Shifted

Hi.
If you liked my blog, please go to my new blog Zehreelay at http://zehreelay.blogspot.com
Thanks.

India. Teaching the world

Today, while surfing, I found a site called dailymind through an article called 100 Ways to Relax, Unwind and Loosen Up. Though I didn't find much in the article, I liked the site and decided to move to the home of the site, rather blog.

As I reached the home page, the sight that welcomed me was of a Kashmiri boat-sailor and a post titled 'Lessons from India 3: Dealing with hardships'.

As I watched below, there were chapters on 'Being Grateful for what you have' and 'Having a Purpose at Work'.

I think Indians are still as good at teaching spirituality as always.

Blogging. Not racing

Everybody makes mistakes. I do too. And here is one that I feel many people do. So did I.

Blogging. A wonderful thing. Something that gives you freedom to say what you want to say. And so people blog. And then they blog, and blog to get readers. That's where the mistake happens.

I was a guy who started a blog as an experiment last September. I kept blogging on and off with business, telecom, and Hindi blogs, hoping they would 'run well'. But in that I lost some of my real blogging pleasure. Still my big world (that's my BLOG) kept going.

And then, there was a block. When I didn't write, due to exams and then unavailability of net and then for no reason. In the meantime I started a blog on music, because I liked that. I thought I'd blog out my views on music because I always liked to make the first opinion.

This was something I was wrong with. I blogged. I gave out my views. But I joined the race I didn't have to. I started thinking more about viewers of blog rather than my views.

And that was One Of The Reasons that I wrote lyrics of three songs from Rock on!! As usual, some time after writing them I searched the song title on Google, and what happened opened my eyes. The top result belonged to a person who had copied the lyrics from my blog. (Don't ask how I know, I can understand if it's copied from mine) On the other hand, my blog wasn't in results. (I m talking top 50, that's what I keep on first page.) This little bad luck was an eye opener for me. This guy who copied my material told me that blogging wasn't a race and there was no point in reaching people with something before others, it's about reaching people with something different, something that is your own, your views you want others to know.

It wasn't that bad because I had written those lyrics because I liked them too, but I was wrong in searching for results and all, of my writings, especially those lyrics.

So if u r a blogger, or ever become one, be yourself and not what people want you to be.

Happy blogging.

Of Blogs and Blogging

For a long time now, I m off blogging. I mean, the real blogging- My big world. I do not know when it exactly happened, but I changed in some way. I felt I was no more able to write. But probably it was something else. Probably I wasn't getting enough exposure- to world, to worldliness.

It was those days of college (not very long back actually, it's just a few months old story) when I felt like writing on everything and used to start scribbling anywhere, hardly half of that reaching my blog. But since the day I left college, the time I was on a trip to Madurai, Bangalore, Kanyakumari and Kodai, I lost touch. And then, even when I got net back, I did everything, including writing on my music blog, but didn't really BLOG.

I thought it was because I was staying home and not getting out. But today, after reading a new blog, I sensed there was something more that was wrong. I wasn't trying new things. Not even those that did not need me going out. Reading. I wasn't reading books. And I wasn't reading many blogs either. The only blogs I read were those from my friends, but the real thing, my habit of reading a number of random blogs was gone.

And probably that was the reason I wasn't writing. Probably it was the lack of enough incoming that resulted in lesser outgoing of thoughts. Probably I wasn't discussing enough. And now that I have found the reason for my inactivity, which is at least what seems to me, it will be worth seeing for me if I get back to 'the writing' or not.

Wish I do.

My Name on TV

19th May, around 10 AM. It was the SRK vs ICC story running on Times Now, a channel I haven't seen much and is not on my list of favorites. But as I was surfing channels, I liked a story, started watching it, and soon made an opinion.

Pretty normal.

And then I decided to send my opinion through SMS at the number they were displaying.

Quite rare.

Soon I sent a message to 58888. (I didn't read the number actually on TV, I remember the 8888 from the days I used to read The ToI and know that we've to add 5 to all such numbers now) The message read, 'Cricket never had franchises. And now that it has, the owners should be allowed to boost their teams' morale in the way they like.', followed by my name and city.

I waited for a few minutes (thus seeing Times Now for the longest time ever, more than half an hour) and saw the ticker running which read, 'I see nothing wrong in SRK sitting in the dug out. He has the right to support his team. Harshit, Najibabad.'

Thus, I saw my own name on the TV (for the first time of course) with a different opinion than I had stated, an opinion that was being given under some other name sometime earlier.

Thankfully they had not flicked my opinion to the other side of the question and my opinion shown there was at least supporting the same cause as mine. Still, I got some truth of the news channels and once again felt that blogs are the best medium to express oneself since TV can twist the opinions of even existing-nowhere people like me.

In a flat world 1.1

Dudes, this is a running post. For those who are interested in Google. (or rather obsessed with it)

If u want to know more about more of Google things, and how Google things work, just type 'Google blogs' in your search box and start reading the results one by one. They may be all new to you, or some of them known. But I can assure you may not know all of these things so well. Actually much of this can be geek stuff and may be it's out of range/above head, I think its worth a watch, especially if you think you know a lot about Google.

So, Happy Reading!

No dream too big

Thanks Jaypee. (Happy? Ankit ji, Jaypee wale)

For this title of my blog. Actually I realized that, of the things that felt almost impossible to me at some stage, many have come true. In time, less or more, I have achieved many things.
It was class V when I got the first big target. When I was in yet-another-school-of-my-town and I had to get an admission in the sixth class of the town's best school, which conducted a test for the admission. According to the stats of that time, almost 650+ students used to take the exam and finally 240 students were taken. Though, there were 300 students by the admissions were over, courtesy Management Quota.

I took the exam and my coach assured my father that I will pass the test easily. And when the result was out, I was second on the merit list. I was surprised, though others were not that surprised I felt. To them it was just 'good' or 'very good'. But it was not unexpected like it was for me.

Then I entered the classrooms of the school and found myself among a whole new group of students. Almost all of them new to me, except a few who had been with me during the coaching, Mostly Achal and Saket. And then, there were half yearly exams of class VI, in which they used to show us the copies before giving the results. So after I had seen 4 copies, in the interval, I was thinking how it was happening that I was on top. I was a good student. I was always on top during my last school. I had studied this time too, but I didn't know I would top here. Though I expected to be somewhere near that, as a subconscious dream at least if not in conscious.
It was going normally, I was mostly on top, once on second position in my class, till class IX. Next year was board exam and I worked really hard. And I got 72%, something too low from my expectations. And probably that was when I stopped dreaming.

I think I did, but actually I never stopped dreaming. Just that I was not that affected by things after that. I took my XII exam, got first rank in my college, missed the merit list of board due to less marks in my one of the strongest subjects, Hindi (I still was the editor of the college magazine's Hindi subsection). But it didn't matter that much now. It wouldn't even if I would have got less marks. Though it never meant I stopped studying or became lazier. Because somebody inside was still dreaming.

And then there were exams I took during my XII year, and then my drop. And I worked hard again. Though not hard enough for the IITs. I don't know who inside me was not interested in going there. I was, of course. I was preparing for it. But somebody inside wasn't. And then the result of AIEEE was there. I had got 8321 rank. I thought I will be under 12000 only. But this good, it was a bit more than my dream this time. I had expected 10-12k. Though I missed my 'favorite' college by a difference of just 2 ranks at that too, I landed in VIT, Vellore, a college my mother didn't let me apply for separately.

2000 kms away from home, near Bangalore, where my didi lives, my cousin to be precise, who currently teaches in a top engineering college there. It was a dream come true again. Because those colleges of Noida, Ghaziabad and nearby areas were too real for me. I wanted to go to some different place. Something better, and for being better it should be far away too. And I got that.

I was a student from a Hindi medium throughout my school. I didn't (and don't) speak much English in college also as I don't like to. But my aim was CAT, the common admission test for MBA, from the very first year of my college, that started becoming showing signs of some ambiguity as I started coming near to getting a job. And soon I decided I'd take up the job and postpone MBA for two years. Later, though, on my friends' insistence, I changed back my mind but I didn't give it my complete attention, that it required I came to know after seeing my results, especially XAT and even SNAP.

MBA is today my unfulfilled dream, whereas TCS, as far as I see, is going to be a dream fulfilled. As I was somehow interested in getting placed in the TCS the first day I came to VIT.
But it's not always just about academics. There have been things that I thought were not possible. And still I worked to achieve them. And then they came in my routine. Be it talking to girls or seeing my name on Google. Well, being from a Hindi-medium-small-town-semi-government-boys-school, I hardly used to talk to any girls till the end of my first year in college, when one day my friend, Tyagi said I should be talking to girls otherwise it might trouble me in the future. And today I have very good friends among girls.

And the second, more recent and comparatively tougher dream was about the Google. I started using the net properly after coming to college only. The start was from essentials like mail and the addiction came from Orkut. But I always thought how could I have my name on Google, in second-third-fourth page at least, if not first.

Then I started blogging in September '07. And resultantly I could use some interesting keywords and find my blog on Google. But one day I found my name was there on number 64 in results when I googled 'Harshit Gupta'. It was the time when I knew I was near my dream and I decided to get my name as higher as possible. Time passed and one day I reached page 1 of Google, on searching Harshit Gupta. Today my name as keyword gives my name as eighth result on Google. And if I search Harshit Gupta Vellore, the first result is my page. So, though my voter ID card shows my name wrong, I have got an identity somewhere.

And that is what will inspire me to dream.

abcdxyz.blogspot.com

I think I have told a lot in the title itself. It is one of my favorite pastimes while i am online. Write any words or combination of words you can think can (or cannot) make the name of a blog, in any language you like, in your address bar, followed by dot-blogspot-dot-com, and enjoy. There are very good chances of finding blogs almost more than 90% of times. And interestngly, most of the bloggers are dormant, and there is either very old material or sometimes no material at all. But many a time there are intersting things found.

For example, one day i wrote the word chitra (picture) and found something unbelievable. I had seen and read English reviews of Hindi movies many times, but this blog was writing reviews of English movies in Hindi! I could really not believe it. Though the page was dormant, it had more than 125 posts, not all Hindi. In fact most of them were English but the pages on top were all in Hindi. The reviews consisted of both Hindi and English movies.

Anyways it's interesting to see different type of blogs by these different people, the blogs being in almost every name from bluewaters to soundofsilence to throughtheyears to simply blue-dot-blogpot-dot-com.

If you too are free like me, you can try this, even use the words of your interest.

My New Blogs

I have started liking it. Blogging. That's what I think of now, day and night. Though, not having net all the times creates probelms sometimes and some of my ideas do not get converted into blogs, but I try.

I got three blogs going at present. The one you are reading is the one I started as a general blog. My first working blog, which has completed months and has posts in two digits.

The second one I launched was a completely business blog that could be understood by any person who might not even have any knowledge of business. It was called Common man's Economics.

The link to the blog is:

http://cozmoneymatters.blogspot.com/

The blog contains informations on current progress of market that is supposed to affect the common man, as well as possibilities regarding taxes and all.

My next blog is an altogether new step for me. Its an all Hindi blog in which I try to find out good pages in Hindi available on net. In this blog I have put many popular Hindi stories and Poems.

The blog is called Hindi Panne and the link is:

http://hindipanne.blogspot.com/

Please see my new blogs and sned your comments to: hg6789@gmail.com

or put them here:

http://www.orkut.com/Scrapbook.aspx?uid=720310748634689861

Thanks,

Harshit.