a new year..a new post...a new beginning or a new direction

hi there.... hope you read this..because this is written for you. Hope you are having a great start to the new year and hope everythings going fine. I never thought when I started to write this blog a year ago that I would actually have any readers. I put links to it everywhere, in my emails, on my IM status messages and on my profiles in orkut, linkedin, ryze etc etc. Some time ago I started to monitor my site traffic statistics and found that there were actually a lot of people who landed up here while searching for the hundreds of little things that google is so useful for. There also were some regular readers who even came back to read this blog when there were no new posts. I would have stopped writing and lost interest soon enough if it was not for your constant encouragement... thank you!!!!!!

Now that I finally kicked the holiday rust off my typing fingers, I wonder what I should post about. So many things have been happening in this world. Technology has hooked us in its electric embrace and we are all connected, but now we come to the next question.....what do we do after we connect?

The last year was quite eventful. I had just moved into a new house, was about to complete a year in a job ( a first ) and was just starting out this blog. Looking back at the posts I find that the original purpose of the blog, that of a diary for myself got left behind somewhere and it ended up being more of a scrapbook of odds and ends which somehow got stuck in my head. I found I wasnt too comfortable writing personal entries like - I bought a new toothbrush and X didnt like it. She told me to get an electric one, but I went and bought a shaver instead.

Also I found that I read more and discovered more about the internet since I started blogging. Its so easy to research something on the internet and you can do your writing, communicating and research on the same machine, so really theres no excuse for not getting your facts right. Just a quick google search, a peek through wikipedia, some copying and pasting and there you are , with all the information at your fingertips.

The last year also saw me return to the pattern of my yearly vacation. I used to take a months vacation every year ( usually after quitting my job ), but had stopped doing so for the last couple of years. This year I did it in style, taking advantage of the low cost airlines launched in India, to spend three weeks roaming around south and east India. From the ridge of Bangalore to the coast of Pondycherry, to the delta of Kolkata to the valley of Guwahati to the hills of Shillong, it was a lovely mad swing with just a backpack and it was great fun.

This was also the first year after quite some time that I found a convenient and big enough swimming pool in the neighbourhood and I spend the summer happily splashing away. It helped clear the head, tone the body and get rid of the toxins and cut down on smoking. The lungs opened up, the complexion cleared, energy returned and life was fun again.