Rohit's nukkad

Monday, May 11, 2009

Cinco de Mayo

5th May, is a special day in Mexican history, its celebrated as Cinco de Mayo which is Spanish for May 5th. The Mexicans defeated the French forces in 1862.

The irony of the day is, its celebrated on a bigger scale in the United States as compared to that in Mexico. Though the day's significance in Mexico is more regional but in the US its a full blown celebration right from television programs to shopping mall. So why is it more popular in US ? May be its like other things in the US something commercial value in the US.

Saturday, May 09, 2009

My Five Favorite posts

Its difficult to pick your favorite posts and even more difficult to narrow it down to five. But if one sets in some boundaries the work becomes easier.
To pick my five favorite posts I have used the following criteria.

1. The post should be timeless and anytime one reads it a smile is inevitable.

2. It should be an original piece. Inspirations are fine but copying is no good.

3. Book reviews and movie reviews have been left out.


So the list goes as follows, they are ordered in how they appeared on the blog.

1. Wonderful Human Being - I can proudly rate this article as one of my best. Its just feels good article. A chance encounter with a stranger - a genuine, down to earth and simple man. As in the article I wish I can be like Lala when I reach his age.

2. Interesting Love story or is it stories - A great piece. An article out of nothing. A headache at work, turned into a great post and pleasure reading. Even now whenever I read it brings a chuckle. Hope you enjoy it similarly.

3. The Man, the machine... Street hawk - A great nostalgic post, took me back to good old TV days, growing up days, programs I enjoyed watching and even now would love to watch them.

4. You won't believe what happened one night - Great memories, a scary experience, great time.

5. Two men and a truck - One of the fun moments of moving I had with this TV purchase. The TV, the size and the bargain price all blinded me with the crucial part of the purchase - the heavy lifting involved. So big life lesson learned from the experience.

Three years to blogging

Can you imagine it has been three years since I put up my first post on Rohit's Nukkad - Express yourself. Three years, a highly enjoyable time and wonderful period writing blog, 113 published posts quite a feat but still miles to go.

"He who believes that the past cannot be changed has not yet written his memoirs." ~Torvald Gahlin

Well the blog posts are kind of memoirs. They help me reflect how much I have changed over the years - be it my maturity level or my writing skills or my reading interest. Whenever I read any of my old posts its like sitting in a time machine and getting transported to the time when I wrote the post, the incidents happening in my life around the time, how did I write the post, the comments related with the posts etc. Some posts bring a smile on my face, while some make me chuckle, while others make me realize there is lot of scope of improvement in my writing.

Couple of interesting statistics related with posts on Rohit's Nukkad
1. Total posts published 113, that makes it roughly 38 posts per year, though I would have loved to have more posts, the number is still decent.

2. Months without any posts - Though being regular is important but at the same time its the toughest thing to do. I too had couple of my short falls. There were months where not a single post was posted on the blog, 5 months in total - November 2006, July 2007, October 2007, January 2009 and April 2009. Why did this irregularity, I don't have a clear answer for this. Its not like I was extremely busy with my work life in these months. On the contrary months when I was extremely busy I have used blogging as my stress buster and written a good number of posts. Having material for writing is one of the main reasons for being irregular.

3. Book reviews and Movie reviews - these two have been the most regular and discussed topics on the blog. I have written about 8 book reviews and number of book related articles like John Grisham works etc. Well no complains - more book reviews coming your way in future, reading being one of my interests its an obvious path to write about them. Movie reviews have dropped down over the period of time, only when some real good or crazy movie comes up a blog post can be expected.

These were just couple of observations about the blog, watch out for my next article short listing couple on my favorite blog posts so far. But as of now all I can say, good job Rohit, be consist and keep on posting.

Sunday, May 03, 2009

The Lord of the Rings moment

"The Lord of the Rings" you might not have seen the movie or read the book but you cannot escape the mention of this epic modern mythological story. Some call it the greatest book of the twentieth century.

Couple of days back I brought a "Lord of the Rings" DVD - a documentary by National Geographic, which takes us beyond the book, far beyond the movie. They look for similarities between the book and real life places, language, people and the various inspirations for the author J R R Tolkien. The idea of the book which started around the World War I and goes back and forth with mythology, past archeological structures long lost languages. A must watch for a "Lord of the Rings" fan.

The story is of gigantic proportions, which takes years, may be decades of hard work to explore, create and bring it together. J R R Tolkien has taken this giant step for us. We need to sit back and enjoy this epic story. My next step would be to either read the books or watch the movies.