Erm...

My Executive Editor mentioned the blog in the edit meeting in a nice way and over the past few days I have received quite a few calls asking me why I stopped writing. Frankly, no reasons, I just needed a break from writing the blog. I honestly believe that sometimes maintaining the blog is more trouble than it is worth, I mean I'm not exactly raking in megadollars in advertising revenues am I? Despite being pretty much in a space of one. I don't post idiotic, rambling posts on foreign policy. Plus, I have been travelling a bit, went to Munich and followed that up by a short trip to Barcelona; and did a quick hop to Benaras here, driving back in Dad's new car through Mayastan. Well, no excuses really for not blogging but frankly I got a bit bored and as I said, the trouble this causes is really not worth the headache most of the time. After all, I'm not an 'independent' commentator, I'm a fairly well-known middle-ranking print journalist, and sometimes I feel that the blog gives me a sense of notoriety that feels bizarre frankly.
I don't know if I will start blogging full-time on this blog anytime soon, I might or might not, depends on what I feel like doing. Don't get me wrong, I love the concept of blogging and the internet. Doing this has really helped me improve as a writer, but I do have a very large workload nowadays and combining work and the fact that I am travelling a fair bit (here and there, driving around all over the place) doesn't leave me much time to do this as frequently as I would like and as I said earlier, there is no compelling financial motivation for me to do so. I still believe that the internet will transform journalism in India as it has in the West, and having run this blog for over six years will hold me in good stead, but the real me has moved beyond K.
So there might just be the occasional post here once in a while, but most other things will move to a variety of platforms. For those of you who know me (or who I am), follow the Twitter feed, I promise to keep that interesting. Take care and I'm not going anywhere just that I won't be here as often as I was.

Sources, schources... hic!

I don’t mean the people to whom you might end up going to shady bars (Press Club or IHC) who end up giving you absolutely pointless and often libelous information. No, I mean the ‘Anonymous’ source or the guy ‘who wished not to be named’ or worse still, ‘the one who cannot be named’. You see, after seeing headlines saying ‘Hindustan Khabardaar’ on Aaj Tak warning about the evil of American Global Hawk and Predator UAV’s now being bought by Pakistan along with the associated illiterate hype, the point is I think we live in a magical Harry Potter world and the reason that sources can’t be named even for the most innocuous story is because the source is either Voldemort or worse still, third-hand.
You know what I mean. Your editor lunched with someone at the Chambers and then tells you a story and tells you to do it. The news is credible and very likely true but you go on your editors word and its your byline. Everybody wins. But just reading some papers, the amount of people who are taking the ‘unnamed’ source escape route is getting crazy. I can’t act holier than thou here, I’ve also been guilty of this, but recently, actually for a few years, to save myself useless questioning later I’ve been informing a senior editor of who the source was if I resort to using the ‘anonymous’ tag. It is a lot safer to editorialize and express an opinion as your own than to constantly attribute to mysterious sources unless it is something policy related. Or when you start discussing the Ambani brothers… In which case just stepping back is a hell of a lot safer then getting dragged to lunches with ‘good friends’. Either that, or doing an analytical study of government and legal documents. Now these can be ‘sourced’ through ‘anonymous people’ but they’re printed documents so they’re a lot safer than ‘sources’.
Anyway, before I bind my argument in several layers of knots like my iPod headphones – what I want to argue is that occasionally ‘sources’ have to be used – most bureaucrats in the central government who are not Secretary-level don’t want to get into a soup and therefore don’t get quoted. And as for the Ambani brothers, nobody wants to get on their bad side. Fair enough. But then at least give me an idea of the source. If it is a corporate story did you get it from the PR flack (company spokesperson). The main reason I’m whining is because sometimes stories include far too many ‘anonymous sources’ and then trying to identify who is saying what becomes impossible for the writer, let alone the reader.
I know. I’ve been there. Just chill on the ‘sources’ credit will everyone? It will help with the credibility of what is being written and my bowel movements!
And if you haven’t read The Secret Diary of Ajit Balakrishnan as yet, you must! It reminds me of the early day’s of the Rakesh Jhunjhunwala spoof blog!

Not an alternative career

I'm not writing this as a disgruntled blogger, because I am not disgruntled. But blogging is not a career option for journalists. No matter how much you game the system and click on the adverts you won't make much money. In over two and a half years I've raked in about $200, maybe because I can have better advertising placement but mainly because there is not too much money to be made. Sure, you can make a few hundred dollars a month if you do this seriously and a few hundred dollars at the current exchange rate is bloody good, but I doubt it will keep the home fires going. Blogging, or micro-blogging are not career options. The blog networks set up by Nick Denton in the US are laying off people. A well-run blog can make money, more money than some new magazines because the cost of bandwidth and server space is miniscule compared to the cost of newsprint, but as a career option. On a badly designed blog! Sorry to burst the bubble folks, but the bubble does not exist. Read Dan Lyons experience with the FSJ blog, and this guy ran a truly popular blog and is a 'propah' journo.
PS: Only 'propah' journos can do what Dan did to a CNBC twat, though after watching a lot of CNBC US, I'm pretty sure that the kids at CNBC TV18 are far smarter than their US counterparts. Though, really that isn't saying much.

For God's Sake

You know what bugs me, is people sending me requests for links. I appreciate that you've worked very hard on your link sharing site and how nice it is, but for crying out loud, I don't have the time or the patience to do your SEO work for you - and spam comments are worse. But sickly sweet emails talking about how someone did something and essentially tried to copy Digg/Facebook or Twitter is useless. How come I'm not surprised that ever since the slowdown there is less and less news of people setting up social networking sites. Why should someone (this this case Undie TV) spend hordes of cash setting up a video-sharing site when YouTube is already there (and you work with them). The idea of the internet is not about re-inventing the wheel or building a new road - the wheel was invested (probably with Indian and Chinese help) in the US, the highways already exist. But car companies are all going bankrupt but guess who is making money - parking lots! Make sure your parking lot is better than the others and not some crappy SEO-optimised site which when Google's spiders get smart will go all the way back down. Anyway, most crappy SEO stuff is now about 'online reputation enhancement' - make sure all the crappy stories that have your name don't come up in Google's first page by creating fake stories about yourself and then cross-linking a bunch of PR3 or PR4 sites. Anyway, just ranting.

Online Advice

When the owners first send a mail asking employees to think about every phone call, yes every phone call, then attack floaters that their organisation has hired given the guidance from the top (guess where from?) over the years. Then in a more recent mail attacks the organisation for being lazy and sleeping on the job. This is not a good sign!

But now their 'celebrity' correspondent attacks people on the internet as having malafide intentions instead of engaging with them. I believe that a 4500 member group on Facebook is not malafide, rather it is symptomatic of a crisis. The best way of dealing with this is engaging with users. The Naval Chief drags up an old controversy and the only journalist to come to your defence is an old friend and the paper which prints your column but several others keep quiet - does the establishment concur or is the defence of the journalist not seen as worth it. 

I really don't know about the veracity of the allegations, I was in college during the Kargil War and really didn't bother watching every waking minute of it on telly. But we lost a lot of soldiers in that war and their memory, above all else must never be forgotten nor must Musharraf's treachery, remembering Kargil for this is stupid. 

But why are there so few defenders, why did Admiral Mehta have so many people back him? And there were people supporting him, you got that sense at dinners and parties. Have so many bridges been burnt over the years and do so many people have it in for her? Or is it the failure to recognise that there is a problem. And there is a way to deal with this problem, and not go about it in a ham handed way.

Let me think of some answers here.

Firstly, most blogs are not sensational or have thousands of readers. Many of them are small, personal and opinionated. However, if several thousand people all over the world have a negative opinion about you, something that can be gauged from a variety of sources such as Technorati, deal with it. The beauty of the internet is that it is democratic, it can give someone completely useless fifteen minutes of fame, it can also bring down somebody. I will agree that there is a lot of slanderous stuff online, like the stuff about me having sex in an ATM (I wish!). And yes, there are bloggers who will spread such unsubstantiated bunkum more and might cite Wikipedia as a source (the perils of trusting Wikipedia, then again journalists across India do, I mainly read Wikipedia for WW2 stories like this cool one). When the number of such bloggers is low, you can hopefully ignore it, but when a large number of the online population starts grumbling - take notice - and engage. You engage with readers and viewers - no wait, that is just Delhi dinner parties. 

But back to my point, the internet and especially Google Search is becoming rather integral to all our lives. Many of us do ego-search. Now when something like this happens, there is a lot of cross-linking across blogs. Now, if you have the Google toolbar on Firefox or IE (PS: anyone know how to see PR on Chrome?) you see a little green bar, that represents pagerank, which is calculated by a complex algorithm, that includes these links and the term. More links like this and your Google search results are doomed - well as you can see - they're not very good right now. Shit, I really didn't know they were that bad. Damn, I'd be pissed off if things were this bad too. 

Regulation is not the answer, because you can never shut up all your critics online, because you'll have critics everywhere. You'll have your supporters too. But many critics can be won over if you bother to engage. They're not like the Pakistani government mired in decades of thinking of India as the enemy. They're desis, like all desis they have strong and often misguided and misinformed opinions, I mean we still vote criminals in huge numbers into Parliament. That is not the point, as an opinionmaker, your job is to not only shape opinions but also to an extent be shaped by opinions. The latter part isn't happening.

Oh, and the next time you say 'Regulate the Internet' - don't expect online support for the 'Please do not regulate TV Channels' plea that you guys will put out. Listen, recognise the internet as the future of media distribution, engage with it, participate in it and not just with 'zombie fans', and hey... maybe next time, the shit won't hit the fan. This is not meant as an ill-itentioned post. I don't want to get at anybody nor do I have any malafide intentions towards anybody, but this sort of whacked out response bothers me.

Again and again...

HT launched their all-new bloggers today. That said, only one post is any fun, but what fun! Previous posts on the issue - the start of the matter, my crappy analysis, someone else wades in feeling indignant about something and there will be peace, no wait, that blood, right?

And this is a nice afaqs piece on the adverts for equity model being followed. Surprisingly, HT Media also announced in their last quarterly results that they'll be doing exactly the same thing.

EDIT: Afaqs link corrected

Yes, I should proof-read blog posts too

I proof my stories before I fire them off, and I should start taking equal care with my blog posts. But I will not edit the last post and will keep the comments as a reminder to myself of my tardiness. I apologise for that, but I've always written posts in a sort of 'stream of consciousness'. Yesterday I fired off the post in ten minutes and I didn't bother to read it even once.

Yes, I speak Bangla and I am Bengali, even my mother who reads this blog (thankfully only occasionally) decided to point that out to me, and the worst thing was that these were not mistakes of ignorance, they were mistakes of laziness. And laziness is worse than ignorance.

Again, I apologise for the rushed, grammatically horrible post. As a writer, one who writes for a living, these are bad mistakes to make. I know that this blog has a life of its own but I should start taking it a bit more seriously, which is why I've added all the comments about the last post.

I'm posting a couple of pictures along with the post, I should have added these yesterday but I didn't have a micro-USB cable with me in Calcutta. The pictures were clicked on a Nokia N78, so the quality isn't DSLR level, but they aren't half-bad either I believe. Until the story gets printed, I can't quite say where they were clicked - I had disabled the location tagging software on the device as well. Or so I think. OK, the only hint that I will give, and good Bongs might work out where I was, is that I ended my day in Tarakeshwar.

More about gossip and all later, including how horribly petty some senior journalists can be, a rampant drug-abuse problem among journalists particularly in one city, in which I also played a role recently, but which has existed for years. And more, as always send in your comments, even the really nasty ones (I won't publish those, but still I need to get worked up sometimes) and you can always email me, the address is on the right bar. To add this blog to your feed-reader, click this link. Take care guys and remember to buy your booze tonight if you live in India.

More peeves among infamy...

One of my colleagues was recently told by stupid peer, "Oh, so you work with K, who writes that infamous blog." Said colleague, a fairly senior one who has known of the existance of this online piece of tripe for a while was failry horrified. "Why infamous?", he asked stupid peer, "Don't you have to do shit to become infamous, all that bugger does is sleep."
Well, in my defence, unlike many other bloggers I do have a fairly decently paying day job, which could pay me more, but, well I guess I would need serious plastic surgery for that. But that said, infamy is not something I aspire towards, many 'reports' on this blog were made by commenters, correctly or incorectly. Yes, I have an opinion, I think some people who have lofty egos should be brought down to earth, and no I am not jealous of a person whose honeymoon was funded by taxpayer money and we ain't talking about Sarkozy and his beautiful wife (be warned, the link has boobies) here.
Now, moving on, I have to go for an interview today and the PR rep called up sometime late last night and said, "Your article on XYZ was fantastic." It well might have been, though it could also have been written in a deadline-beating, stream-of-consciousness ten minute burst, which is rather more likely. But, that compliment rang hollow, as most of these usually do. I don't know why this happens so often, PR chaps think they can win brownie points with journalists if they give them praise. I very often get, "You won an award, you must be very good." The award was six frikkin years ago, it is just a trophy that sits fornlornly somewhere in my house. The problem is that giving these compliments is not going to win you brownie points with me, or a lot of other journalists for that matter. If you want to massage my ego, there are other things to. But one of those does not include telling me, "Your blog is fantastic/infamous/vile" either.

On Blogging...

One of the tragedies of recent years has been the shifting of the funnies to the supplements. Since I am usually too rushed to read just papers every morning, I rarely pick up Delhi Times or HT City to read the comics and even with comics, you get the same old, same old. Not that I would pick up the supplements anyway. Very few new comics ever get printed, like one of my favourite ones Stephan Pastis' Pearls Before Swine. So I often thank the big guy/gal up there for the interwebs so that I can get my daily dose of the funnies. And this was his strip yesterday which I thought was hilarious.

Travels

I came back from a rather lazy weekend in Bombay where thankfully I managed to steer clear of doing crazy things. Beer, smokes and football only with a different group of people this time. Quite enjoyable. Anyway, soon after I returned by the evening flight yesterday I was coerced somewhat by a friend I had not met in a while to meet up. Like more than half the people I know, this guy also hacks around for a living and interestingly we had some points to make about media criticism online.
"You know why more people don't do it?" he told me, "Because they're shit scared they will get caught. And when they caught and if they've been stupid idiots regarding what they write on the blog, they'll be unhirable!" And of course, he proceeded to give an example of a chap who has pretty much shot his career to shreds because of this and argued that a whole generation of senior editors will never hire the bugger.
But then again, I still believe an online blog/commentary on the way Indian TV anchors/reporters look, talk and generally do news stories is a completely decent idea. I mean, there are so many pancake faces and women with bad hair day's on TV and this is before we get to the diction and elocution part. Among TV anchors while I still believe Vishnu has by far and away the best elocution of any anchor, there are others with fake accents and awful diction. Then scripts, watching TV around seeing how a bunch of unelected twits (Karat and Yechury) trying to hold our (flawed) democracy to ransom and the horrific blasts at Hyderabad, I noticed a horrible usage of adjectives.
But this is not going tob be a job for me. And before TV-types pipe-in with vitriol, I think this will be a great idea because criticism only improves the final product. What say?

Notes on Blogging Part DLVI

Sometimes a cursory glance of the editorial pages can lead to surprising finds, like this for example a few days ago in the Times Of India. Nothing that most bloggers don't know, but this was the lead edit and the timing of it got me a bit surprised, a cursory glance of the blogging scene in India leads me to believe that some of the older bloggers have reduced the amount they blogged or stopped altogether, even a glance at Technorati data can lead one to make the impression that people are actually blogging less than before. What I find surprising about this is that India is going through a second internet boom, everybody pouring millions of dollars into new internet ventures, even though most of them seem to be social networking sites or video-hosting sites, and in some cases into gaming sites - but given the profile of games at sites like Games2Win I really wonder what sort of market people are going for - merge the demand for gaming and repressed sexuality in one unipurpose game.
I met Ajit Balakrishnan of Rediff lately and he did not agree that all these sites were money being poured down the drain - even though I cannot imagine the business model for social networking sites, especially since according to what is flooding my inbox - Facebook and hi5 are the latest cool sites, in fact the growth of the former has been rather spectacular and Google's Orkut service pretty pretty much degenerated into an online sleaze service. But Balakrishnan did make one valid point, India definately needs a lot more online content coming on stream over the next few years if the 'broadband revolution' that we have been promised for years is going to happen. I mean look at the numbers, while in absolute terms they're pretty decent, in percentage terms computer penetration isn't working that well.
Why? One reason, is despite the hype, low-cost computing has been quite a non-starter in the home market, because the machines are fairly poorly specified. At the end of the day, I guess we all want a computer which can do something decent. And while I might carry a N-series phone with more processing power and memory than my first Pentium machine back when I was still in school, I still want my computer to kick-ass. Don't know why, but I just do! Low-cost computers and even thin-client machines have been pretty hyped-up in India, but I don't if these machines will work too well in the home environment for two critical reasons - bandwidth -both wireline and wireless, the latter being in a state of extreme flux. And while the telcos don't give you figures, India has over 40 million handsets capable of data connectivity and prices are fairly affordable, but the number of data users out there are fairly limited.
And this is where I come back to Balakrishnan's point about the lack of content online - there is almost no really compelling online content on any Indian site. And while blogging is very often horribly inaccurate and like in this case extremely opinionated, blogging, not just in English needs to increase. Not just for the case of stimulating people to come online. But maybe also to help revive the lost art of Journalism, where newspapers institute awards to award it to their own reporters - true, no-one I know ever applied, but shouldn't awards in journalism be independent of news organisations. Heck, who knows, at this rate Rajat Sharma will institute an award for best Rakhi Sawant coverage and promptly award it to his channel (though Aaj Tak will come a close second!).
Anyway, I know there are tons of people who read this blog, the reason I added the 'Recent Blog Comments' widget was to stimulate comments, and it seems to have done the trick, but guys and gals, lets see you write a blog! Just be yourselves, don't worry about what clowns say, you can always delete comments! I do!
And just a note, if you came here from the IndiaBlogs directory, this is anything but a Political blog, I have virtually no comments on the Pratibha Patil controversy, other than to say I have a strange feeling that the woman will backfire on the Congress.

Assorted notes

Went to a dinner on Saturday, lots of media people there and felt great to catch up with people who have spent the better part of the previous month in the badlands of Haryana. Anyway, the discussion turned to blogging and after attacking one, now completely defunct blog, I managed to convince people that there was a need for a 'critical' media blog. You know, the sort of blog where people can bitch out the stories that go into news channels - like trying to comprehend what exactly is running in the minds of people at TV Today, because I would would certainly like to smoke some of the shit they're on. But beyond just dissecting the news, there should also be critical commentary on things like accentuated accents - I mean the terribly fake accents you come across sometimes. Or the godawful dressing sense of some reporters who seriously look like the car dragged them into work in the morning.
My new blog is currently a work in progress and it seems unlikely that I will get around to launching it before July - thinking of buying a domain name and contemplating a switch to WordPress, and given what I just wrote, debating whether there is space for a good collaborative media blog. Not the typical names of oldies and keeping a blog restricted to one part of the country or one type of media - a good, and that word is very bloody important - good media blog, run not by people who sit idly by and constantly critique the media, but by fairly intelligent insiders.
Someone sent me a mail asking me about the marital status of a prominent female anchor, and even though I know, it is in such bad taste to comment on why someone did something or even to write about who on earth is sleeping with whom. I will gossip about these people over a beer or two, but this blog, and I have made the mistake previously, should not become too bitchy. I don't want to say that someone is warped in the head because he goes around dipping his wick everywhere or that certain reporters have slept around for stories/jobs. It happens, but nothing off my back, right!
Anyway, another person wrote in saying why I don't write about radio. Which got me thinking, why don't I write about radio? Well, MP3 player in car and a couple of iPod's essentially, but then I made the mistake of hearing the latest channel in Delhi, and lets put it like this - I want to release a couple of big cats in their studio (pun intended), because that had to be the most infernal crap I have ever heard. That said, some of the other new channels are pretty nice, but sadly I don't live in Bangalore and therefore don't get Indigo, which is a brilliant channel by the way!

Updates!

Tomorrow we will discover what grand schemes the Finance Minister has planned to taken even more of our money and put it into the grubby hands of party functionaries across the land. But not before the party gets wiped out in UP (if you can call the sorry state of the Congress currently in UP 'not wiped out'). Anyway, there are just some site-related things I thought I would update readers on - firstly I've cleaned up the links a bit, corrected quite a few (sorry about that Jai!) and added a couple of sites which I think are fairly interesting (NSFW) and readable. Now that the other half has decided not to kill me off (hah, he wishes!) this blog is destined for another 500 posts, even though in the process of cleaning up, some very old posts have been discreetly removed, and maybe some more might meet the same fate.
Anyway, on other updates - it seems that God has been given a two-year extension as Group Editoral Boss at the place he runs and because of the upcoming UP Elections, the party and God seem to have kissed and made up, so there will not be a repeat of the events at last years 'big function', and from all indications this years big function will be bigger than ever. The other media related item (and listen I know I give these obtuse and sometimes vague names, but please understand my compulsions) is that this post I wrote last month is coming true. The grapevine has it that 'The V' has put in his papers at 18-20 KG Marg and now will leave CK to take that paper down into a burning heap of rubble by himself. There is an old saying... which would be inappropriate to repeat over here. 'The V' will head up 'The Groups' foray into entertainment which if Nita has her way will start off with a 24/7/365 Dandiya channel. Which wouldn't be so bad really!
In another piece of news, Loha Lady (version 2.1- new 'smiling version' when Railway Minister cracks jokes she can't understand) has launched her latest witch-hunt for the person who leaked out that rather salacious piece of news that Q had been caught and thus totally ruined Rahul Baba's chances in UP. Well, from early indications it seems that her treatment of Natwar Singh is going to backfire because from what I have heard it was a Natwar loyalist inside the MEA who leaked the story - and a very well executed leak, making sure that everybody got the juciest inside details. Touche!
On Thursday we shall see the first 'Big' showdown between Papermint and ET, after the rather insipid performance of the former following Tata-Corus and Vodafone-Hutch, I'm not expecting much, but then again, as Tony Bourdain says, it is when expectations are low that you get really surprised. One way or another!

EDIT : Bonatellis requests and I always please my readers, but the question remains why on earth have One, Two and Three been given the boot at BW? From what I have heard about the explosive happenings at the ABP company today morning - One was asked to choose between the magazine and his own business. The two Bengali's were moved off elsewhere and the China correspondent, not a patch on the best China correspondent of an Indian publication which would be Saibal at the Times has been appointed boss. This has meant that P will quit because he doesn't want to report to the Chinaman and B has been moved to a marketing function within the group. I don't understand why the sudden flurry of activity over there but it might have something to do with competition getting worse and a huge rush of people leaving the publication because Aveek Babu's pursestrings are way too tight. Anyway, this is what I know, I take no responsibility for factual accuracy whatsoever.

In Defense of Anonymity

Or in my case, as a couple of people have mentioned - Psuedonymous - or is that the right spelling. Whatever it is, I will get that silly red squiggly line any which way. See, I have never tried to really hide my identity, it is too difficult maintaining the facade, I did initially but then, and if you've been reading this blog frequently, you probably already know me. I will be the first to admit that I have made a lot of friends through blogging and while some of my friends (from earlier times) find the entire concept peculiar (just like I find social networking peculiar) but I have discovered all sorts of people through blogging.
So the question is, why on earth I don't I jump out of the cake and take off the few shreds of anonymity I still have? Well, there are a couple of reasons actually. I've rather begun to like 'K', I've always been slightly schizo, but 'K' is the nice guy that I am not. And maybe, I think I have a soft spot for the guy, it would be unfair to kill him off. I know that regular updates are rarer nowadays, partially because I'm not as vela as I once was, I am genuinely working harder and secondly, I currently maintaining three blogs - one of which is actually a signed blog. And talking about signed blogs, I am fairly sure that in the coming months there will be a few more blogs where I won't be signing off as 'K' but using the entire name that my parents happened to bestow on me in a moment of serendipity.
So will this blog remain? Obviously it will. I mean where else can I post incongruous stories. Like the silly happenings over at Mid-Day, where well, TA just asked a person they recently hired last year (after his stint at EchTee, which ended in disaster) to move on - evidently because there was a major Editor-Reporter disconnect and from all indications there was a near mutiny. I don't want to speculate much beyond this, but my god, how the mighty have fallen. Someone once told me that it isn't a great idea to the top at the speed of light because if everybody knows that if that happens you would have sold your soul to the Devil, and the Devil is a hard taskmaster and you will go down and people will take a perverse pride in watching you go down in flames. Good enough reason to turn down a promotion? Doubt it, but it does make you think.
But K's blog will remain, no matter what people write about how 'unsigned anonymous' bloggers having no editorial control. No, I have complete editorial control over this blog, and this is not a bitchboard. I also realise that blogs, or rather Blogs and other Web 2.0 elements will dramatically alter the way people use and consume media and no matter how many Edit page middles you write, that is a pretty much undeniable fact. But yes, I will put in more effort into 'officially sanctioned' signed blogs, because that is what is going to be funding me.
Here's to you K, you changed my life. I think. Maybe. Whatever.
Like I need an excuse to get drunk.

- Your Alter Ego

EDIT : Didn't win the Indibloggies business, anyway I have a couple of thoughts on the 'awards', but I will not elucidate them right now because the opinions would seem in very poor (and 'sore loser') taste - even though I should know that an award is only an award unless it involves a free trip to America. But more on that later.

100,000 visitors, 450 posts!

This is the 450th post on the blog and the other day, the blog steamrolled past 100,000 visitors since I installed the Statcounter code back at the end of June 2005. That is an average of 222 page hits a day, which is quite a lot even if you exclude my own visits. Not bad, if I say so myself!
Adjusting back to Delhi has been a bit weird, I've been bored more than anything else. After all how much can you possibly play videogames, even if it is on the new XBox 360. Since my self-declared semi-sabbatical from drinking, rather a sabbatical from out and out 'lets see what drinking fifteen whiskeys does to the human body' experiments every second night, life feels strangely empty. I don't know what that actually means, if that really means that my life had degenerated to the point that I was on the verge of alcoholism, or maybe even was an alcoholic. Well, I am reading a lot more all over again, and really should start watching more movies.
Office on the other hand has been strange. One of my editors and a man who despite the fact he constantly took my trip, I genuinely enjoyed working and writing for, is leaving. I've been in this organisation for three years and had become really fond of the guy, I mean as a journalist you like working for some people and I enjoyed working for him. He is taking up a big new job, and I'll miss him, anyway there are another two weeks - basically for me to think up what I should give him as a farewell gift. And these words are not being written because I know that he reads this blogs, I genuinely mean them. Well, even though when he does go, office seating will be juggled and I will be brought back from the Kuiper belt seat that I currently have and I hate.
Other colleagues - office has changed a lot since I was in Delhi last and despite the unexpected churn at the top, things are more or less same there, but colleagues on a more equal footing. Well, I don't know if they read this blog but I really want to use this service on one of them. I'm fairly thick skinned, but badly timed jokes are really not appreciated. And when you have the hairstyle he does (like the Manager character in Dilbert, seriously) I would refrain from making jokes. Anyway, I don't want to get started on everyone else, including psychotic young female colleagues, which is enough said.
Chalo, I have to work now.

Even more searches

Strangest Google search string to hit the blog to date, and it is a bit troubling. But why would somebody use Google to do this I don't know. And why am I on the first page of these results? Anyone, there is someone is Autralia looking for a contract killer. Cops if you're reading this, this blog is not written by a contract killer but a badly contracted journalist.
Let see, what are the other interesting searches...
More illegal stuff... (I'm #1 here!!!)
Another #1 - but why?
What the....
Google PageRank surprises me everyday!
EDIT : Pimpin'

Yet another template change...

Blogger beta is refreshingly nice, template changing is amazingly idiot proof and doesn't require massive amounts of HTML knowledge. The one thing that rankles is the part that Adsense somehow seems to disappear, quite strange for a Google service. Talking about Google services, Writely, Google's online word-pro program has opened registrations again. I figure that I might actually like this service a lot, travelling journalist type that I am (even though I was threatened that my wings were going to fall off Icarus style by Bossman).
Anyway, cutting to the chase, third template in a fortnight, and I think it looks nice, what say you?