On reaching Pune my Mom launched a full fledged ballistic missile attack of 2-3 Prithvi missiles and a few more of the Agni range. How the hell could a 22 year old mature adult forget to carry footwear for a wedding and walk in with only sports shoes? While his travel bag stinked like one those tabelas in bihar he needs to be readmitted in atleast Class I or even worse in Kindergarten if he wiped his running nose on his t-shirt ever again. So without being entitled for a much awaited sleep I was sent to shop… I felt frustrated like an innocent guy who is jailed for 14yrs and on release is sent to prison again, just because he didn’t salute the jailor. That’s how life treats you sometimes…

Moving onto the wedding… It was the first one I had attended in all its phases. Busy guys like me don’t find time for weddings right? They can only watch hours together of NDTV (For Smriti Rao ofcourse!) and bikini babes on Fashion TV. A heartfelt thanks to my cousin who gave me this wonderful opportunity to realise that weddings for real are institutions offering crash courses in Saree Design, Art of Ornament Exhibition, and Gossipology. For the ladies though it sounds like an equivalent to Kitty parties but for the men it’s a place to realise their long suppressed regrets. Poor men, if they even happened to prolong a natural glance over a pretty woman, their wives gave them the typical emphasized “Tumhara uske saath kya rishta hai???” kinda stare mastered from any one of those Ekta Kapoor serials. There were quite a few sweet kids also playing catching-cook and running race, girls went “cho chweeeeet” at. But mind you these same sweet kids, if you refuse to play with them could come from behind and kick your ass… So all in all for bachelors like me it’s a place of boredom where you do find pretty girls around but sitting amidst big brothers who have been visiting the akhada since the time I used to soil my diapers. And then you have your own mom along and you don’t want to be caught by her while dreaming of family planning with the girl who just served you laddus. So not so handsome guys like me have to get involved in talks with other elderly people around to pass time. But as I said, wedding is an institution or maybe a university too for the kinda knowledge that it imparts! Now I know, that the elderly fella who was sitting beside me has a son who has his office just 10 mins away from home. And how his son once had to walk up the 7 floors of his office building when he was suffering from loose motions only to find the toilet closed for maintenance. So weddings are also centers of social display of empathy to the problems faced by today’s junta. How would you ever know how difficult it gets for people working in offices with just one toilet? Well but I don’t blame that guy. Infact out of boredom I too got tempted to tell him that my neighbour’s relative’s friend’s dog was in love with a neighbouring bitch who had already given birth to seven pups. Maybe we could exchange more of some worthwhile information on this too…

I hadn’t seen so much gold and glitter around me those beauty-parlour-prettied-ladies were clad with. Their necklaces were so heavy that one day a sitting Rajpal Yadav might be taller than the stooping them. Talk about their heavy weight bangles… one could use them for weight lifting. And the amount of makeup they had… no wonder the cosmetic industry is blooming in India. As far as my opinion goes (if anybody would care for) at such occasions, I would like women wear delicate jewellery and sarees with simple elegant designs to go with. Not the gold laden women having the gaudiest choice in their supposedly designer wear sarees. Neways giving a little of my busy time at the wedding to such imperative observations, I wasn’t far from a PhD in the Art of Ornament Exhibition course offered by the prestigious University of Weddings. But I don’t think I would ever be able to master the art of just glancing at the ornaments and making a precise guess at the store they belonged to and also the accurate price, which those ladies were doing all so very well! Probably I need to be reborn as a girl in my next janam to be bestowed upon with such stunning brains having Pentium 6 kinda processing power.

For the little marital status inquiries attracted by this not-so-handsome-but-earning-guy, my mom had an answer ready. Instead of responding as Single, Married or even Committed she announced that I was an “Infant”. And not just that I was an infant who needed his diapers changed every 3 hours if not more often but also needed to be spoon-fed every meal with motivations like… this one is for Daddy… this one for Mummy… so that I don’t spit out the food. So for her, considering me for a marriage was like choosing Gulshan Grover for the role of Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic. If my mom had the authority to I am sure the marriageable age for guys in India would be increased to atleast 35 years. And then one day when I am a successful person like Atal Behari Vajpayee, APJ Abdul Kalam or Ratan Tata, I can proudly tell my adopted grand children… “Har kamyab aadmi ke peeche ek aurat ka haath hota hai… mere liye woh meri Ma hai!”.

Well so to conclude my experience… guys… if you ever have to go for a wedding make sure you have good company (and also that mommy isn’t along ;)). As an additional advice… in your own wedding don’t go around gaga spending too much money on people you would meet only once in your lifetime, instead save that and go for an extended honeymoon. But again don’t be a guy like me who won’t spend a buck on anything remotely signifying his own wedding and plans to do a court marriage and close the deal with a cheap Cello Gripper ball pen… unless you want to stay kunwara all your life…

DRINK LIKE A MAN AND NOT LIKE A LOSER!!!

Please. For your own good.

From

Someone who cares for you…

Time: Tea break (Officially anytime between lunch to dinner)

Scene: A beautiful HR executive is sipping her tea while giving a frustrated look to a Yana Gupta song being shown on News 24 (Newly joined the league and has undoubtedly lived upto the reputation of over-exaggerated hindi news channels). No mention required of those frustrated IT coolies sitting around and watching the television with utmost concentration [:p] (Very precisely their only source of entertainment).

Act: The beautiful HR executive yells (I am unsure of what to highlight – beautiful or yells [;-)])… from a distance, at the canteen incharge… with a strong voice just like one of those mahila mandal’s morcha leads… “Humein Yana ka gaana nahi chahiye!!!”. Oh did that rhyme? Seeing the canteen guy perplexed who is busy giving food coupons for cash, she says it again to make her point.

“Yana ka gaana nahi chahiye!”.

“Professional environment rakho. Koi achcha News Channel lagao”.

Nobody would have refused to such a beautiful lady’s humble yet “intervening” request. But this time it was probably the authority in her voice and position(ofcourse!) that made the canteen head change the channel. And while he did that, a sequence of Kareena Kapoor’s latest movie Tashan plays. She(The beautiful HR) looks at the TV screen with all the more disgust. And then looks back at all the employees lost in watching Kareena’s super toned figure… She(The beautiful HR… ok sorry wont do this again [:p]) seems all the more upset with something…probably the employee culture going down the line which she had to do something about…! Probably!

And suddenly it’s NDTV… back to business… back to serious news… employees stare into their plates for a couple of seconds only to realise that they were here to finish something. They still didn’t have a clue of what happened. She walks out of the canteen with immense satisfaction of setting the professional mood she was probably looking out for.

Can you simply swear at your HR and get away? NO (without giving it a thought). So you better get done with your tea break.

Oops…

“Chhaliya chhaliya chhaliya… Ruh churalo mein hu aisi chhaliya…”

Eyes pop out, jaws drop, tongues hang out (well… ok…not exactly…[:p])… canteen fella smiles to himself… and the tea time extends again… [:)].

Conclusion: (Pick your choice)

1. Food in canteens of software companies tastes great!
2. Beautiful girls hate others watching other beautiful girls [:p]. – “How mean!!!”

So how was the “Blog Camp Mumbai Style”, for me? I and Amit were amongst the early birds to flock there. The Blog Camp being a part of BarCamp Mumbai 3^rd Edition, there were a lot of participants trying to get their way around. Many like me who just hired a rick from home (yea and there were sexy sportscar owners too) while also with quite a few who had come over with all their luggage there (:p) right from many other places like Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Pune, etc. All in all it was great to see the enthusiasm in everybody. I wondered why I had missed it all this while!

I was looking forward to meet a few online friends here… Deep, Ashwin, Mani and many more. While also few more bloggers like Sakshi, Meetu and some net freaks I only knew by their name or even pseudo names. I am really glad that I got to interact with most of them. And now certainly it’s gonna be more fun following their blogs. Well getting back to how the blogcamp was…

The organizers gave all due respect to the Indian Standard Time for the start with the event ;). Ok I know it happens everywhere. No offence please :). So those who joined in late were probably lucky not to miss anything. After a round of introductions(which we could barely hear) by the speakers for the camp, the sessions wiki was put up on the whiteboard only NOT to be followed :(. Because of which there was a lot of confusion as to where what was going on. As a result we missed Rashmi Bansal’s light talk on blogging. Luckily all the blogging related stuff was put up in one auditorium and we found our way there. We decided to stick there all day as we didn’t get great feedback from others who attended the sessions going on in the other audis. But am sure we missed some good ones there.

Anyways, the one I attended first was Security and Blogging by Rohit Srivastava. Am sure he had some good stuff around to discuss but the 30 mins allotted for the session were all too less. So the discussion often losing direction (thanks to the silly comments and comments over comments :p by the crowd) only reiterated some elementary knowledge over keeping your software versions up to date.

The session was followed by Ankesh Kothari discussing on strategies to employ to make your blogs earn money for you. He believed that 3 was an optimum number to have as the number of blog authors and had some tips to share. Well for those new to blogging and making money through them, am sure they made it a point to listen to everything he said (only if the over-intelligent crowd could allow him to speak). Anyways he presented his point well with some interesting facts to go with them. Yea interesting, that’s all I had to say.

The next session was more fun and learning to be in. Presented by Aditya from theindicast.com on Podcasting and its scope in

It was already passed 1:00, so we moved to the open audi for lunch. Well kudos to the organizers that it was all well organized there. Got to speak to a few more bloggers and realized what a great place it was for networking. And even better for the startups crying for attention. Soon after lunch we moved into a session by

We also had a session by boozle.com guys on Unexplored possibilities of Tagging. Am sure the discussion did help the guys a lot to better the product. Do check out the site for more on their free service.

Uske paschyat hindi blogging ko kaise is desh mein badhava diya jaye ispe vichar vinimay hua…(Huh! Cant find an online Unicode Devanagari keypad ;)) Well that’s exactly what Pankaj Tiwari discussed. When most software companies constitute a majority of Indians, we still cant find one concrete solution for flawlessly displaying Devanagari font over the web. There are still so many issues with Hindi blogging (or blogging in any Indian language) which developers smartly turn indifferent to. And for those who believe that there isn’t a good audience for stuff written in Hindi, I am sure they are the same who catch up atleast one Hindi movie every weekend and yet write a review on their blog only in English. Anyways I will probably come up with a blog post on this topic later with a few suggestions of my own. And for those who hurriedly left the session (just because a discussion on their national language wasn’t vey interesting for them), I feel sorry for you guys… you missed some real quality discussion. Its not the dollars that you have in your Adsense cheques that make you a successful blogger, its how well you connect and listen to the problems of other bloggers that make you one.

The next session was super fun. “It took a fall from the sky and 27 fractures for one man to become a successful entrepreneur” as DNA reports about Karamveer or also known as Jim Karter and now a self-confessed JohnChow Hater :P, made some 53k dollars for the month of Feb 2008 from his network of sites. He explained some simple tricks to get to what he does (Creating MFA sites basically) and their work arounds with ranking high in google. Well there are sure many enthusiasts to try this stuff (already saturated business anyways) and many more to simply hate what he does. But at the end when asked of the secret to make money online, our dear make money online guruji did say its all about writing good original content. Oh did we just hear that from you sir? :P.

The next session by Tarun was short and sweet. He probably was lost in the audience taking over the session with little discussions going around everywhere. But the million dollar point he made was that… on one hand there is this guy who makes 53k dollars a month and dosnt care at all about his thousands of site visitors and on the other hand there is a guy like him who cares for even the 10 few people visiting his site and reading what he writes, for himself, for them. Well he got a much deserved round of applause for that. Another interesting point he brought forward was that if earning big money or having a lot of site visitors reading your blog makes you conscious of what you write. And you start writing more for others than for yourself. Good or bad I do believe that it happens.

The last session I attended was by Mani and Ashwin. Both I had known over the net since a long time now. Got to meet them for the first time. Mani had some interesting SEO tips to share and what are the common misconceptions about SEO and a few dos and donts in this business. While the second part on using SMM for pumping a site higher into the SERPs could not be discussed due to the shortage of time and the organizers had to call it a day.

Soon after, there were DNA, Outlook and rediff guys taking interviews of bloggers and to listen to their take on where blogging could move towards in future. I am pretty sure their favourite question though must have been… How much money do you make with blogging??? :P. Afterall its that what makes news today.

All in all it was real fun to be at this event. Kudos to the organizers for putting up a fantastic show. I know a few things went wrong. But hopefully they are left so only to get better for the next time. Just a suggestion… The schedule was changing all day and people sitting inside the auditorium had no clue of what was happening in the other auditoriums. So most of us missed some interesting sessions we wanted to participate in. May be the next time they can put up a screen in every audi of the ongoing session in the other auditoriums. It would really be appreciated… But still good stuff!

Anyways I will call it a post now. Its 3:45 AM now and I need to catch some sleep. All those who missed the show, for sure have got a detailed insight on how the event had been like. Do try to make it there yourself the next time. Its sure great fun to make a lot of friends on whose blogs you have been commenting all this while. It feels different to go and say a hi to them :). Oh yes! And you can take home a smart BarCamp shirt too!

For pics on the event here are a couple of links:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/blogcampindia/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/brajeshwar/sets/72157604300813081/

I am just loving this phone!

My earlier theme was the Gespaa Theme by Phu Ly. Had then modified it a bit, but there certainly is a different pleasure in going custom.

Old Theme:

New Theme:

I have not yet checked if the theme is fully compatible with earlier versions of wordpress. As I just upgraded mine to the latest release of 2.1 and it works all fine here. Right now there are a few bugs, so making a list to fix them. If you find any bugs or can suggest any usability changes, I will be glad to incorporate them. As I have plans of releasing this theme for public use soon. May be those of you who liked this theme and would like to use it for your blog, can expect it by around the next month.

Do let me know how much Fire is there in this theme! :P

A guy is April fooled by his friends. To prove that he is not one, he decides to fool a few of his close friends. Messages them that he has met with a small accident. They call back worrying about him. He looks like a fool all the more… explaining to them that it was a joke. While riding back home he really meets in an accident. Ok he is fine now… no injuries. Just small bike damages.

Moral of the Story: Ride Safely, Wear a helmet. :P :P :P

Hehe…Ok here it is…

Have a safe April Fools Day! And please don’t ask me who the guy was ;).

This time, I wanted to withdraw some 1XXX USD from my paypal account. I logged in to paypal and realised that my monthly withdrawal limit showed 0.00 USD from 2,500.00 USD 8O. Uh! Now what was that! So immediately contacted paypal via email. Paypal popular at sucking customer support, I knew I will be made to wait for a week atleast to get a response. So I switched to Google about this issue. Found a post on DP. This limit has been imposed on all Verified Indian Paypal members while most of the accounts with 500.00 USD limit. Ofcourse I could not wait for the issue to be resolved as no one had any idea about it.

Got to know about Xoom.com. A money transfer service that has very low transaction fees. Infact if you get some discount coupons, you can skip almost all of the fees. Xoom has a Paypal Seller Reputation of 26000+. Yes certainly deserves a wow! On DP I got the discount coupon codes for first 2 transactions. Also any amount above 750 USD they do not charge transaction fees. So I could skip all the fees. While 1000 USD is the maximum you can withdraw. Anyways Paypal had restricted my withdrawal limit totally so a 1000 USD would work great anytime.

So I immediately initiated a money transfer request. Impressed with their pickup locations (about 3500 all over India and 13 in Goa. They work with PNB – Punjab National Bank) I chose to proceed with the same. A few hours later I got an email from them that the transaction could not be completed as India to India transfers were not allowed. Sucks! :x This was not mentioned anywhere on their website. I even checked their help section and every page possible. I was just hoping that I don’t lose Paypal transaction fees in this bargain. Which could go as high as about 7%. So I emailed Xoom and they clarified that all the money would be refunded to me in 2-3 days. And they did it in about 30 hrs. Fast! Also they told me that alternatively I can either choose for the cheque to be couriered or directly credited to my account. So I initiated another transfer with the second discount coupon. And within 3 days here I have my cheque right in front of me. They also have a contact number for the Indian customers of Xoom.

For all those who have their money stuck with Paypal please feel free to start XOOMing your money. If you need discount coupons do contact me. Don’t think I will ever use Paypal again to withdraw my money.

As JohnTP put it “Every blogger stops blogging once in a while…” in his post Do You Apologize to your readers for not blogging.

An apology has to fight the inner ego first, that no blogger would confess of having. But be a dedicated blog reader of a blog, and you will know how frustrating it is if you don’t see a new post when you log on to the site for more than a week. So here it is… battling my inner ego (If you thought I was too humble to have one. Your wrong, I do!) let me put it in the most modest way possible:

“I am really sorry for not blogging all last month”.

I can’t draw any good things out of this break… though my blog traffic has somehow increased and so has the Google Adsense earning (however meager it might be). Should have been the other way round eh?

Hmm… Anyways lets not get into the past now. The saffron skies tell me it’s a new fresh day, calling me out to fly… fly high into the boundless space (afterall I am Aseem – without boundaries). Just keeping my fingers crossed that I am not facing west…

Though we missed so much Dhoni’s big hits… and a high scoring game but the cricket fever was pumped up all day. I missed nothing, it was just a perfect Valentine’s Day!

What did you do on your Valentine’s day?