After 15 months of entrapment, finally I will be stepping out of this country and that too with the blessings from the mighty Hitler(s) of my life.

And so starting tomorrow evening, I am officially on my three weeks Asian Summer Break – departing from one hot city arriving at another and moving along.

Intended destinations:

Hong Kong

China – Shenzhen & Macau

Thailand – Bangkok & Phuket

Click here to continue reading ‘Summer Break’

Okay now don’t ask me about the previous three. The fact that I have never mentioned them before on my blog should be a good indication that I won’t be doing so now. At least not for the time being.

But then why talk about No. 4?

The answer to this question is quite simple: To me No. 4 is special. Very special. It represents me. More like, it signifies the real me from within, the only difference being now I wear it on my sleeve. Sorry cross that. My ankle.

Like many other decisions of my life, this one too was taken on an impulse. Yup, pretty much like woke up one morning and the voice from deep down pronounced "It’s time for another". And imprinting a crawling Black Panther on my ankle was my choice from the very beginning. Yes, there were slight deviations – a fantastic tribal frog and the artistic wolf but the voice (from within) was hell-bent on the Panther.

Click here to continue reading ‘My Tattoo No. 4′

Yes people, me off to Pune early tomorrow morning with friends to attend the IndiBlogger Pune Blog Meet. The plan is to start off in the wee hours of the morning, eat breakfast at Khandala, make a couple of pit stops on the way and finally reach by 2 in the afternoon.

Pune Blog Meet is expected to start at four in the evening. And those interested in going, it’s not too late – Just head here and get registered.

Personally speaking, I was expecting the Pune Blog Meet to be just like a regular blog meet - something more along the lines of what Mel and I have been doing with our pet project, Mumbai Blog Meets.

However after taking a look at PBM’s overview e-mail, more than an evening of socialising, this meet sounds like a small-scale Blog Camp: Compulsory registration, only-bloggers-allowed rule, topics to be discussed already laid down and sponsor’s product pitching.

In plain words – the organisers here have an agenda.

Quite frankly, initially I was amused. I mean after being part of four successful (not blowing my own trumpet here) Blog Meets, I had come to believe that Blog Meets are simply about mingling with each other. And it didn’t necessarily have to involve only bloggers but also blog readers, bloggers in progress, blogger’s friends, in short any and everyone who is interested.

Anyway as it is often said, “Change is good”, keeping this mind hopefully Pune Blog Meet will turn out to be exciting despite its corporatised outlook. And then again I am with friends, so the weekend looks promising and super thrilling.

Pardon my Hindi here guys but seriously I am so bloody ticked off with this whole spamming facade. Since last night I have deleted exactly 187 spam comments. And guess what? They keeping popping back up.

Really, what the fuck! I mean here I believed myself to be “invincible”; armed with all the latest spam blocking bazookas. Then this bloody sucker appears from nowhere and in matter of hours manages to infect my sterile blogging space like some freaking jet-fuelled virus.

Click here to continue reading ‘Sale Kameene Spam Wale Tera Muh Kala‘

Barely into the year and its party time already and that too in a spectacular fashion.

Mumbai city’s most popular cultural festival, The Kala Ghoda Arts Festival is starting this coming weekend i.e. 2^nd Feb and will go on till the 10^th Feb. To more on the events, competitions and workshops, you can hop over to the festival’s official blog – The Kala Ghoda Gazette.

I plan to attend most of the days, if not all. And have enrolled myself in a Freelance Journalism Workshop, which will be conducted by Kavita Rao. Detailed information on the same can be found here, along with the enrollment procedure. Only 20 seats avaliable, so move your butt fast.

If any of you Mumbai folks will be or are interested in attending the Kala Ghoda festivities this coming weekend i.e. 2^nd and 3^rd Feb, maybe we could hook-up there. Just leave me a note in the comment section or email me and we can take it up from there.

Nobody said it was easy
It’s such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be this hard
Aww take me back to the start

                                          -The Scientist by Coldplay

You will be greatly missed.