42 Quirks

I know this post is long overdue…

MICA was a fabulous place. It had all the elements a quirkyalone like me would ever want. It was remote, there was ample solitude and there was a good place to crash…

I have over 300 pictures of my days at MICA with all the other RJs from all over the country. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to upload all of them.

The first batch of 25 selected photos is up.

Here’s where you can access it:

http://picasaweb.google.com/shrikant.j/TrainingMICA

More photos are on the way… You can subscribe to the RSS feed for this album if you want to be updated everytime I add something to this album.

There’s so much I want to write about MICA, and so little time… :(

Yours truly is in Ahmedabad.

At Mudra Institute of Communication, Ahmedabad (MICA) to be precise.

A total batch of about 30 RJs from different stations of Radio Mirchi across the country ( both existing and upcoming) is here to get their basics brushed up, and to learn newer things about the world of Radio Communciation.

For the next 15 days, I will be infrequent with my updates, and comments. I apologize in advance. *ducks*

I am already going crazy with my Sony DSC W-7, and behaving like a perfect tourist. Will post details of my Ahmedabad trip and the corresponding pics soon.

Until then, please excuse the delays and kindly adjust. :)

Continued from Them – Part 3

He stood there dumb-founded, the words not really registering upon him. She was leaving and he stood rooted to the spot. His mind was filled with a thousand questions all of which wanted an answer at once. His mind was filled with an impenetrable mist. He was lost in the fog. He was searching desperately for some kind of an answer. And by the time the mists cleared, she was gone. He stood there, looking at the ring in his hand.

***

She strode up rapidly toward the exit, dabbing her kerchief at her eyes attempting to remove the last traces of tears. But the harder she tried, the faster they came and then they didn’t stop.

His denial had been his undoing. The fact that he so vehemently denied proved that there was indeed someone else in his life. And he had been shocked when she first threw the accusation at him, hadn’t he? If he was telling the truth he needn’t have looked so shocked, right?

Oh why? Why me? Why does it have to be me? Didn’t I love him enough? Why did he have to go to someone else? What did the bitch have that she didn’t? She was definitely a hundred, thousand times more beautiful than her. Even he had said so. And even he admitted that she had a more beautiful smile than the bitch. She also had a better figure than her. Then why?

The strains of a latest movie song filled the air. She faintly recognized it as her cell phone ring-tone. She wiped her tears as best as she could, cleaned her nose and answered the phone. It was Sam.

“Hey, sorry I couldn’t call earlier. I was a little stuck in a meeting here. What’s wrong with your mobile?”

“Nothing. Why?”

“He was trying the whole of evening, but it seemed your mobile was ‘out of coverage area.’ Even I keep getting the same response. Where have you been?”

“Nowhere in particular. Why, what happened?”

“What happened? Haven’t you heard? He’s been promoted to Project Manager!! He wanted you to have the news first. But your cell phone must have conked off. So he called me. They forced him to host a small party and he said he would be late. So he asked me to call you and inform. I was stuck in a meeting with my boss so I couldn’t call earlier. You there?”

“Uh? Yes…”

“He’s slogged mighty hard for it, you know. The boss was impressed. Now he can easily book that flat he’s been looking at the whole of last month.”

“Flat? What flat?”

“You mean he hasn’t told you yet? Uh oh, big mistake! I was supposed to keep it a secret until he told it to you. Damn, me and my big mouth!! Listen, don’t tell him I told you. He’ll kill me. Come to think of it, he should have been there by now. Hasn’t he come yet? Hello… hello…”

She heard nothing more. Clutching the phone in her hand she ran. She knew he wouldn’t be there. Nobody would stomach such an insult and stay. But in her heart she hoped he would stay. She already knew what she had to do.

She reached the park bench. He was nowhere to be seen. Her heart sank. And then she noticed a lone figure sitting on the grass. It was he. He was sitting desolately, plucking the petals off the bunch of roses. She walked up to him. He saw her and immediately stood up, the joy on his face evident, but masked by caution.

She bade him sit on the grass. He obeyed.

He was still clutching the ring. She took his hand in hers and slipped on the ring. He looked at her and smiled. Everything was forgiven. The moment of madness had passed, faded. She leant upon his shoulder and rested her head upon it. He moved his fingers through her long hair. She attempted to speak.

“I…”

“Shhh… Don’t say a word. The new girl at the office is on the phone. I thought since you had left, I might as well flirt a little…”

Well, life was full of surprises.

—–

Author’s note:
That’s all that I have for the moment. I intend to continue it later, from this point, but don’t see where to go… Maybe I need one of those flashes-of-inspiration things that people keep talking about… :)

—–
The intensity of the moment faded and so did the embrace. She rested her head on his shoulder. He began moving his fingers through her hair looking into a deep unknown somewhere, the expressions on his face conveying a sense of deep contentment.
—–

They had been engaged for six months now.

As she sat waiting on the park bench, she was reminded of the day in the coffee shop. The entire café had witnessed a wonderful once-in-a-lifetime event. Many of the girls (especially, the PYT) had gone home with a twinkle in their eyes.

Now the only thing that remained was to inform her parents. He was an orphan by birth and lived with his old Aunt who clearly approved of her. Her parents had a vague idea of him as he had been to her home on two occasions: once during Christmas and second when the computer had conked off. They had seemed to accept him fairly well back then, or were they just being courteous to a guest and a friend?

As she pondered these questions over, she became aware that he was looking intently at her. Her reverie was broken and she looked at him. His gaze seemed to reassure her that everything would be alright. She smiled wanly and held his arm. They had walked to her house. He kissed her on the forehead and said, “Good night.” He turned to leave and stopped. He looked at her and said, “Don’t worry, it’ll be alright. They like me, you know. They can’t refuse.”

She had broken the news to her mom, haltingly and trying to judge her reaction at every statement. Her mom took it quite coolly and responded, “We knew.”

“You knew? What do you mean, you knew?”

“He spoke to us yesterday. He asked us for our permission. And we were only too happy to give it to him. You are a very bad liar.” And she had broken into peals of laughter while her daughter stood there stunned. He never failed to surprise.

As the reminiscences came back she chuckled to herself. She gave a cursory glance to the watch more out of habit than the need to know the time. And she realized she had been waiting for him for the last three quarters of the hour. She looked up at the gate. This was getting to be a regular occurrence now.

Third time this week that he was late. Was he…

No, he couldn’t. He is too much in love with me to do that…

That’s what I think. Maybe that’s what he wants me to think. Maybe he’s trying to avoid me. Maybe he’s grown bored of the entire thing. Maybe he doesn’t love me anymore…

No, it cannot be!!

Why not? He’s been an hour late, twice already! He wasn’t like this before! In fact, he was the one who used to wait for me…

That was then. This is now.

Maybe he’s exacting revenge on me, making me wait.

Or maybe he’s really found someone…

Why would he do that? He doesn’t look like the kind…

Men are all the same. They soon get bored and look out for greener pastures.

But I would have caught him somehow or the other!!

He could be seeing her on the sly…

If there is a ‘her’. And if there is, then God help her, because I am gonna claw her face to shreds!!

What else could explain his regular delays? It had to be… another… woman…

» Read the rest of this entry «

—–
He smiled at her and pulled her closer and embraced her tightly. They needed it. They knew they needed it. There was to be no looking back now…
—–

She sat sipping the coffee, her eyes riveted to the entrance.

As she took a third sip of the warm liquid, she began to think of the days that had passed and smiled.

After the incident in the theater, life had never been the same. It was now a roller-coaster of fun and enjoyment. He had the talent of surprising her every time she thought he had exhausted his stock. Somehow he managed to come up with something new each time. She wondered how long it would last.

She had been doing that often lately. She never knew she could become so involved in a man. But then he was different. Yeah, right! Nice way of saying, I am madly in love with him. Was he equally serious about her? There was no way of knowing. They had been seeing each other for almost 2 months now. Should they move on to a further level? Or is it too early? What will he think? Is he ready? Or was she just a passing fancy? STOP!!

She held her hand to steady herself. Her eyes were shut tight. She tried to calm her frayed nerves and slowly opened her eyes. He was sitting in front of her.

“They are calling for you,” he said, simply.

“What?”

It hadn’t registered to her that the café speakers had been calling out her name for the past thirty seconds or so.

“I said they are calling for you,” he said it again.

“Calling for me? What for?” she managed to blurt out.

“Beats me! Why don’t you ask them?” he said without so much of a flicker of interest on his face.

She rose in a daze and started to walk towards the counter. A couple of steps later she paused and looked back. He had calmly picked up a newspaper and was nonchalantly sipping away at her coffee. She chuckled to herself and proceeded towards the counter.

» Read the rest of this entry «

———
He gazed long and deep into her eyes… She leaned on to him and planted a little peck on his lips. It was her way of saying, ‘There, satisfied now?’ He liked that.
———

She came over to him. His heart was doing a thousand already. When she spoke, it went out of control. He could barely hear her words with his heart booming. For a brief instant he wondered whether she could hear it.

She was saying something, but the words wouldn’t register. He was so engrossed in looking at her that he forgot that he was supposed to hear and answer – as is wont in a conversation.

” … you coming?”, he snapped back to reality just in time to catch the last few words.

“Sorry? I wasn’t listening…”

“I said, we – that is I, Sam and Anita – are going for a movie in the evening, and I was wondering, if you aren’t doing anything, then maybe you would like to join us…”

He couldn’t believe it! Neither his ears nor his luck! She was asking him out? But …

» Read the rest of this entry «

[level: absolute layman]

So you’ve got yourself a feed-reader, eh? And you have no clue how to go about it? Well, let’s work this through step-by-step, through simple questions and answers:

1. What is RSS?

RSS stands for Rich Site Summary. Take each word on its own. Rich – Lots of information. Site – your web site :) Summary – smaller understandable chunks. Put them together and you get, straightaway:

“Lots of Information (from) your web site (put into) smaller understandable chunks.”

RSS also stands for Really Simple Syndication. To understand this seemingly difficult term, consider only the word syndication. Syndication means sharing or publication of material/resources into an extended network. The concept arose from cartoonists, writers and such newspaper related people ‘syndicating’ their content for different publications.

RSS is the online method of sharing/syndicating content created by us. It is an efficient distribution system, that allows you to ‘pull’ content , instead of ‘pushing’ it like email, for example. The flexibility of XML allows better content management and allows developers to play with the feeds in more ways than you can imagine.

Geeks, head over to Wikipedia’s RSS page, and BBC’s RSS page.

2. What are Feed Readers or RSS Readers?

Ok, now we have lots of information pulled from your site. The question is what do we do with it?

The immediate answer would be read! And that is exactly what feed readers do. Read your feed. Rather, they allow you to read the feed.

A feed reader the XML equivalent of a browser. A regular browser reads HTML code and displays the information between the HTML tags, as per the formatting defined in the tags. Feed readers read XML information and display the content between XML tags.

This explanation over-simplifies the RSS/XML concept, but is good enough for understanding purposes, I think.

3. How do I use a Feed Reader (RSS Reader)

Like a browser!

The URL/Location/Address bar of a browser allows you to navigate to a site. Similarly, you point the feed-reader to an RSS feed published by a site. Usaully feeds are publisehed in .xml format, but with user-friendly software like Feed Blitz or FeedBurner (I use this for my site) the feed address can be a lot simple to remember.

Here’s the process to add a blog/website feed into your reader:

1. Look for a link/button called “Add feed“. An input box asking for the feed address will appear.
2. Enter the feed address in this input box. For example, the feed address for this blog is:

   http://feeds.feedburner.com/42quirks

3. The reader will then fetch the contents of the feed (article, individual posts, etc.) and allow you to read the contents online or offline, based on the kind of reader (Web-based or Desktop-based) that you are using.

You’re done!

4. Ok, so I’ve added a feed. What next?

Well, nothing actually.

That’s the beauty of it. With a feed reader, you no longer have to visit the blog for updates all the time. Every time a new post is published, it appears in your feed reader automatically. You can simply read the updated feed (i.e new posts) from inside the reader. You only need to visit the blog if you want to leave a comment.*

You can also chunk your feeds together in logical groups for better reading experience. For instance, some of the categories I user are as generic as ‘humor’, ‘tech-blogs’, ‘poetry’ etc. or quite personal like ‘blogs-of-friends’. You have the liberty to name yours the way you want.

Such chunking is permitted by all readers, though each reader names it differently. Some call it folders, others call it categories, yet others call it channels. The essence of all these terms remains the same – a user-created logical chunk of feeds.

5. What if I can’t connect to the Internet all the time?

Work Offline!

No, I am not kidding. There are desktop-based feed readers, too.A desktop-based reader is a program that runs from your system and polls the internet for feeds whenever you connect to the internet. Akin to an email client, these feed readers connect online and (literally) download entire updated feeds to your local machine.

Those of you who use Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express or Thunderbird at work, might know what I am talking about. The workings of a web-based and desktop-based feed readers are the same as web-based and desktop-based email clients. So you are not entirely on unfamiliar territory there.

6. Which RSS Reader should I go for?

There are lot of arguments across the web regarding this one. I personally prefer web-based readers, since I work on different machines at home and work. A web-based reader allows me to keep a track of my feeds in these circumstances, just as a web-based email client.

Among web-based readers, I find Google Reader the best. With a wide array of keyboard shortcuts and the amazing speed that we have come to know and expect from Google, Google Reader beats everything hands-down, IMHO. Rojo and Bloglines come a close second.

Among Desktop-based readers, I haven’t tried many of them, but among those that I tried, Blogbridge (Java-based) and RSS Bandit (.NET based) are a good try. Attensa was interesting, but it crashed my Outlook once too often and out it went.

7. Questions?

Post your questions in the comments section. I think we can have a good FAQ setup here!

Cheers!

*Many publishers have an issue with RSS for this reason. Since most of the sites run on Ad revenue, publishing a feed means losing out on crucial page visits, and hence Ad revenue. Will Feed-vertising be the answer to all this?

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