of life. And then of course there are the practical realities. I once had a friend who used to sing very well. She was passionate about singing and did her bachelors and then her masters in music. Unfortunately in India, the country of a billion people, singing will not provide the daily bread and butter to manage the basic middle class life one needs. Hence she was extremely worried about life. She did not, and would not do anything else apart from music, she felt she was betraying her call in life if she did anything else. Her career went downhill, her self esteem took a plunge, she started losing respect in social circles. Till a friend explained that trying out a profession would a) not mean that she would have to give up music and b) could mean that she could find something apart from music that she actually liked doing. She tried her hand at multiple professions, and after some amount of job hopping finally settled down in a corporate job. Last I heard, she still is a professional singer, pursuing degrees in music and making appearances in professional shows, but she also likes her job. I took my lesson from the story, the idealistic and the practical nuances of life are not always an OR option, sometimes they can be AND options as well. And that is what I have told myself. That I shall take the AND option. I will mix the practical geekiness of my life with the other more idealistic “creative” options that life gives me. Of course, in taking the AND option, I shall run the risk of one aspect of life dominating the other. Like it is now. When I find myself playing badminton once a week, blogging once in 2 weeks, and not going to the gym at all. When I have not touched a motorbike for months, and have not travelled to a new country for around half a year. When I find myself immersed in making proposals and learning about the latest sever release more often than planning my next road trip.

But I shall fight the domination and strive to restore the balance. And I will not give in to the OR syndrome. I shall be a geek, but manage to lead the life of a muggle (??!!) without the superpowers of geekdom as well. I shall not give up.. on either geekiness or my other callings in life. And I shall also manage to fulfill my wish list, the weird things I have to do before I die (now DON’T ask me what they are, if I started off on that you’d wish you had never asked!). Wish me luck :)…


For the uninitiated:

"The definition of geek has changed considerably over time, and there is no longer a definitive meaning. The terms nerd, gimp, dweeb, dork and spod have similar meanings as geek, but many choose to identify different connotations amongst these terms, although the differences are disputed."
- Wikipedia

One of many definitions that abound on the internet:
"A derogatory reference to a person obsessed with intellectual pursuits for their own sake, who is also deficient in most other human attributes so as to impair the person's smooth operation within society"
- Wikipedia

Image source: http://bytheinside.wordpress.com/

Some more snow, this time at the crossroads...

I am at the cross roads. Did I hear some one sigh and whisper “not again”? Well, ok, I admit, yes, yet again. It’s not my fault you know, I try choosing the straight roads with minimum intersections, but damnit, I always end up with ones with the maximum. But what the hell, if that is what destiny has in store for me, so be it.

There have been so many of those in recent years that I have almost come to a point where I shy away from decisions. I try procrastinating to the extent possible. Till the point when I really cant run away anymore. I wasn’t always like this, but there is a limit to which a guy can make random gut-based decisions in his life. Phew! Believe me I have had my share. But it just keeps piling on like there is no tomorrow.

So here it is once again. After innumerable promises to my family, my friends and most of all to MBF and myself, of returning back to India for good, here I am rethinking it all over again. I can see the despair in everyones eyes as I say this, but I hope they can see the angst in mine. Its not easy you know. To keep hopping… mind you, not just cities, but from life to life. (More of this HERE, HERE and HERE, seems to be my fave topic on this blog). Whether I like it or not, Stockholm, yes the Stockholm you see in the picture above, is the place which I call home. And though its tough because deep inside my mind home still means India, I still have to know this is where I am most settled in right now. Maybe, some day I shall move back, but now I think I can allow myself the luxury of feeling upset about leaving my current home, Stockholm. Call it the Stockholm syndrome if you will.

Finally the weekend is here. I have successfully completed a week in Sweden. Its tough to imagine that exactly a week back I was in Bangalore, whizzing around in a car in shorts under the hot sun and 18 degrees with the air conditioning turned on maximum and loud music from the car stereo trying to drown out the traffic sounds. Tough to imagine now, sitting here (still in shorts though :P at least inside home) with minus ten degrees, a divine silence engulfing everything and snow all around. I had serious doubts if I will survive a week in Sweden, I almost thought that I will land at the airport take a look around, and head to the counter to finalize my trip back. But it was quite the contrary. I got completely awed by the beautiful snow. No, its not that nice to trudge through, and very unpleasant when it gets in your shoes and mixes with dirt to become a muddy mass at your apartment entrance. Its not nice when it settles at the tip of your nose and manages to give you a bad cold. But gotta admit, its still beautiful.

Weekend plans include badminton, a small party on Saturday and gadget shopping on Sunday. And if time permits, some more blogging!! Heres a toast to getting back to blogging :).. and to a fabulous weekend!

Snow, Stockholm, Sweden and some other things :)

The sea is frozen, the chill in the wind bites through your clothes and the sun hesitatingly comes out once every few hours in a day. The dress code in the city is unanimously shades of black and grey, the mood is unanimously dreary. There is a strange silence as I sit on the train on the way to office. As the train comes out of the tunnel sometimes, the city is covered in a beautiful quilt of snow. Its like when you accidentally spill a can of paint in the kitchen, the color of nature is unanimously white. Its beautiful to say the least. It kind of takes your breath away. It makes up for the minus ten degrees temperature, the biting wind, the lack of color and the lack of laughter. You cannot enjoy the winter if you don’t let your mind take the bend of the philosophical and let it find the hidden message in those hexagonal snowflakes. Let your eyes wander on that vast white expanse, and then rest it on that single man dressed in black trudging across the snow to his workplace.

Yes, I am back. To Sweden, and to a winter which they say is colder than it has been in the last decade, or maybe more. Though it has snowed every winter, I haven’t seen this much snow in the last 2 and a half years I have been here. I guess the Gods had decided to reserve the best for the last. After incessant snowfall yesterday, as I trudged through the shin high snow, something made me look up. And suddenly I realized why they say that snow can make you feel closer to God. As the snowflakes drifted down from the white sky, I realized how it made everything feel like when you watch it in slow motion. And I closed my eyes, and experienced the amazing silence that snow brings with it. I am sure it can be explained scientifically, because snow absorbs sound or something, but it’s a silence that can make you feel more at peace. More conscious of yourself, and of the beauty around you.

Everyone around me, friends in Sweden and India were curious to know my reaction when I landed here. Would I be disappointed? Sad? Homesick? After all it had been a very long trip to India. So long that when my client (during a client visit to India) asked me where I lived in Stockholm I went "I live in... errr... ummm... damnit, I have forgotten where I live...!!!" No kidding, I couldnt recall the street I live in, it took me a full 2 to 3 minutes to get the name. Yes I was THAT disconnected. So everyone was curious.. what is going to be my reaction. It was tough to explain what I felt. It was like being transported into a completely different realm. And its not just about the weather. It’s the colors, the noise, the smells, the feel, the people, the language, the accents, the complete experience. Somehow, for some reason it is not comparable. I cannot and will not compare my life in India to my life in Sweden. I cannot say this is better and this is worse. I can only say its different, very different. And I can enjoy the bits that I like about both places. And about where I shall finally decide to settle down, we shalt see.

The days are becoming longer. The light is not that bad as it used to be in November. My European friends are awesome as usual, so are my NRI ones. Life in Sweden, from afar, was somehow more scary than it seems once I am here. I shall live. No, I will not have a zillion friends I have to meet, nor a million relatives who will invite me home for breakfast, lunch and dinner, I will not have the chats, the bhel puri and the Indian ameriacan choupsey. I will not have the luxury of getting into the car in shorts and a t-shirt and grabbing some dosa when I get hungry at 10 pm. I shall not have the Ayurvedic massages. But I shall have the beauty of the snow, the peaceful noise-free life of Stockholm and European football at O’Learys.

Do not be disappointed. It always begins on a philosophical note. And then it flows into the more mundane. I shall not fetter you with more of this abstract nonsense, but sometimes, just sometimes, it should be allowed. A lot has changed. That too in a very short while. And I wonder...

But as I said, all in good time...

Back...

Sunset at the Kerela beach 30 kms from Mangalore

Yes I know. I haven’t written like for ages. No, I didn’t forget all about blogging. There was too much happening in life. Both professional and personal. And blogging sometimes takes a back seat. Even temptations of undergoing blog therapy didn’t motivate me to come back to the blog. But the important thing is, that I am back. It doesn’t matter now why I went missing, right? A crab is allowed to crawl back into his shell once in a while, allow me the liberty.
Now for the updates. I am in India. After nearly 10 months, which is a long long time. On a “pure” vacation (hopefully) for the first time in the year. The last few times it was more of a partial vacation. The past 2 weeks have been a crazy rush.. almost like a mad chase, I don’t even know what it was all for. I’ll cut to the essentials, because it has also been interesting :). Heres what has been happening for the past 2 weeks.

• Hectic week before travelling to India... as if millions of things were chasing me.. almost as if my manager didn’t want me to travel back..
• Customer escalation.. the worst ever. Last day of work at Sweden.. My nastiest meeting ever.. senior clients screaming.. multiple projects escalated.. enough to worry both internal and client execs..
• An eventless flight to Frankfurt and from Frankfurt to Bangalore.. the latter filled with Indians settled in Canada. Good to know there are people other than me trying to escape from minus fifteen degrees!
• Royal treatment on reaching Bangalore... a new apartment, me likes. An Ayurvedic Rejuvenation massage leaves me rejuvenated :).
• One last week of work from Bangalore.. much more hectic than the one in Sweden. Killing traffic takes most of the time.
• No time to breathe, but a lunch at IndiJoes and a beer at TGIF thanks to some friends. And comfort, peace of mind and good food at home, thanks to MBF :).
• Journey to TAPMI Manipal for MBA Workshop, I lose my travel bag on the way to the station (with my MP3 player, camera, and T-shirts I got from Paris, Amsterdam and Rome :( sniff sniff ). I manage to retain my Man Utd jersey coz I am wearing it :phew:
• For my senior exec and me, we have one ticket on RAC and one wait listed. We also have confirmed Volvo AC sleeper tickets, but we decide to risk the train.
• The ticket checker allows us to board the train, we do not have a seat, it’s a 12 hour journey. After 3 hours the ticket checker gives us one berth for 2 of us. No bribe asked for! I am shocked. India IS changing!! Or is it just South India?
• Very little sleep on train (2 people on one berth.. we manage).
• Royal reception at Mangalore. One small glitch, the banner says “TAPMI welcomes Merlin and team”. My senior exec is 10 years senior to me, and 4 band levels above me, he is anything but “my team”. But he has a good sense of humor, just winks at me. When will students realize corporate protocols :sigh:
• Vada sambhar breakfast at Mangalore. I realize I am in a football jersey and jeans, and have no luggage on me except a laptop and a laptop bag. No deo, no toothbrush, no formal clothes. I need to go shopping.
• In Manipal the Alumni committee generously gives me a pulsar and directions to a shop I can buy a shirt.
• Its been 10 years since my senior exec sat on a bike, I am tempted to show him some bike stunts, but I suppress my wicked urges and drive carefully.
• A discovery that Manipal, the hep the yo and the happening student town does not have one decent shop where I can buy one Allen Solly shirt
• Forced to buy an unbranded black (the other colors were HORRIBLE) shirt from Riverdale, which is a shop which is planning to close down and has NO options
• Awesome workshop. I think we managed to keep 98% of the students awake for 2 hours (bless the girl who blissfully slept through it all on the last bench), which at a 2pm lecture is the greatest feat for any speaker.
• Lot of attention from students post the workshop, am successful in diverting all the attention towards my senior exec saying (he is the guy who will make hiring decisions if any, I am a small fry)
• Hire an Apache bike for 24 hours for 1500 bucks and a 5000 bucks deposit. Yes you are right - I have been fleeced. Its all right, I am a NRI in India, and this is the only way I can get a bike in good ol’ Manipal
• Thanks to my “juniors” I have an awesome dinner and “bakar” session till midnight. I cant believe TAPMI has a in time of 12 am for girls AND guys! I miss my late night bike rides!
• A most enchanting dawn!! Up at 6 am.. don’t remember the last time I got up at 6am without having a meeting.
• Joined by MBF and family.. A bike ride to Karkala and other nearby places. Finally give up bike and shift to a diesel Ford Fiesta. An awesome car.. but I prefer driving petrol cars on highways.
• Lunch at LX in Udupi.. refreshing old memories… awesome buffet topped with caramel and bread-butter pudding desert.. Drive down to Mangalore, movie “Rocket Singh” at AdLabs.
• Some rest and then draught beer and a Chinese dinner at “Froth on the Top” at Mangalore. I can vouch that it’s the best draught beer in Mangalore!
• After being deprived of sleep for 2 days, I finally sleep like a baby.
• More draught beer at 10 am, its not good staying a 100 metres from “Froth on the Top”. The earliest I have had beer ever!
• A drive down to one of the Kerela beaches in the Ford Fiesta. I was driving but I was well below the minimum driving alcohol level ;)
• Awesome trip to one of the temples and the beach. A romantic sunset.. with some romantic company :).
• Drive back to Mangalore.. more of Froth on the Top and American Choupsey for dinner :). An affirmation that I love “Indian Chinese” more than authentic Chinese :).
• Morning and a beautiful train journey from Mangalore to Bangalore on Konkan Railways. The train trip is certainly recommended if you want to see the Western Ghats... absolutely breathtaking
• Feels so good to be back to a culture where everybody on the train talk to each other.. the children are playing with each other even before we have put the luggage in. The adults start talking about the trivialities of life.. family, politics, rising prices and education. Soon even some common family ties are found.
• Everyone shares their lunch, either bought on the train or from their “tiffin boxes”. They also share snacks, marriage related opinions and a lot of advice for one kid who is ill.
• Incidentally the lunch on the train (vegetarian biriyani with raita) costs Rs 20, for the benefit of my European friends that is approximately 3 SEK or 0.3 EUR!! And I have a feeling it’s more expensive on the air conditioned coaches, I don’t know if it cost lesser in the non AC coaches.
• And now.. back to the Bangalore grind :sigh: When the time comes to retire, Manipal will certainly be one of the options as a place to retire in :). By the way, the second option is Paris, the third is Rome !!
  

Fall....

Fall is here. The temperatures are dipping. The sun seems to be getting shy and peeps out only once in a while. Very soon it will be honoring us with daylight only for 3 to 4 hours in a day. The temperature today is 6 degrees, and it has been progressively dipping to the dreaded zero and sub zero temperatures. The general climate is becoming dull, drab and morose. People are quieter, are more serious and have shifted back to wearing their grays and blacks. MBF with her pink gloves and scarf is the only refreshing change I find in this dull and drab European winter fashion trend.... she brings the only whiff of color in my life :). I wish the other Swedish girls would also follow the trend. People are becoming more focused on their jobs and work, and this will continue till late December till people start shifting to the Christmas mood. There are lesser and lesser things to do in town. The Desis have their own Durga Puja, Kali Puja and Diwali celebrations... but I am feeling more and more restless and impatient. I have loved Sweden and everything it has offered to me.. but I am getting kinda bugged of this whole weather thing. I have lived in cities with extreme weather conditions, Nagpur, Delhi and Kolkata... some of the hottest and most humid cities in India. But this is much worse than all of those. It is not just about the weather here, but it is also the overall mood which dips and becomes morose along with the weather, I dont know how to explain this.

Maybe the time has finally come to make a move. I have cribbed about being a vagabond and craving for a stable settled life in my post before, but a settled stable life still eludes me. Maybe its just me, my restlessness and my refusal to accept something as a permanent life and settle down with it contentedly. A close well wisher told me "You have the greatest job, awesome money, amazing brand name and an exotic foreign posting, dont be a fool and think of ever throwing it away". I agree to all that, but in the end its my happiness that matters. If the great job role, money, foreign posting and brand name has stopped giving me the thrill and excitement it used to give me, it is time to move on. I am not sad, not upset... not even bored... but I realized a few days back that I am missing the zing in my life. And its a familiar feeling. Like the feeling I had when I was in my first job, when I quit to go to business school. Or like when I was in engineering college, and decided to leave civil engineering after a year to join electronics engineering. Alas, it is time for a change again. I dread change, I detest and abhor it, and yet I cannot live without it. Such is life.

For those of you who asked me how the singing went, well, it was awesome :). The photos will appear on FB soon, for those of you who are on my FB. I was dressed in a traditional embroidered Kurta... and jeans (I know I am such a loser to be wearing jeans but I didnt have much of an option so dont groan). The crowd actually went "Once more, once more" and we were all completely taken aback.. we didnt know a crowd was allowed to say that kind of thing in a religious setting. LOL.

I am heading back to India for a month in December. And I am absolutely thrilled about it and am eagerly looking forward to it. Some very important decisions will be made while in India... I guess we need to make such decisions every once in a while :). My friends in India are fed up of me because I keep trying to make plans about where we will go and what we will do when I land there in December. As one guy said "Dude.. this is India... you plan what you want to the next day just one day before... we do not have the European way of planning a year in advance.. come over and we will have a blast.. without planning anything". SIGH! I guess he is right. But can I still just keep myself happy by thinking about some awesome late night bike rides and some early morning long drives into the highway? Some midnight pav bhaji after a late night movie and a trek to the nearest waterfall? And wearing a light jacket and zooming away on a bike in the middle of December! :)

I need to make up for my last nasty post :P. So here is something to make you feel better. A video that always cheers me up and makes me smile. And not just because Salman Khan is so cute, but because I find it extremely amusing to watch the blondes doing all the Indian dance steps so perfectly. I wonder what my European friends would have to say about it :)

Blogging Woes

I am in a bad mood. I really feel like lashing out. So please do not feel obligated to read on unless it amuses you to read the thoughts of a guy in a really bad mood.

If you are thinking I will now write down the reason of my bad mood, I am sorry to disappoint you. I do not know the reason. I have absolutely no clue. And before you label me as insane, I would say in my defense that there has been too much piling up and I guess it has all reached a point where its just brimming over.

I am kind of disillusioned with blogging. I know, I know, you all told me so. But it was fun till it lasted. And I know most of my close friends have already gone through this phase (yes Iya, SG et al).. the phase of finding the joys of blogging, reaching peaks, having blog fans and then finding that the blog is not able to justify the freedom of expression. That there is too much pressure to write something or not to write something. Or that the comfort level with known people reading the blog is not good. So I have reached the last phase. I can either shut down the blog, or make it limited to people who are really close and who live in the real world. People who accept me for what I am. People who dont have weird expectations from me. I am sorry but I cannot blog about Obama winning the Noble Peace prize because I have some more real life concerns to take care of. No.. this is not meant as an insult to all the people writing about serious world issues. I write about generic stuff too... but not when my own life is kinda all tangled up and needs straightening up. Sigh! I told you.. this will be more of a venting post.

So there are a lot of other things about blogging that has been bothering me. Maybe this is the most unpopular thing anyone ever said on any blog post ever... but the motive behind me blogging wasnt exactly popularity so I shall say it anyway. I do not believe in Blog Awards. I respect all those who do, but I dont. To the extent that when someone gives me an award, I do not post it on my blog. And this has resulted in lost blog friends and lost blog followers. I do not mean to provocate you into a pointless debate, but my point of view is that my blog is for me to express my views irrespective of who likes it and who doesn't. I appreciate appreciation, however self created or passed on jpeg images titled with some fancy names to be put up on my blog template as awards is going a bit too far. I am not against fancy things or aesthetics, and would put them up for the heck of it, but my objection is on the principle that when you give an award to someone and refrain from giving it to someone else, in effect you are saying that one blog is better than the other. It is crazy. How can you compare blogs? It is like comparing apples with pears. So here was one blogger who was a regular reader of my blog. He/She gave me a very generous award.. I was honored, however did not think that I could put it up and declare my blog to be better than others and hence I went and thanked him/her on the comments section and then did not put up the award on any of my posts. The person in question stopped following my blog henceforth. I also heard of bloggers not getting awards and getting disappointed and not talking to the person giving the award. Also heard of bloggers changing their writing style/template/content to be more popular. Well.. this whole concept beats me. Seems to do more damage than good, and seems to serve no purpose. We are all mature people in blogosphere, so if I really appreciate someones blog, why cant I just go and comment on his/her post and let him/her know how much I liked the post or the blog? Why do I need to compare someones blog with someone elses and give an award to one person and not give it to someone else? Who am I to decide what is good and what is not? If a blog has received tonnes of awards does it really mean that it is better than others.... or even that it is really good? If not then what is the point in the awards at all? If it is just a meaningless fun thing then why do I see it causing more harm than good to all my fellow bloggers? I honestly do not think that my writing is worthy of any awards, and I do not think I am great enough to decide if someone else should get an award. Hence, ladies and gentlemen, I shalt take a polite bow and back out of the awards section. And if by doing this I offend someone, then my sincere and humble apologies to the person. For all those who do believe in awards, I respect your belief and do not intend to offend you. This is just my stated opinion, so kindly keep me out of the award circle :).

I have a feeling this post is going to make me very unpopular. And maybe I will not have to shut down my blog... I will be labeled as a crazy person and left alone with zero readership :). I love my blog followers from the bottom of my heart, but when they expect pressurize me to behave and write in a certain way, I feel that the whole purpose of blogging is being lost.

Bear with me. I have been down with flu and working on the escalation with high fever. And have had friends ignoring me... And the work escalation just seems never ending. It seems so impossible when the client and my own company super senior execs are on call and debating on a topic which is simply not relevant to the escalation. Now I know, there IS something called being TOO high up on the corporate ladder. SIGH!

Hopefully will write a more calm and "happy" post soon. Till then let me go spoil some friendships and get back at all the people who have been ignoring me! :). I am in a wicked mood.