Tag Archives: 2008

A good year !!

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I know its a bit late to be rambling about the year that was but given the fact that I was in hibernation for the last week or so, I have no option. More than anything, this post is a personal memoir for the year 2008 and what it had in store for me.

2008 has been a good year over all both personally and professionally(I am glad I still write in that order). I can vaguely remember how it all changed, from being just a regular software engineer cum web junkie working for one of the very few global web startups in India (Slideshare) to getting into social media, to co-founding kwippy and much more. It’s been a crazy, happening year with lots of learnings, relearnings and unlearnings. Some of the good things(online mostly) that happened to me in the last year

Kwippy: From a simple thought of archiving gtalk status messages to microblogging to conversations, Kwippy is most definitely the best thing that happened to me during the last year. It’s been really challenging and exciting playing different roles at different times, a front end developer, a customer service rep, a community manager, executive head and more. Talking about web apps is one thing, building an app is another and it’s this transition that teaches you a lot. Not only you get to experience things(and situations) first hand, you learn to appreciate things around a lot more. Kwippy will get to see a lot more action in days to come and I am really looking forward to the planned changes and improvements.

Blogging: I started blogging regularly this year only and have written 75 posts in total, which have  received  92 comments so far. Blogging, started as a hobby and is now a passion. Now it feels weird if I don’t blog for a few days and that urge to express my thoughts makes me sit through the night and scribble my thoughts. I’ve written quite a few event driven posts about Twitter off late, as the way I see things and I hope they are not taken in any other way. I plan to blog more regularly and stick to writing about business, marketing and social media mostly.

Reading: I started reading a lot, both online and offline this year. Its customary now to read at least a couple of blog posts daily. I became more regular with reading books(as opposed to just buying them) and magazines(primarily Tehelka).

Friends: Thanks to various social networking sites and startup related events, I’ve made some really nice friends over the last year and learnt lots of things from them. Hope things to continue being good in times to come.

While 2008 has been a good year, I hope this year brings on a lot more for everyone and leave us as better humans.

Disoriented

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Yes, that’s what I am right now, “DISORIENTED”. Things were fine till saturday evening, I enjoyed a lazy Saturday morning, met college friends after long and had sumptuous lunch. Everything was Normal and then a friend told me “three bombs went off in cp, karol bagh and gk”. I was then at a nearby Pizza Hut meeting my school friends. Within minutes everyone was on their phone’s calling family members and friends to know if they were fine. Ten minutes later everyone got settled and resumed talks about school, teachers et all. Another group of friends went for a late night show.

Indians are known to be adjusting and accommodating but who thought they could be this adjusting. People who were waiting on the bus stand where one of the blasts happened resumed the wait for their buses half an hour after the blast. Everything seems back to normalcy (assuming there was a disturbance), maybe for good but something doesn’t feel right. Had it been a weekday, with people busy with their 9-5’s maybe it would have been hard to notice any difference at all.

All sorts of questions are haunting me. Not only this I can feel lots of processes running in the background making me feel kinda lost, being there but without really being there. Was discussing with another friend who was equally shaken “What can we do about the whole thing”,  we’ve always been cursing the administration/government for not doing enough but that just doesn’t seem to help and my mind refuses to believe there is nothing we can do about the situation.

“A Wednesday” a film about bomb blasts and how a common citizen tries to avenge for it, comes to mind.

*spoiler alert start*
The story is about a 50+ year old man, a common citizen who is overwhelmed by the sense of insecurity that prevails that he takes law into his own hands and tries to take revenge from those who were behind recent bomb blasts
*spoiler alert end*

The film shows a way in which a common man raises above his existential needs and tries to make a change ,but that cannot be the only way. There have to be more ways in which we can do something about the situation rather than taking a backseat, doing nothing and only to be reminded of it few months/years from now. Its not one of those numerous problems that our country faces, unlike them it doesn’t have an obvious solution(at least not to me). Not sure if  I am the only one facing this but we need to start doing something to make things better and trust me if you think somebody else might do it for you, you couldn’t be more wrong.