Some Documented Truths

There is turbulence lurking under the calm surface exterior.

It turned out to be a late night on Saturday as I was finishing off the final master interviews for the documentary that I have been taking part in.

Just so that you don’t feel completely confused and in-over your head .. The documentary gives you an insight into the lives and perceptions of an NRI living in India (me); an Indian girl – NB - who is born and raised in India and an NRI guy – AC - living overseas.  The documentary goes on to look at each character’s perspectives on relationships and thoughts on arranged and love marriage.

In some of my previous posts, I have discussed the type of person you are attracted to as well as the importance of mental and physical chemistry between people. 

As some of you know, I’ve also set myself up as a guinea pig whilst exploring the route to marriage by way of the typical Indian matchmaker / priest as well as a matrimonial website (and I’ve done this because in 2 years of being here – it just seems more complicated when it comes to meeting men who know what they want !) 

I came to realise a few things …

1. No one is what they appear to be
2. I cannot and will not compromise my personality and who I am for ANYONE
3. I am not arranged marriage material

I already knew these things but now after taking part in the documentary – I just ‘know’ those things. 

I got to hear a few things said by the male protagonist and somehow I just wasn’t surprised that a good looking, smart, educated male would go on to ‘talk down’ on the modern woman and her ways of life .. specifically – he was talking about ME !

This man – who has known me for all of a week perhaps – has spoken out about how he felt I was ‘clingy’, ‘could not take a hint that he was not interested’, ‘overly flirtatious’ and apparently ‘disrespectful to my mother’ ! 

This description is in the context of me being someone who is considering ‘an arranged marriage’ (and by arranged I don’t mean that I would just jump at whoever my parents point me at but in the sense that I’m at least open to the idea of meeting men who are interested in a serious LTR via my family / relatives etc)

That’s just a load of f**king crock mate !  At some point whilst I was being interviewed I eventually lashed out and pretty much cussed this man out.

Why ?? Because in his entire description of me – he failed to mention that HE made a MOVE ON ME - we kissed and fooled around a bit (and really it was just a bit!) and of course he totally forgot about that ! So I told it like it was ! The irony behind all of this was that I dropped him to the airport a few days later and even hung out with him for an hour in the waiting lounge where he pecked me good bye … Some people are just twisted in their thoughts.  Maybe he should have thought about the fact that perhaps his actions led to me flirting more with him than I would normally do so.

This is why I’m not made for an arranged marriage scenario … there are too many ‘do’s & don’ts’ that one has to follow – especially the women … there’s way too much protocol on how one should behave, and what is considered acceptable in the company of a man who is looking to get married.  That’s just rubbish as far as I go … who is the man trying to marry – ME or the FAKE ME who has to pretend to be someone that the guy would ‘want to’ marry ??

In one of my previous posts I wrote “You can be assured  that the other person is never actually going to understand your view point because they are mentally just not ready to accept anything beyond their personal experiences and understanding”

In another post, I wrote about Actions & Interpretations – and I honestly believe it holds true especially with the newfound knowledge I have of this man – who I thought was a pretty cool guy.   His actions – intentional or not (and he’d have to be pretty thick not to realise that everything he says is going to be shown on TV and people will make assumptions and my family will also watch this!) – have condoned any future of even a friendship between us. 

I wrote a poem – Actions -  quite a few years ago which I reckon summarizes the situation. 

Apologies to all for the rant – but I was really annoyed about this !  I don’t judge you – you don’t judge me  - is it that hard a concept to grasp ??

The Ugly Truth

Life – Relationships – People and Perceptions … it’s all about the ugly truth isn’t it ?

Went to watch this movie last week and it was (in my humble opinion) bloody brilliant !  A quick synopsis of the movie would be along the lines of  …..

A fairly attractive TV producer, Abby Richter (Katherine Heigl) who is a slightly neurotic control freak comes head-to-head with her new hard core TV anchor Mike Chadway (Gerald Butler) who promises to spill the ugly truth on what makes men and women tick !  

When I first heard about the movie – I thought it might be one of those total rom-coms which I am definitely not into … I didn’t even go to check it out in its opening week … It was a total last minute decision to go watch a movie after work … apparently quite a few other co-workers thought the same thing as I bumped into them outside by the ticket booth.

This movie is ‘in your face’ with enough vulgar humour to entertain a ship full of horny sailors !  In fact Butlers’ character is the epitome of crass !  He totally objectifies women and basically guides men on how to get their mack on !  It is hilarious though !  Everyone in the theatre were cracking up !

Sure the critique in me noticed a few continuity errors but they were a bit minor and most of the audience would be too involved in the actual scene to notice it … I did think the movie lacked a stronger adhesive to keep it together – the scenes kept jumping into a another picture almost.

I mean come on … how does a woman who can’t stand the obnoxious behaviour of a man suddenly be able to confide in him her fears of forming a relationship AND allow him to take her shopping on the same day !  There could have been a bit more of a build-up to the story behind that.

The idea of the Ugly Truth has been playing in my head for a few days now … in fact I should have posted this last week but didn’t get around to it … I have a few theories of my own which I’ll share over the next few weeks.

Until then, if you haven’t seen the movie – go and check it out – it’s worth the laugh =)

Until I found Cardboard Love

So it’s been a ‘not so good morning’ for me … and it’s coming to lunch time … and I have found some Cardboard Love … If you haven’t heard about this site, then I urge you to go and visit it … I can guarantee that you will get a warm and fuzzy feeling from the time you enter the site …

I saw this and I smiled … my first smile for today and it only took 7 hours from the time I woke up to find a reason to smile.

Everything will go away if I could be held right now … Yup .. that’s what I need …

So who’s going to hold me ?

A Not So Good Morning

My morning started off quite badly … My mood went from

‘Good Morning Peeps’

to

‘yeah remove the good from the morning’

and then to

‘feeling disillusioned by all around me’ …

Is it possible to have Thursday morning ‘blahs’ ?

It didn’t look or even feel like my day would get remotely better … the air around me seems sort of heavy (or maybe it’s the quarter bottle of vodka I drank last night by myself – no not by ‘myself’ but I had vodka whilst AA, my friend / colleague had a quarter bottle of Teachers whiskey since it was his last day in the office) …

I’m not hung over – nowhere close to it.  The morning  started off with me wanting some bagels only to be told that the bagels I had bought yesterday had been eaten by others at home … No biggie – peanut butter and jam sandwich should work … My mother came in to meet me … that conversation took a random turn and got pretty heated … it was nothing serious but I think it affected me …

Of course it affected me – no wonder I’m feeling this way … the frustration that was within me seemed to keep building up … I could feel the tears of accumulate behind the whites of my eyes … wanting a release … I stood under the shower – washing my hair – and waited for some sort of epiphany but no such luck … (speaking of ‘release’ – AA would totally be shouting out ‘Release Me’ right about now and making fun of me !)

Between wanting to shout out some profanities and just get the hell out of my house … I still felt trapped … I left home today and didn’t say bye to my mother … my father as usual didn’t exactly acknowledge my greeting or goodbye … No wonder I get worked up on family related debates !

I got lost in random thoughts – even more than I usually do on my way to work … It’s like I’ve reached the cross road of my life … which way do I turn ??  Lately I seem to be fighting this internal battle – and I’m probably not even all aware of it …

I miss my boys right now more than ever … especially since it was JA’s birthday yesterday … didn’t even get to speak to him as he was with family …

Now to find something else to distract me from this mood …

To Text or Not To Text With An X

I came across a great post on Primer magazine titled The Politics of Texting : New Technology, New Drama by Adam Baxter and it instantly conjured up an image of a round table discussion I was having with a group of friends whilst filming for the documentary that I participated in.

The subject of conversation that day included the implications of putting an ‘x’ at the end of a text message and more so about how my friends and I (who are all technically NRI’s who have moved to India recently) found that some people really ‘read into’ the smallest details behind text messages.

I’ve actually had a conversation with a girlfriend who analysed the way a guy had sent me a text and what it meant … That’s right – she looked at whether or not he put a smiley or a winky or the cheeky tongue (=P) ..

My first hand look at the art of flirting by text ! Apparently all those mean that a guy / girl is showing signs of affection and being flirty … to me .. that’s just the way I normally text … with expression.

The person on the receiving end is unable to see my face nor can they hear my tone of voice – and depending on the way the message is written (all lower case; all caps which is the equivalent of ‘shouting’) it very well could come out the wrong way. I can be quite sarcastic when I joke around, so I tend to put =P or ;) or LOL (laughs out loud) thus allowing the recipient to know my mood and frame of mind when I send the message.

According to SG, one of my guy friends “a message with an ‘x’ is better than a message without an ‘x’ especially when it’s from a person whom you know as it brings a smile to my face and makes you feel that the person cares for you.” At the same time – he doesn’t think too much about whether he’s putting smiley faces or ‘x’s – because his friends will understand what he actually means.

Another friend AA, reckons that if the recipient is a chilled out / open minded individual – they wouldn’t really read into the ‘x’ at the end of a message … however a person who is a bit more conservative will look further into it and wonder ‘why’ would someone use such a ‘personal expression’ ….

Personally, I will only put ‘x’, ‘xxx’, ‘xoxo’ or ‘mwaah’ at the end of a text if I know the person very well – regardless if they are male or female – single or in a relationship. I don’t think too much about it. I will NOT however do that with just ‘anyone’ especially if I get the impression that the other party might even be remotely interested in me – I don’t want to give off the wrong impression.

The problem with text messages as highlighted in the above article is that the ‘meaning behind’ the SMS is lost or often misunderstood. Why ? Because we all have a different perspective on how we look at and digest information given to us.

I’ve noticed that since moving to Mumbai, India – almost EVERYONE I know seems to communicate using text messages, IM’s, Facebook or Twitter and no one seems to believe in picking up the phone and ‘talking’ to each other !

There have been occasions over the last 2 years where I’ve actually had to sit back and assess a few of the text messages I have received and tried to figure out exactly what they mean or imply. e.g. when I first got here, a guy I’d met who seemed quite into me – would call me quite a bit; and then as we both got busy with work – the ‘texting’ came about … and for the life of me I had no idea if this man was still flirting or if he was even interested. I’m just not ‘used to’ having conversations with people over ‘texts’ !

Just yesterday whilst writing this post, it struck me that this guy KB that I’m getting to know – for the past month has always called me ‘diva’ in his messages … yeah that didn’t happen yesterday. Coincidentally – I barely heard from him all day except for a minutes in the morning (so at least he was taking my calls). Later in the day – I sent him a message (yeah I’m guilty for doing that) telling him to ‘cheer up – it was the end of the day – and as his messages came across as frustrated’ … No response ! (Don’t blame him either)

Basically I got ‘used to’ the fact that he addressed me in a certain way and it was out of my comfort zone when he didn’t .. it made me wonder - ‘is all ok’ …. I know I don’t need to think that way – however for the purpose of this post – I allowed my mind to wonder about it. I still sent him a ‘good morning’ message today … and I got a ‘diva’ this morning woohoo !

Oh and ironically – just the other day I told this same guy that ‘I felt that for some reason I couldn’t just pick up the phone and call him as I would with others as I feel I might be interrupting his work’ to which he told me not to worry and just call him at any time and if he couldn’t talk he would let me know …

It’s an obvious – stares in your face – fact. From my social circle, I’d say that 6 out of 10 use short hand SMS or acronyms whilst chatting ‘online’ i.e text message, IM, and email.

I absolutely detest receiving messages in short hand. I really do. I find it annoying to read and decipher messages in a combination of upper and lower case characters and what looks and reads like atrocious grammatical errors ! But unfortunately for me – the rest of the population around me don’t care a damn because short hand SMS is now perfectly acceptable ! *sigh*

In essence, Social Networks are Changing Conversation. There is no shortage of communication between people - email, instant messaging, and text messages, but there is a definite shortage of clear and concise human communication – basically we now lack the art of conversation !

It just seems these days, that the only people I speak to are my ‘good friends’ whilst texting is when I can’t really be bothered to ‘speak’ to the other party. Intellectual conversation seems to be a dying art form according to me – at least around the people I am surrounded by because everyone is so damn busy with their own lives. During the day, whilst at work – when I feel like exercising my vocabulary skills, then I will either text / IM / FB message my friends (depending on how and where they came to mind) – however the majority of the time – we end up in a conversation over MSN or Gtalk so that we are able to at least multi-task and get work done at the same time. Personally I don’t indulge in too many personal ‘calls’ whilst at work.

To highlight my point, luckily I found some valid stats about this on an article in the Business Standard. Furthermore, VitalAnalytics states that India is currently the second largest mobile market in the world after China, and nearly 10-12 million mobile subscribers are added monthly in the country.

Do you realise the implication of just how many text messages are sent out on daily basis ? No wonder people are getting confused and mixed signals about text messages and their deep dark hidden mysteries !

For those that ‘read into’ the messages that you receive – my only advice to you is ‘Don’t Do It’ ! Especially if you live in a multi-cultural environment – there are people from all sorts of backgrounds and each culture has their own way of communicating – with or without the ‘x’s and ‘mwaahs’ and ‘hugs’ … So don’t dwell too much and just take the message for what it is … read it but don’t read into it !

What do you think ??

Some Interesting Articles

1. Mobiles Are Not Just For Talking
2. Sexting : Foreplay via Text Messaging
3. Kolkatta has highest mobile, PC penetration among Students
4. The SMS Rage

Cyber Highway Traffic Records

I’ve been meaning to look at my traffic records for a while now … I have looked at them but never got around to actually making ground notes on what my driving skills are … and I’d like to think I’m a wicked driver … I could easily ride with the lads and put some of them to shame ;)

Without further adieu I shall share with you the fine print that the cyber patrol officers have sent my way and perhaps with all your experience you can give your neighbour a hand on the best way forward :)

Alexa Rank Report

A few months ago, I installed the Alexa Traffic Rank button on my blog page after Kaddu talked about  "Traffic"-(k)ing! Or Queen? as my curiosity (and ego I reckon) got the better of me.

When I had originally put it up – my rating was somewhere up in the 630,000 mark …. sounds good eh ? Not really – in fact the way it works on Alexa is that the ‘lower your ranking – the better your web presence’.  Then maybe last month when I checked in on it – I saw that my rank had gone down to the 350,000 zone … progress baby ! And September stats show that I’m down at 260,000 ! Awesome ! 

I also managed to find out how popular my blog is ranked in other countries … My Sporadic Reflections seem to be going down well in India … and when you think about the overall big picture – out of millions of blogs around in Bloggerville – my blog ranking is  28,120 in India and 186,541 in the US

As you can see from the below pie-chart; the majority of my readers are from India and the US – and a tiny 1% readership from Malaysia too … Thanks guys !  Although I’m wondering where are my UK peeps !!!!

If you don’t already have an Alexa Traffic Widget – then you might want to consider trying it.  It’s free and gives you some statistical data about the usage and traffic on your blog.

Google PageRank

I have been reading about PageRanks for a while now but never quite figured out what my own Google PageRank was until I came across some statistics from IndiBlogger – which is a blog community that I am a part of.

Apparently in May I had a page rank of 2 and in June & August a rank of 3 … but September is showing a big fat Zero :(  I still don’t quite understand HOW I can attain a rank or WHAT I can do to maintain a rank … but hell I’m just excited that I even GOT RANKED !   By the way PageRank is measured on a scale of ONE to TEN and assigned to individual pages within a website, not the entire website.

Of course, I’m the kind of girl with ants in my pants and I set about trying to figure out how the hell the Google PageRank system works and came across a few helpful posts.  I’m still trying to figure out How To Improve A Websites Google Ranking – so if this makes sense to you – help me out !

IndiRank by IndiBlogger

IndiRank is a system that allows IndiBlogger to create a ranking amongst Indian Blogs.  Each blog is manually verified before being allowed into the system – however the final ranking process is automated.  Blogs are ranked on a scale of 1 to 100 – and the higher the score – the better the ranking.

Last month I’d received notification from IndiBlogger that I had a ranking of 82/100 … I’ve been a part of the community for a few months – and it was a nice feeling to know that I got ranked :)

Unknown to me was that in May my rank was of 79, and through June – Aug it was at 82 … but September has seen it dip down to 75.   However – I’m not so worried about that … IndiRank gets refreshed every month, so a blog's previous rank will have no bearing on it's present rank.

So there you have it … my cyber records right here in black & white (with some hints of colour) … I did find that I have some funny 'key words’ that seemed to drive traffic to my blog but I’ll go into that in more detail once I’ve mastered the art of the correct use of key words to increase blog traffic !

If you have your own cyber records – why not share them with your neighbours so that we can perhaps gain some tips and tricks :)

Mumbai Moments Captured

Further to my last post about how Al Pitcher uses photography of day to day things found in whichever city he is in … I reckon that I too have quite a few ad hoc images that I feel can only be seen in Mumbai (and around India) …

Drum Rolls …. Raising Curtains ….

The Motorbiker Series

It’s quite rare to see ‘just’ two (yes the number 2) people on a motorbike in India … I’ve travelled to Bangalore, Delhi, Calcutta, Kerala, and Goa .. and everywhere – it’s the same ! You get more than 2 people on a motorbike !

Here’s a classic that I captured with not 1 or 2 or 3 but FIVE passengers – of which only ONE was wearing a helmet !

Talk about recklessness !  The traffic out here alone is enough to worry me from ‘inside’ a car !

I can’t even imagine how people on motorbikes feel !

If that’s not bad enough – traffic in Mumbai especially - is so haphazard – no one believes in indicating; the horns are used as naturally as we breathe – it’s deafening ! 

Whilst driving to Pune one weekend .. but before that I will digress as there’s a fab joke that Al Pitcher did on this .. Pune a city about 180 kms away from Bombay is pronounced Poo-neh, also be known as Puna.  Al was talking to one of the reporters and said how he was looking forward to coming and performing in ‘PUNE’ – pronounced ‘pyoon’ but meaning ‘peon’ as in attendant / messenger in India …

So anyway going back to my drive in Pune – I came across the rare sight of just two people on a motorbike …

Seems alright doesn’t it … two people, both WITH helmets as well … quite an smooth looking road and quite empty as well from this angle … Now take a closer look at them ….

yup … that’s right … She is READING a BOOK whilst sitting as a pillion passenger !!!  Damn and I had thought WOW – I have found the model motor biker couple who could inspire and influence others to wear helmets and ride around safely !  But seriously – hats off to this woman for being brave enough to read whilst on the back of a motorbike ! Don’t get me wrong, I love reading but not at the risk of my life !

And on that note – if you don’t find multiple riders on a motorbike … you will always find the solitary hero riding around like there’s no care in the world …

… and it’s because he knows that he’s going to be safe on the roads leading to Chandigarh because he’s got his HELMET tucked into his ARM !

That’s all from me on the Motorbiker Series … I do have many more funny moments captured and will share it with you all over the next few weeks … After all can’t give you all the photographic evidence I have managed to acquire in one shot now – I got to make sure you come back for more … =)