Changes

I was just revisiting my blog today.. you know, getting familiar with what I should already have been familiar with. And I discovered this old post of mine. Made me sigh to think that there used to be a time when I used to have readers…:) The post also made me want to make some changes to my blog.. try out the new ‘template designer’ by blogger and generally play around with my blog. So I have spent a pleasant hour and a half painstakingly customising a template and just when it was about perfect, changing it into this off-the-shelf minimalistic version. Somehow I think I like this better now. I have also updated my ‘currently reading’ and ‘recently read’ columns, and have trimmed my blogroll too. Hah!! I have also removed a few redundant features and have basically cleaned out my blog. So, please, oh please dear imaginary reader mine, do stroll around this new version of my blog, and murmur appreciatively to yourself…

And speaking of Ads...

...I have also decided to post my pick for the top five Best and Worst Ads on TV (seen either today or in the near past):

The Best Five: -
5. Max New York Life Child Plans: 'Czechoslovakia'.
4. Sundrop Refined Oil: 'जलेबी!!'
3. Airtel: पापा का फ़ोन आया था न? + The first ad with Rahman and his tune.
2. Havells - Wires that don't catch fire. (what I love most abt this ad is that it's a 'silent' ad)
1. Orbit Chewing Gum: TOW the slaves lighting up a medieval city!

The Worst Five: -
5. BSNL Broadband - '2mbps superspeed, BSNL is all you need'
4. Airtel - The Mahadevan and Vidya Balan series.
3. Hyundai I10: 'It's zippy too'.
2. Havells - 'छूटे पसीना मुश्किल है जीना.'
1. Axe: The Axe Effect - ALL Ads in this series.

And speaking of Zoozoos...

.... here are my picks for the top ten zoozoo ads: -

10. Cricket Commentary on your mobile

9. Fashion Tips

8. Be the Star of the match

7. Dating Tips :)

6. IPL Alerts on your mobile

5. Phonebook Backup

4. Beauty Alerts

3. Vodafone Maps

2. Download Games

1. Stock Alerts

Honourable Mentions: -

1. Bhakti Geet

2. Fun Box with two year warranty

3. Chote recharge

4. Can't Answer? set a busy Message

5. Send a Voice SMS

Blogrolls

I almost started by apologising for the long hiatus from blogging. But then I figured - who am I kidding, this is more for personal satisfaction than for an actual readership. None exists anymore anyway. This realisation has given me the freedon therefore to post on the most inane of subjects. Blogrolls.

I was recently deleted from a blogroll because the owner of that particular blogroll likes to keep his blogroll short. (Ok, this entire post is actually so that I could put that sentence in!) I was most inconvenienced due to this newest obsession of his. See, I like to keep my blogroll short too. That is why, my blogroll is never an accurate account of all the blogs I follow. Actually, it is not even necessary that I follow the blogs appearing on my blogroll. Mostly, I use my blogroll as the shortest route to access the blogs that I do follow. i.e. I use my blogroll essentially to access other people's blogrolls.

So now you see why a trimming of the blogrolls by a person on my blogroll would greatly inconvenience me? Especially since I do not make any attempt to pagemark / bookmark the blogs I like or even remember their url nor do I know how to effectively use web history etc.? So here is an appeal to all on my blogroll - please do spare a thought for your readers - do not detrimentally tamper with your blogrolls. Additions will always be welcome ofcourse! :)

Of My recent doings or Of Boredom!

As most of you know, Blogger has this new feature that displays your blogroll in order of the most recent postings. It also apparently displays the name of the latest post! Well, I have not yet figured out how to make my own blogroll do such things... but I am tired of seeing my name near the end of other people's blogrolls. Also, a few people also asked me why it was that I had not posted for a long time. Well, I took both of these to be a compliment (since they show that I have more than one reader) and hence, decided to post. But then there was the small question of what to post. I have been doing next to NOTHING these days and spend most of my time fighting boredom. The situation is so bad that I recently realised that I no longer find sundays restful since I never end up working during the week (~sigh what a waste of a sunday~) and also, very shockingly discovered that I actually enjoyed sitting through four mind-numbing classes today. (It has just become such a rarity to have classes these days). So anyway.. for lack of a better topic, I decided to blog about my recent doings (or the lack thereof).

So as I said, classes are random and sporadic at best and we are usually let loose by around 11:15 am everyday! Therefore, in the recent past, I have: watched two movies 'in the hall' - Thoda Pyaar..Thoda Magic (best avoided) and Jaane tu.. ya Jaane Na (excellent movie - universally recommended), watched countless other movies and episodes of other sitcoms on my comp, perfected the art of being able to go into deeep sleep at any time of the day and yet feel sleepy at sharp 10:30 pm every night, read lots and lots of blogs, discovered exactly what internet addiction means, learned new abbrevations, shirked genuine responsibility etc.

I have also, followed in the footsteps of many of my other batchmates in taking up my very own 'activity-for-the-semester' and have found for myself a very patient teacher to teach me Table Tennis - just like others have taken up swimming, strumming, dancing, gymming, running, blogging etc. (refer also here). Here I have proudly discovered that I have this ability to pick myself up and present myself at the TT table day after day inspite of losing all but two games in the past two or three weeks. It must be because I have such a strong urge to learn, No? Or is it maybe because I have a thick skin?? *scratches head and wonders*.... So anyway...coming back to the point, while all of this is a lot of fun... this is not what I consider to be the highlight of my semester so far.

The highlight is - (drumrolls) I have regained my erstwhile reading speed and have a renewed interest in fiction - Yaaaay!!!!! See.. recently I was getting worried since four years of law school had slowly but steadily eaten into my reading speed and had somehow made me prefer non-fiction over fiction! (~shudders~) Now non-fiction is important and has its own place etc etc but to me fiction always comes first. right? So you can imagine how worried I was starting to get when my mind refused to obey my convictions and had started preferring non-fiction! So now that things are back to 'Normal' - I must tell you that I have 'consumed' four books in the recent past (all really really good): -
1. Life of Pi (for the second time round and I loved it better this time)
2. To Kill a Mocking Bird (No - I hadn't read it till recently - so sue me!)
3. The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency (Don't Laugh - it's a really good, well-written, non-children's book)
4. Tears of The Giraffe (2nd part of No.1 Ladies' Decetive Agency - equally well written).

I won't tell you about the first two books since I do not want a repeat of what happenned when I went into raptures about the Life of Pi (on it's 2nd reading) and tried to tell people how great the book is and all I got for my efforts were cold stares which said - "Is this some sort of an insult? I already know... see.. I have READ it!" So... I will only tell you (some other time) about the other two books - which I don't think are half as well known as they should be.

So till then - ciao! while I go think of something else to do for the rest of the day.