Saturday, February 24, 2007
User feedback time
Okay, in response to the response to the previous post I am interested to see who enjoyed which post best of the 190-odd posts (250+ if you count writtenword) on this blog. Of course you don't have to wade through all the posts again but if you remember something that you liked, it will be most interesting for me to see
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10 comments:
Ok, I'll go first. I looked through your posts from the last 6 months and this is what I enjoyed
1. Any blogs with pictures - makes it more interesting, divali pics, halloween pic (I even showed it to Seshu), curious kitty pic, timbaktu pics etc)
2. Most of your Timbaktu posts were interesting and informative
3. The posts where you write about the things which I think you enjoy - such as the Coaching Rohit post and the Bijapur teaching posts
4. I enjoy posts about people I know - family, friends, familar places etc
All that being said - this is your blog not mine, and the blog should reflect YOU not ME.
5. Humorous posts - links to that Indian stand-up comedian (name escapes me) Indian English etc
I will return when I think of more -
Dude:
I am too lazy to go through your blogs and form an opinion. But here are some thoughts.
( a ) To me the content of your blogs were quite incidental. The main reason I enjoyed visiting your blog was that it allowed for a good way for us to stay in touch. So the question of content appreciation always was of second order importance.
( b ) At a deep level, I think I love the company of my thoughts . This is a defining trait and at defining flaw in my life. So the posts that I liked the most, were the ones that allowed me to think. A rough guide to these is to look at the ones where I contributed some comment.
( c ) I loved blogs where I could show off both how correct I am and how horribly wrong you were. These mostly related to blogs where you displayed your on going stupid affair with protectionism, anticapitalism, and other knee jerk reactions of yours. At other times, I loved showing you how dead wrong you are in claiming to know whats good for the world.
( d ) See, I liked your blogs because I am self obsessed and I love to meet another self obsessed character!! Now, the issue with Priya not liking your blog, comes because she is not self obsessed. So perhaps you could get her to be self obsessed if you want her to like your blog. :)
( e ) When I saw the blog of your ex-colleague (alice in ...) I was struck by how naturally down to earth some of those pages were. I wish your blog had some of that quality. For a long time now, I have been telling you that both you and I suffer from the disease with the following properties - (i) having a very high opinion of ourselves
(ii )we are uncomfortable with this high opinion of ourselve
and
( iii) then try to make it up with a very strained modesty.
So if you can be more comfortable with yourself and stop trying to be cool, your writing will be free of the strained modesty and will acquire the natural down to earthness that I found in the few pages that I saw in the alice in wanderland blog.
( f ) I found your cell phone review and lap top review blogs to be quite painful. There are plenty of better sites that provide these things and your opinions on these are of little relevance to a consumer. These blogs were at odds with the main reason I visit your blog - to be in touch. And really, I dont need you to tell me what cell phones are useful.
( g ) Some specific blogs I loked: I liked all the blogs of the places you visited. And I agree with Sajini, Taimbaktu blogs were nice.
Arvind
PS: I also loved blogs that allowed me to rail about the worst newspaper in this or any other neighboring galaxy - the Hindu.
Arvind
I would also add that I found blogs where you showed some underlying passion for the topic were good ones. So for example, when you wrote about Timbaktu, I think that was what I liked about it. Similarly, when you write about Arundhati Roy and other such incompetent people, who are hell bent on wrecking India with a voice much larger than their intellect should reasonably allow, I liked those blogs because you were passionate although misguided about it. Now compare those writings with that stupid cell phone review blog that you wrote. (Patro and I thought of setting up an intervention after the cell phone review, but I was too lazy to do the intervention.)
So if you are saying something with pain, passion, happiness, laughter joy, I liked all those blogs. When you were describing facts, it read like a VCR manual, and those of course ...
Arvind
On Martin Amis on Graham Greene
Amis recollects his meeting in 1984 with the octogenarian Greene. Greene is dressed in his traditional black and green. They meet in Greene’s flat in Paris (spacious but not airy). Amis finds Greene’s “demeanor and habitat that of a retired civil servant or (just possibly) an exiled spy – a quiet Englishman, a confidential agent, a third man”. They talk about Greene turning 80. Greene is happy that a brewery has had him sign a hundred thousand bottles of their strongest beer.
Greene, Amis finds, is heavily anecdotal in his interviews. Episodes come from a standard repertoire – joining the Communist Part to finagle a free trip to Moscow, asking his psychiatrist friend to give him electro-shock treatment, being deported by the American authorities from Puerto Rico, experimenting with Benzedrine. So there isn’t anything new to talk about. They talk about Greene’s travels. Greene gets around quite a bit – Switzerland, Englad, Italy, Spain, Antibes and of course, Paris, where they meet. Greene hates the United States (“I don’t like the United States). He does not like Americans on the whole – noisy and incredibly ignorant of the world.
Amis describes Greene’s literary presence in 1984 as “cool, fugitive and slightly sinister”, “exemplarily adult and exemplarily modern’. Now in 1993, and I agree, he seems neither. Now Greene seems adolescent, albeit in the richest and most romantic way possible, to Amis. Again I agree. Greene’s world, the oppositions, the relationships and the moral trade-offs all remain the same. It is a unique place Greene awakened us to. But awakening us to this world he never took us out of it. Like his clothes, his world rarely changed color. This could briefly summarize one’s moving, past Greene and Greeneland.
Palls -- in (at last count) 275 posts, is it so difficult to stomach a couple of product reviews ? I am glad they caused you great pain and I shall strive to do some more in order to inflict more pain. Otherwise, good to read your responses :-). Will respond in more detail.
If I were to objectively pick out the parts of your blog that I enjoy the most and hold dearest to my heart, then I would have to say, a bit reluctantly but in the face of overwhelming evidence for its verity, that it would be my well thought out, if in your face, comments!!
I must congratulate you for having retained my continued readership. On this count, you have obviously done much better than your that disgraceful house of print in Anna Salai - the worst newspaper in this or any other neighboring galaxy.
Good Job dude!!
Arvind
the main purpose of the blog has been served well. so 'self-discovery' posts are what make this blog. the other stuff does not change things significantly. although forays into domesticity etc have been mostly descents into mundaneness.
Sajini -- all the posts that you mentioned are stuf that I enjoyed writing about. I feel quite nostalgic about it :-).
The problem is that this blog was supposed to be about my year off from work, but I'm working full-time now (and enjoying it!) so there is no time to wander around and do different stuff and blog about it. Perhaps the blog is dying a natural death.
Palls -
The Hindu ROCKS.
And Calvin and Hobbes style I decree that any who reads my blogs implicitly agrees with that. So there.
Part of the flavor of the blog has definitely been about a few people using this as a way to keep in touch with me (and each other!) and that's been nice and intimacy-like.
I didn't particular get a 'down to earth' flavor from Alice in Wanderland myself.
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