Chp 204. Bicentennial resolution

I made a new blog resolution. Having crossed my 200th post recently, I am going to call it my Bicentennial resolution.

To read at least one fiction novel a month, written by somebody who does not belong to the mainstream group of fiction-thriller I usually read like Jeffrey Archer, Robin Cook (L), Robert Ludlum (L), Louis L’Amour (L), Tom Clancy, Ken Follett, Frederick Forsyth, Mario Puzo and Ian Fleming.

Like how my good friend P would always criticize me: "sheesh, you guys are all so predictable! You’re all a bunch of typical stereotyped males with no appreciation for real literature".

And then we would get into a never ending argument about how my Ludlum main character could kick the ass of her Nora Roberts main character.

Anyway, jokes aside, such type of books, the number I have read, on my fingers, I could count, meekly.

Made a resolution to read such a book every month, and I’m telling you, the experience and journey were amazing right up to the very last punctuation.

The book I am talking about is "Half of a yellow sun" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and I highly recommend that you read it too.



Also available in other covers:



For those of you who were moved by movies like Hotel Rwanda and Sometimes in April and could watch them over and over again, this novel is a must read.

Even till now, I go teary-eyed at that part in "Hotel Rwanda" when all the foreigners were just about to leave in the bus amidst the rain and then suddenly a voice cries "No waitttt!" and then we see an exodus of people hoping to be transported along with the white people while the song of Wyclef Jean’s million voice** in Kinyarwanda dialect is played in the background.

Ni ryari izuba rizagaruka hejuru yacu? Ni nde uzaricyeza?

When will the sun return above us? Who will reveal it to us once again?

** nominated as best film song for the Golden Globe in 2005 and the Grammy Award in 2006.

Like I said before, this book was a totally new experience for me. It’s about the civil war in Nigeria during the Biafra separatist movement in 1967. Even though the war was coming from a woman’s perspective and had none of the usual Ludlum-Clancy style of counter-espionage and lethal upper-cuts that I’ve grown accustomed to, it was nevertheless an amazing piece of work, a masterpiece if I may say so, wherein I was transported all across the war ravaged country with each chapter engaged.


[ source ]

It’s like a drama, with lots of bloodshed, rape, sex, emotions, and innocence.

Having Rwandan best-friends for 4 years back in college, this novel definitely opened a sluice-gate for me. That, and also the fact that this bloodshed took place due to the same mistake the British made here in India – Conquering a particular region and then making a country out of it without considering any religious, ethnic, linguistic and cultural differences that have existed there for ages before they arrived. It’s like a déjà vu of what took place here in India.

Once again, I do hope you get to read this wonderful novel and I really must admit, the powerful and honest narration by the author is bitter-sweetly poetic.


[ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – source ]


--------------------------------


My favorite War quotes:

	War does not determine who is right - only who is left. -- Bertrand Russell
	When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die. -- Jean-Paul Sartre
	I think war might be God's way of teaching us geography. -- Paul Rodriguez
	It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. -- Voltaire, "War".
	Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because it is the one thing that stops women from laughing at them. -- John Fowles (The Magus, 1965)
	We have women in the military, but they don't put us in the front lines. They don't know if we can fight or if we can kill. I think we can. All the general has to do is walk over to the women and say, "You see the enemy over there? They say you look fat in those uniforms." -- Elayne Boosler

------------------------------

Interesting reads:

	The Nigerian Civil War - Causes, Strategies and Lessons learnt
	Quick Kill In Slow Motion: The Nigerian Civil War
	Reviews on "Half of a yellow sun"

Chp 203. Sweet Gothic Love

I came across these two “Gothic” music videos recently, and I love it. Being a Goth fan, I must say these people did an amazing job, and I really hope this small promotion here will give them a little bit more exposure to the rest of India and hopefully some of our fellow countrymen will realize how advanced the music scene is in the Northeast, contrary to popular belief that the only thing that exists in the Northeast is terrorism.

Click on “PLAY” of both the videos and then pause them and continue reading the rest of this post while you wait for the videos to load.

The Scavenger Project – Signs





Myth of Fate - Paradise




I am not getting into the whole debate on what exactly is Goth. It is too wide a genre to define in one sentence. The kind I am crazy about would be Gothic Metal, which as wiki aptly describes it, is “a combination of the aggression of heavy metal with the dark melancholy aesthetics of gothic rock.”

You have the Goth subculture, such as this picture below:



Nah, that’s not the kind of Goth I am into. The pictures below are the Goth I love, which showcase some of my favorite bands.












And that is why I stress once again that being Goth is too wide a term to use. In fact, if you look at the first picture above of the Marilyn Manson look-alike dude, many of you old timers like me would remember that popular rock band called KISS (Beth, I was made for loving you, Detroit rock city, Rock and roll all nite etc). Well, one thing is for sure, their music was nowhere near Goth and yet you can see the similarity in their looks.


[KISS]

Just like how Heavy Metal is too general as there are thrash metal, power metal, speed metal, death metal, glam metal, even nu-metal etc with different fan followings in each sub-genre, the kind of Gothic Metal I follow can come under “Symphonic Scandinavian Gothic”, since a majority of such bands come from Finland and other Scandinavian countries (Norway, Sweden and Iceland).

Of course I don’t like all Goth bands that have a female front (wo)man, like for example Cadaveria (former vocals of Opera IX) whose style is more extreme to the likes of death metal bands like Carpathian Forest, Satyricon, Deicide etc which are all way too dark for my taste.

[Cadaveria]


Likewise, I am not into Astarte, althought they are hot! After listening to a couple of their tracks, I had to sadly “shift+delete” the files.


[Astarte]

And there are many other Gothic bands I listen to, that do not have a female vocalist. It’s mainly about the similarity in style.

Some gothic black/death metal may be about Satanism, occultism, nihilism, necrophilism and all the other disturbing “isms” one can find in the dictionary, whereas the symphonic gothic metal that I love are usually about mysticism, nature (animism), medieval love songs, Norse mythology and even phantasmagoria.

However, there is no clear cult definition because of the continuous fusion of various styles and forms of music.

So rather than argue about what is the exact definition of Gothic, or the subtle differences between melodic black metal and symphonic black metal, or Gothic ambient and Gothic doom etc etc. let us all appreciate these two new Mizo bands and hope they continue to shine. In fact, "Scavenger Project" defines their music genre as ELECTROROCKGRESSIVE.

All the best to you guys! Show the world what you've got.

I’m just a little bit disappointed with some of the criticisms they get, mainly: “Why don’t you guys come up with your own style or originality? Why do you copy other styles?”

I find such people who talk like that to be quite ignorant about the music scene. I wonder what they mean by “original”. There has been so many many many different styles produced all over this tiny place that we call earth, that it would be extremely difficult to come up with a totally new style that has never been composed before.

If such people hear a “new” style and say “THAT is a new style”, then it is simply because they haven’t heard of it before, hence the reason they think it’s a new style. That is why I call them ignorant. Just because they’ve never heard of a particular style doesn’t mean it does not exist.

So keep rocking, Scavenger Project and Myth of Fate. Don’t listen to such unconstructive criticisms and may you take India by storm. Special wishes to the bassist of Scavenger Project - Jonah who’s the ex-bassist of IIIrd Sovereign and a good friend of mine.

Now, scroll up, watch the two videos that must have loaded by now, relax and admire their awesome talent. Cheers.

Chp 202. Cool viral – Kima 666

Before I joined the advertising world, the only viral I knew was the fever kind.

Never did I imagine it would be something my entire life would revolve around.

Viral:
"Any kind of digital advertising tool that can be forwarded to multiple users due to its engaging and entertaining content."

Or, according to my senior copywriter, a viral is something you work your ass on for months and finally does not get released. Lolz!

Here is a cool viral forwarded by my friend Jimbo the dimbo (ps. No, a dimbo is not a cross between a dumbo and a bimbo. And no I am not passing on subliminal messages to you. No, there aint no polar bears in Antarctica.)

Click here to go to the page.

It’s a promo of the recently released (in US) animation called Igor with the voices of John Cusack and Jay Leno!



There’s a small interesting game in the Igor microsite, so in true Advertising sense I was analyzing the specification, feasibility, implementation and execution of the promotion of that online standalone viral… or in layman’s term – I was simply wasting a few minutes of my office-hours.

And hey, I high scored!!!



Just a little bit funny though, that the exact score I got was 6:66! I knew it! There was always something wrong about me since I was a kid. The way I skinned the neighbor’s cat or pushed my nanny down the flights of stairs always seemed weird because the other friends I knew back then never used to do those kinda stuff.

They used to tell me their folks didn’t allow them to do that, but as for me, I just simply obeyed the strange voices in my head

And then when I was in 9th standard, those voices told me to buy the latest album of Backstreet Boys and that was when I stopped listening to those horrible voices, for good.



So there you have it. Me a 666.

In other online related news I came across today, my good friends from samaw.com mentioned that there was a google pagerank update recently and zawlbuk.net at PR 5 is currently the highest among all Zo-centric sites according to samaw.com.

dipr.mizoram.gov.in is also currently at PR 5, but I read somewhere that government (official) sites are given higher priority for SEO or something like that so I guess it does not count.

hmar.net and delhithurawn.net are currently down. Can anybody explain?
( Lal, I told you not to fiddle around with the codes while drinking )

My blog is currently a PR 4. Yay!!!

Here is a list of some of the Zo centric sites with latest PR:

PR 5 - zawlbuk.net
PR 4 – youthim.com
PR 4 - zotalk.com
PR 4 – lelte.net
PR 4 – vanglaini.org
PR 4 - lengzem.info
PR 3 – lawrkhawm.com
PR 3 – samaw.com
PR 3 – buannel.com
PR 3 – maraland.net
PR 3 – ralvengtu.com
PR 3 – kolasib.com

Check your blog PR here at PR Checker.

Check Page Rank of any web site pages instantly:

This free page rank checking tool is powered by Page Rank Checker service

Our site misual.com is currently at PR 2, so we will try to figure out where we went wrong in a jiffy. I hope we didn’t get penalized for something we were not supposed to do

Until then, keep blogging and viraling.

Updated today - October 2nd, 2008:

ok this is really freaking creepy now. Today I came to office and checked my status at this browser game I am hooked to, and I have currently accumulated 666 points!!!! (I have censored some of my important resource amount and army strength because you never know if my enemy tribes are spying here... lolz. )

Chp 201. Lighter not in pocket

 
I feel my breath grow heavier,
and the constriction within my eye socket.
It is time to light up another,
but alas, my lighter isn’t there in my pocket!


Where could my lighter be?
I ain't afraid of the supernatural or ghosts;
But since I came to webchutney,
more than a hundred lighters I have lost.


I wonder where my lighter is,
probably lying next to some guy’s "gear".
I feel so sorry for that lighter
when I think of all the smell it must endure.


Have you ever thought about it-
the number of pockets my lighter must have been in?
From Sanket to Sidhwa to Amit.
Maybe that’s the real reason why it is now in hiding.


Sometimes I just close my eyes
and try to imagine where my lighter can be.
Entering pockets of different sizes
I really hope my CEO didn’t take it back to Delhi.


Even among the girls it could land,
lying somewhere unnoticed at Manisha’s table;
moving from there into Meg’s hand
& finally settling next to Tarana’s unmentionable.


In the end it doesn’t matter
whether my lighter ends up next to where it itch.
I’ll find out, sooner or later.
Hell, I even suspect the peeps from Bombay Bitch.
 
 

Chp 200. Post number 200

Ok, actually it’s not my 200^th post. It’s my 200^th Chapter! Because a couple of years ago, I used to occasionally post “Chapter Interludes” in-between Chapters. “Chapter Interludes” were short posts, maybe just a sentence or two, very much like the twitter of today.

5 years I’ve been blogging now. And it has definitely shaped and moulded me into what I am today. I was never the writer kind of guy back in school and engineering college. But that one incident at IIMB changed everything.

For 5 years I’ve been maintaining my forte – article based long copy, usually covering one entire issue completely and with an introduction and conclusion, while maintaining a flow throughout the article.

I can say at least 95% of my posts have more than 1500 words each, and to have more than two lakh visitors even with that length is something I am truly grateful to you all for.

I know, I feel bad that I do not blog about all those wonderful tags and memes I get from all my amazing friends around the blogosphere. It sounds so… prudish and egoistic of me to ignore the tags. But much as I would like to return all those favors, I also have to maintain the so called “brand image” of my blog – strictly article based posts [ General | Humor | Mizo-centric ] or short stories and poetries.

And I am glad many of you understand me for doing that.

For people who think blogging is a waste of time, let me fill you in on some of my experiences as a regular blogger.

1. Vast improvement when it comes to language usage and article framing. It also gives courage to people who have always been afraid to speak out.
   
2. Knowledge increment. With today’s easy access to the internet, any info you require on anything is available on the net. By reading other people’s blog, I learnt a great big deal about stuff I never knew. Sometimes I do my own researches too.
   
3. Social network! I have found a lot of new friends from blogging and my bond with such people is extremely strong because we all share the same wavelength.
   
4. Exposure to the unknown world. It is always exciting to wander into new domains we’ve never explored before. Blogging provides different platforms for that.
   
5. Recognition. This is also something that comes automatically once you cross a certain milestone. You are recognized not just socially but also professionally and your entire blog itself becomes one huge résumé, which to me is the biggest gain I got from blogging.
   
6. And of course, apart from your normal salary, there is always the extra side income you get from Google Adsense revenue. Lolz.

I can go on and on, but let’s leave it at that for now.

If I ever reach a position where I can give advice to other new bloggers, then my two advices would be:

1. ALWAYS accept criticisms. Sometimes you can even ASK for criticisms. Correct yourself from those criticisms. If you are not getting any criticisms
   • Nobody’s reading your blog.
     
   • Your so called buddies are not real friends, because true friends criticize each other honestly.
     
   • Or you’re the kind who can’t take criticisms so your friends are afraid to criticize you.
2. Learn how to differentiate between constructive criticisms and people criticizing you just for the sake of criticizing.

200 chapters and many more to come. I am eagerly looking forward to the bright future with fingers poised and ready on the ctrl+S keys

I will be moving into a slightly more flash hybrid blog with better GUI and UIDs, while maintaining the same content-driven USP.

And I’ve just joined twitter, finally. Catch me at twitter.com/Mizohican for lots of lovely twits. Errrr…

Cheers to you on my Bicentenary!

Chp 199. It's so lonely at the Top!

Latest EPL Standing as of September 22, 2008
Position	Team	GP	W	D	L	Pts	GF	GA	GD
1.	Arsenal	5	4	0	1	12	11	2	9
2.	Chelsea	5	3	2	0	11	10	3	7
3.	Liverpool	5	3	2	0	11	5	2	3
4.	Aston Villa	5	3	1	1	10	10	7	3
5.	West Ham United	5	3	0	2	9	11	9	2
6.	Sunderland	5	2	1	2	7	5	6	-1
7.	Hull City	4	2	1	1	7	5	8	-3
8.	Blackburn	5	2	1	2	7	6	11	-5
9.	Manchester City	4	2	0	2	6	9	7	2
10.	Fulham	4	2	0	2	6	4	4	0
14.	Manchester United	4	1	2	1	5	4	4	0

[This is just the appetizer. Read on for more! ]

Time for a brief football break!

I can’t believe I haven’t written any football post in a loooong time! A new EPL season has already begun and I haven’t written anything about my team Arsenal. Gasp, I am ashamed to call myself an Arsenal fan.

With new work and new commitment, I still find the time to watch ever single Arsenal game on TV here in Mumbai. And even though Mumbai may be divided on the whole marathi manoos incidents and who is supporting who etc, one thing is for sure though – Here in the suburbs of Andheri East, there is a HUGE Arsenal fan base! Lolz.

Lemme explain.

For many of us who don’t have dish TV and Tata Sky etc, we subscribe to this one cable operator. And that cable operator, the stingy bastard that he is, gives us only THREE freaking channels for sports. In those three channels, he gives us ESPN, Star Sports, Neo Sports, DD Sports, Star Cricket, Ten Sports and Zee Sports, selectively broadcasting only three channels at a time depending on the program that is currently going on.

We have to call him up to request for a change in those channels if a particular sports channel we want to watch is not being broadcasted, and depending on the majority, he switches the channels. And most of the time his number is engaged.

Of course, cricket is what’s shown on those three channels most of the time.

But then, the funny thing is, every single Arsenal match is shown! Suppose there’s an Arsenal game at 7:30pm. Till 7:29pm there is some boring cricket match on Star Cricket or NEO sports broadcasted, and then at exactly 7:30, the screen suddenly goes bzzzzz for a fraction of a second and then ESPN or Star Sports comes on, broadcasting the Arsenal game.

I likeee very mucheee.

I long to meet the other Gunners supporters around my area here in Andheri East. I want to know these other guys who are calling up our cable operator every time there is an Arsenal match. I want to meet them, and watch Arsenal games together. After all, Arsenal fans are ultra cool dudes, unlike ManUtd and Chelsea supporters who are greedy and obnoxious and only after money.

(pssst psssst… this is a football post. You really think there’s not going to be any ManUtd Chelsea bashing? )

The other day I was quite pissed.

I missed the UEFA Champions League match between Arsenal and Dynamo Kiev recently. So the next day, the first thing I did when I reached office was visit arsenal.com

And what do I find?

Suddenly arsenal.com is no longer mozilla firefox friendly! Aaaaargh.

Here are a few screen shots I took that day.







WTF is this? How the hell are we supposed to read the articles when the stupid embedded Ad is blocking half the article!!???

The Ad is a Flash application so I could not drag it away from the article, and there was no CTA (call to action) to close the freaking Ad.

The webpage looked fine using internet explorer though. And I hate IE. I hate anything that tries to monopolize a market just because they have the moolah (yeah sometimes the communist in me speaks louder than the capitalist in moi).

Compatible only with IE? This kinda goof-ups should happen only to ManUtd and Chelsea homepages, because it fit in perfectly with their ideology and so called team spirit. But not with Arsenal, which is about true talent and genuine football spirit.

Last night ManUtd and Chelsea played. Guess who won? The young Gunners! Lolz. The game ended in a draw, benefiting Arsenal by a great deal.

ManUtd are still not even in the top 10 even till now. I’m telling you, all that hype about Berbatov joining and Ronaldo choosing club loyalty over money etc is just plain BS. This time the Red Devils are going to be relegated. Hyuk hyuk.

You could see the desperation in the way they played. Ronaldo started his usual falling down tricks but that wasn’t enough to beat the Blues. Man, that Ronaldo guy falls down so easily, sometimes if I just shake my TV, there he falls!



And sometimes when ManUtd aren’t able to win any match, they start playing volleyball! You guys should have seen that goal attempt by Scholes the other night when they played against Zenit St.Petersburg for the UEFA CL. Or maybe he was attempting another "Hand of God" shot à la Maradona, except of course, this was not so subtle and it was more like a beach volleyball smash. Hahaha. What will these guys think of next?

Watch that hilarious video here, courtesy NaziSriLanka



Really that desperate to score?

And of course good ol’ Sir Alex was quick to come in his defense saying it was "instinctive". Lolz. More than 20 years that dude has been playing professional football and you call that instinctive? Yeah I agree. After all, that is how ManUtd have been winning most of their matches – through unfair means. You are so right, Sir Alex. That was indeed instinctive. All hail the Mancheaters United!

Chp 198. Different tastes, different humor.

Over 4 million viewers.

That’s the amount of people who tuned in to watch the first episode of Bigg Boss 2 on TV.

Over 11 million viewers.

That’s the amount of people who watched Bigg Boss 2 on its opening week.

Damn…


[Pic source: rediff.com]

I scoffed when the show first debuted. Well, now I am munching on a very tasteless humble pie. 11 million is no laughing matter.

*shakes head, goes to the kitchen, heaves a sigh, puts on blue jeans, submits visa to rude grey haired man, collects pension fund from bank, comes back to the lap-top, still shakes head*

I know it is bad manners to make fun of what people watch, but still… Bigg Boss? That too 11 freaking million viewers??? That’s like 11 million people I hope I’ll never be stuck in an elevator with, who’ll probably talk only about the previous night’s episode…

- did you see the nightie Payal wore? It was so horrendous!
- Sanjay is so funny, the way he makes tea and yawns…
- I think Raja has the hots for Sambhavna, because I think he was thinking about her the whole day…
- Watching the contestants go for their evening walk is so exciting and it makes my adrenalin rush! Such electrifying strides…
- I swear to God Rahul hums when he’s in the loo. Here, listen closer…

Arrrrrgh!

To me, all that kinda translates as, “Hey! I don’t have a life. Woohoooo.”



But then again, I shouldn’t judge people. That’s a bad thing to do. A huge chunk of these 11 million viewers would probably call me crazy too if they saw the kinda stuff I watch on TV.

I am a sit-com addict, and talk-show hosts and stand-up comedians like Jay Leno, Jimmy Kimmel, Ellen DeGeneres, Russell Peters, Ryan Stiles, Wayne Brady etc. Put them all in a house à la Bigg Show, and that’d be something I would definitely not miss. Something like “The last Comic Standing” maybe, which is another favorite show of mine.



I love people who make me laugh. Not surprising that my IDOL and HERO is none other than the great, oh so great, HOMER SIMPSON!





And that’s exactly what I love. A bunch of people cracking me up with hilarious jokes and puns. Sometimes I love to see people get roasted. And then sometimes, I love to watch people get hurt!

Does that make me a bad person?

By pain, of course I don’t mean in that evil, sadistic, malefic, psycho kinda way. I love shows like “Whacked out sports” on AXN where they show people getting hurt for doing silly silly totally unnecessary stunts.

And this is exactly the reason why I try not to mock people who watch Bigg Boss, because having stayed away from home for a long time, I know from experience that many people find it strange too that I enjoy watching boxing matches, The Contender, football fans fight etc etc.

Suppose during a basketball match, two people fighting for the ball suddenly banged their heads against each other… I would laugh, while most people would show genuine concern. Of course I wouldn’t laugh if there’s blood and broken bones and brain pieces. Duh! I wouldn’t laugh if I witness a horrible car accident, or a bomb blast victim, or a guy on youTube executed by a masked man wielding an AK-47. Those are extremely gory and make me nauseous to the core.

But if a defender kicks the ball into the referee’s urrrmm… thingie by mistake, or Adam Sandler throws the ball at that same spot [The longest Yard] or a kid inflicts immense pain on two adults [Home Alone], I laugh my ass out.

Yet there are those who see no humor in all that. To them, we have a crude sense of humor, and to us, they have no sense of humor. I guess all of us have our own criteria for definition, and the problem is, all of us try to measure everything according to what we are.

I still remember so well back in IIMB when Peeyush threw the basketball at the pillar (post) after scoring a big basket, as a sign of intimidation to the opponents, when the ball rebounded and hit him square on the forehead! I laughed out so much I nearly pee’d, and yet all the others around me were giving me a dirty patronizing look for laughing at somebody’s “misfortune”.

That is why I am extremely careful over here. I’ve learnt that everybody’s different, and just because people laugh at this kind of stuff back in Mizoram doesn’t mean that people outside Mizoram do.

What caused this big difference between people from the North-east and other Indians? Is it because of our tribal background? Back in Engineering college, the exchange students from Rwanda too loveeeee to laugh at each other when one of them goes through a minor mishap during a football/basketball game. So how come those Rwandans and Mizos share the same sense of humor? The two would have not even met, even as microbes, during the period of Gondwanaland.

The question I’ve often been asked regarding this is, “How would you feel if you tripped clumsily while running after a football and people started laughing at you? You’ll feel bad naaa.” And my honest answer? “No, why the heck would I feel bad about it?”

Seriously. Why would I?

And like I mentioned earlier, all of us compare things based on what we are, and so that is why I am me and you are you and I am not you. Basic mathematics.

Enjoy Bigg Boss 2. Hyuk hyuk hyuk.