My Web/Online Presence till today..

I visited some friends a couple of days ago and one very dear friend asked me if I was on Twitter. When I replied with an “Of Course!” he grinned and replied “Why am I not surprised!!” :)

While chatting with him I realised, Yes, I do have a presence on the World Wide Web!! And am proud of it too!! Today the whole world has congregated together on the Internet and is reaching out to people all over. As we progress, in time, each individual with access to a computer and an internet connection will be present online.

As I started getting introduced to the infiniteness of the internet, I decided to make my presence known to all around me and beyond.. :) I started off (years ago) with signing up for a yahoo mail id, a hotmail id and an Indiatimes id which then graduated to just having 2 mail ids – one on Yahoo and the other on Gmail. After this I got onto the social networking bandwagon and signed up onto Orkut. After getting bored with the site (yeah I know… u don’t understand that!!) I graduated to Facebook where I am more or less settled – for the time being at least ;) till something more fun comes up!!

On the professional networking side I signed up with the lesser known Ryze network years ago but I must confess that I didn’t find that very user friendly and now I am more active on LinkedIn!

Blogging caught my eye and the fun that I have had blogging has been awesome!!!! As you can see by this blog – have 75 posts and counting and have been around only 1.5 years – which may be less compared to those that write every day – but what the hell.. I enjoy writing and what I write!! Hehe Personal blogging aside I decided to get into blogging about my profession and started my HR Blog – it’s still only 3-4 posts old but I think I will get to 75 posts soon!!

I then wanted my own domain name and went out and bought that too which gets directed to my personal blog. I am in the midst of getting/setting up a website too wherein all the links to me will be present – cool nah?

Click! Click! Then I wanted to share my pics with my friends, so I signed up for the then popular Yahoo pictures – loved the interface and could uploading pictures was as simple as A-B-C!! After Yahoo shut down their service I went on the hunt for another online photo sharing site. Amidst all the ones out there, kind of liked Flickr but soon gave that up when I stumbled onto Picassa! This prompted me to start off my very own photo blog and I did! Though it is young too I don’t doubt that it will soon grow to be full of manyyyyyyyyyyy pictures taken from my camera and phone!

Twitter happened recently and it’s not too bad.. Have been getting the hang of it now and keep trying to tweet regularly! Spied one of my friend’s signature sporting his Google profile and now have one of my own too!

So I think for an HR person I am quite present on the Internet!! What do you think? ;)

My Best Friend’s Birthday Adventures

No, this is not like one of the Famous Five’s adventures!! This is about a night out with my best friend on her birthday last night. It all started out well, and we left her place for Juhu in her car.

With the windows rolled up, we waited for the air conditioning to kick in but to our disappointment it refused to do so and we had to roll the windows back down – not too bad as there was a cool breeze blowing. After filling up petrol we got on our way with the FM radio belting out the latest Hindi movie songs. We decided to take the Worli-Bandra Sealink and turned towards Worli seaface.

We suddenly heard a thump-thump noise and were wondering where it was coming from…. As we racked our heads to figure out the source of the noise we became aware of the car not performing the way it should. We pulled over on the side and discovered we had a flat!! Ok!! Two of us stuck on the side of the road with a flat tyre!! As we debated on how to get to the nearest petrol pump our eyes fell on couple of men changing a tyre on a car and we looked up to find that we had stopped right outside a small-time car alignment garage!! Luck was on our side!! We got the tyre changed and made our way towards the Sealink.

As we approached the Sealink the excitement grew and we were soon driving over the sea!! As we crossed the Sealink, I started taking pictures. The sights that greeted us were amazing and the journey was awesome!!

We made our way to the restaurant at Juhu without any further adventures and settled down to a yummy Italian dinner at Del Italia.

Grant us Independence today!

“Independence” a word that we take for granted at times but makes our hearts swell with pride as the tricolor flutters in the clear blue skies! As we all prepare to enjoy and celebrate our 62nd Independence Day from the British rule, I would like to ask for Independence from some other chains that bind us!

Grant us Independence from the terrorists who think it is their birthright to make our lives miserable by indulging in killing innocent people just so that they will go to heaven!! Don’t they realise there is nothing like that! Why are they getting away with all that they do?

Grant us Independence from the H1N1 virus that is making us suspicious of everyone we interact with, travelling with masks and handkerchiefs wrapped around our faces, and taking the lives of innocent children and elders.

Grant us Independence from the drought that we are facing in the country; send those rain laden clouds to us please! I recently saw the state of the fields on a TV channel and the dry, arid landscapes have been imprinted onto my mind… it is indeed a sad state of affairs…

As this year’s Independence Day passes I am thankful to be living in a free and independent nation. For whatever its quirks I love this country with all my heart!!

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY TO ONE AND ALL!!

Flu – Pls fly away!!

As the H1N1 virus enters our living space there is wide spread panic among all individuals. These individuals consist of educated ones like you and me and uneducated ones like my rickshaw driver today who was wearing a handkerchief around his nose and mouth. Surprisingly the authorities are quite chilled out in their responses to the general public, their reasoning being that people die of more of other diseases every day than from the H1N1 virus. That may be true but they need to understand that for those “other” diseases there is some treatment, some vaccine and for the H1N1 virus the jury is still out on that one!

What has really upset me about this sudden biological attack is that the ones who are suffering the most are the children!! :( Which brings me to another controversy that is moving around – are closing down schools and colleges going to make a difference? Maybe yes, because of the near proximity of the children. Here authorities are playing safe and precaution is better than cure.

Indians are tolerant about a lot of things but when they are faced with something they do not understand they do tend to panic. This can be seen on every station, every bus stop in the city these days. Like someone said – it looks like everyone has turned into surgeons overnight with masks covering half their faces!! Everywhere you turn you see an assortment of masks – white ones, green ones, blue ones, even yellow ones! I too got my green ones! But got fleeced in the bargain!! The guy at the chemist charged me Rs. 20 per mask instead of the reported Rs. 5 – 7!! After I came home I realised that I was not the only one being fleeced the TV news brought it up too with the Health Minister. And kudos to him I actually liked the reply he gave the TV channel – if you are so upset with being fleeced and have proof of the same, file an FIR and the State Government will resolve the issue and take the chemist to task!

Hope that the deaths get curtailed and that everything returns back to normal soon!!

Take care everyone!!