This piece of news just blew me off.

Read the complete news here


Call me old school and old! As I completely fail to understand the Farmville / Fishville addiction and the joy one derives from creating a virtual farm. Let alone virtual currencies. I first came to know of Farmville when my 14 year old screamed in excitement during one of his 30 minutes restricted online time – I got a pig! I got a pig! Yes! Yes! Yes! Apparently, someone had gifted him a pig and it is oh so expensive! This kid would give up anything for 15 minutes of Farmville. They even make and break real life friends depending on their interaction in the virtual world aka gifts sent in this case.

Farmville is just a game after all, but the addiction is real. The news above where the couple starve their 3 month old kid over raising a virtual kid is on the extreme. Hope this dies as a one off case.

Why am I blogging all of a sudden? Because I waited 7 months for D and Dlittle to grow chubbier, and now need a space to flaunt their chubbiness. Or that I need a space to rant that the 7 year old jeans that fit me few months after Dlittle was born, does not fit me anymore.

No big bang announcements. I needed a break from that bay area lifestyle. A change to rejuvenate. Am totally recharged. The journey in Bangalore has been very smooth so far. People here are very warm, friendly and helpful. Life in general is pretty good. Few hiccups here and there, all very much manageable.

Feels like a good day to start back. Dlittle is all of 1 year and 9 months today. D is one day short of 4 years and 4 months. I am.. well.. we’ll not get there now. I’ll leave you with a promise to announce my 40th birthday.

Thanks to the many many of you’ll who wrote to me personally inquiring about my whereabouts. It means a lot. All you nice people, in addition to this blog’s newly-discovered-die-hard-fan V(my niece), are one of the reasons to get back in action. With all honesty, I probably wouldn’t have blogged this long if not for you readers and the comments you leave behind. Thanks!

Pic courtesy: iRecharge on Flickr

!! We are moving to Bangalore, India !!

The reason for all this drama in the previous posts? Let’s just say I am a drama queen. Or that I wanted to wait till the tickets were at the least blocked if not booked.

Why Why Why?
That’s the million dollar question. In my close to 10 year tenure here, I have come across many immigrants who wish to go back at some point or the other for one reason or the other. Sampling the thoughts, the common denomination factor invariably seems to be the extended family and aging parents.

I love this country with all my heart. This is my home. This is the life I know. I came here in my twenties with 2 suitcases, 500$ in hand, a visa stamped passport, a job and loads of determination. Though the initial intent was to work here for just a year, go back to unite with my then fiancé, who had no intentions of migrating out of Bombay. Life chose a different path for us. Circumstances forced him to make a business trip to California, Cupertino to be precise. A die hard fan of Steve Jobs gets lodged behind the Apple company, and rest is history.

This country is amazing. Living in the silicon valley, the technology hub, is like heaven for techno nerds and geeks[Read the LH]. The opportunities it gives, the thought process it provokes, the space it provides for creative thinking. Constantly surrounded by highly innovative, crazily creative and passionate people. Where else in the world would one find the headquarters of Google, Apple, Ebay, Yahoo, Oracle, IBM, top tier VC firms, all in the proximity of few miles. Oh, I can go on and on.

If not for being a resident of this place, the confidence it induces, we wouldn’t be running a business today. A business that has provided for 15 odd people in Bangalore for the past 3 years. With a salary I could not even have imagined when I worked in India in late 90’s.

Yet, there is an emptiness. Even at the end of a good productive day, when kids are asleep, the mind if free from racing thoughts, there is a longing to know what the aging parents are doing back home. Technology does bridge the distance, they are one phone/skype call away. Yet, there is a constant angst. What if there is an emergency? What if?

It’s important to put feelings in perspective. Living within India may not mean being physically present 24 x 7 or being available when the moment of need arises. Who has seen what future holds. In spite of this planning, who knows how things will pan out? But, self employment and the nature of our business is giving us this flexibility to take this decision without much impact, in terms of work.

The move is not permanent. We like to plan our life in 5 year chunks. We live in a global world, there is no denying there. A 5 year plan just seems more practical and realistic approach in this global economy. Our business in US will continue as usual. I am fully aware of my duties towards the country. To abide by the law, to be loyal, to pay taxes and to vote. At the same time, I cannot disown my birth country, neither can I disown my family that decided to stay back.

I will miss..
My brother, sister and family.

Friends, friends, friends. A small group of friends in the Bay area who are like extended family. The friends who took turns to provide food for 3 days when I was to be at bed rest. Those friends who took time off from work to stop by and lend a listening ear just because I was feeling low. Those friends whom I could call anytime of the day or night, don’t have to think twice before asking for any sort of help. Those friends whom I could chit chat while cooking and laugh over silly things. Thank you for being there, you will be missed.

I will most definitely miss the people, the general junta. Americans, Chinese, Mexicans.. There is some kind of positiveness in people here. Any passer by would almost always smile, say a hello, sometimes even take a minute to say how lovely the dress I am wearing is. Or that my daughter has a cute smile.

I will miss the non-interfering life style. I do what I wish, no one questions why.

I will miss Whole Foods/Trader Joe’s. Don’t ask me why, but yes, that comes this high in my will-miss list.

I will miss drinking milk directly from the carton, drinking water from the tap. I will miss the dry hot plates that comes out of the dishwasher.

Looking forward to..
I am so looking forward to this move.

To spend time with parents and parent-in-laws. It’s my turn to take care of them, love them and feel loved. To be with extended family, something my daughters have not experienced. This will bring its own set of issues, I am very well aware of that. Yet that experience I want to go through. I want my daughters to know what it is like to live with cousins, aunts and uncles. To spend a winter or summer vacation with them instead of home or a summer camp.

I am so looking forward to the energy India has. We did a dry run of 5 months in Bangalore about 2 years back. I will probably do a separate post on this, but the city in spite of its infrastructure issues has its charm. It’s vibrant, full of energy and enthusiasm.

I am so looking forward to having a cook and a cleaner. My house can once again be sparkling clean every minute of the day. I can be greeted with a glass of water the minute I enter the house. I can wake up to the gingery smell of chai served right to my bed. When the cook entertains D alongside preparing breakfast, I can get a little extra dose of sleep.

I am so looking forward to the sun dried crisp clothes. Oh, that smell! To exchange smiles with neighbors.

I am so looking forward to the change. The chaotic yet organized life style that amazingly works.

So, here we come Bangalore. Welcome us, will ya!

Disclaimer: This post is solely based on my personal experience and my personal opinion.

I was shocked to learn that 30ml of Zofran [vomit medicine] costs 110$. Thankfully, I have medical insurance and it cost me $10 as copay, but it makes me wonder about those who cannot afford medical insurance, or the one’s with minimalistic insurance. Their 3 year old is different from mine? Those 3 year old’s should just vomit till the bug finds it’s way out naturally?


In this presidential campaign, there are a lot of talks around affordability, cutting taxes, filling consumers pockets with more money which they would then use to buy insurance. What about regulating the drug prices in the first place? Or allow drugs to be purchased from outside the country. Having worked for the e-commerce division of a pretty well known pharma company, I know the outrageous margins on these drugs. Agreed, these companies are running a business, not a charity. They have a right to monetize their years of research and operating costs. And make profit. They usually have a 2 – 3 year period before the generic is released and that is their window to monetize. But, what after that? A little googling shows that this drug was first introduced in 1984. Almost 25 years back. And to date it costs an exorbitant 110$? Beats me!

I should probably send in a query to Jack Cafferty from the CNN news room to ask the presidential candidates what they would do about this. But, with my limited not-up-to-date political knowledge, who knows they might have talked about it. One and only one reason I am pro Obama is because he does not carry the burden of knowing how Washington works. He is young and hopefully bring in the changes this country needs.


I am not all for medicine, I don’t give one unless absolutely needed. D vomited more than 5 times in less than 2 hours. She could not even keep water down and the last one had liver bile. A little more than a year back the exact same thing happened and after the bile vomit, she started puking blood stained biles. Knowing the time it takes to see a doctor even in the ER, I wasn’t going to wait this time around. Her doctor was available to see her and sure enough she prescribed the medicine. But, we never got a chance to use it, as she slept on our way back home for more than 3 hours and was just fine when she woke up.

This morning I was going to check the expiry date on the bottle before throwing it out. My eyes popped out when I saw the price. I am almost tempted to gulp the medicine instead of trashing it.

Reminds me of the shocker I felt when I got to read the paper work from D’s delivery. Sure, I had an emergency C. Baby was suspected meningitis at birth and was held in special care for 6 days. Thankfully, the results were negative. At that time, we paid some 400$ copay, 100$ per day of hospital stay. The paperwork they sent us later showed the bill to be 78,000$. SEVENTY EIGHT THOUSAND DOLLARS!!!! Now, is that some money or what??


We are self employed, which means we are even more messed up. For one, not many are willing to cover us. Two, if they do, they will cover at the most 70%. OR we get insured with a HMO and be stuck with limited options. We chose a HMO insurance and a hospital which is partially funded by the government. This was the only one to cover us close to 100%. HMO’s are also supposed to have lower premium. Sure, we are paying just 1100$ for the 4 of us. With a copay of 25$ for a doctor visit, 10$ for a lab test. Many illness are not even covered.

Which brings me to my cleaning lady. She called in sick a few weeks back. When she did make it, she did not look very well. A little pondering, she says her insurance won’t cover her surgery as this is a pre existing condition. So, she is proscrastinating her doc visit. I did a little math. I pay her[2 of them come] 60$ a visit, twice a month. Multiply by 50 houses at the most. Dividing amongst the 2 ladies, they take home 3000$ a month. This is the best case scenario. She jokingly said, I can own a car, but I cannot afford medical insurance. I don’t have that kind of money to pay for her surgery, but one thing is fir sure. I will not bargain with any of the blue collar workers going forward. I had bargained from 65 to a 60$ when I hired her. I am not going to be able to build a mansion with 10 extra dollars a month. But, she might be able to get pain killers to ease her pain a little bit.

Snow soft is a definitive over statement, but soft enough for Dlittle to gulp half of it in matter of minutes. Yes, you guessed that right! I am talking about idli’s. Reading too many posts on food, from avacado parathas to pesto dosa… All I can think of is food…


Few weeks back we were at yadaayadaa’s place for dinner. Her mom and dad are here and the menu for the night was idli, chutney, vegetable medley, roti, baingan bharta and one more dish I forget. Idli stole the show, at least for me.. They were so soft and yum that me and her mom spent good 10 minutes talking about it. Aunty gave tips on the batter, precise to the point – soak rice 5 minutes after you put urad in the grinder. Put urad in fridge for 30 minutes before grinding. I followed some of the steps[blame it on the kids] and the idli’s turned out really soft. [Put urad in the fridge for 30 minutes before grinding. Rice to urad ratio 5:1 + 1 cup of puffed rice. Grind urad for atleast 40 minutes].


I have come to the conclusion that I have a tongue tailored for South Indian food! In hindsight, I feel I should have had the LH sign a pre nup agreement on eating South Indian food atleast twice a week. Sigh!! I am sure he feels the same way. On having missed the opportunity to get in writing, that I will not feed his kids curd rice, esp. with SALT! How could a human not like curd with salt, is beyond me Ok, this time I won’t promise a post on this, though it is worthy of a whole separate post.


My phone conversations with yadaayadaa are mostly like this :
YY: Hows life? All is well?
Me: Yup. All good. How are things at your end?
YY: Good. Busy at work. Any plans tonight?
Me: Not really. Just usual day to day things. Busy..
YY: seri, veetukku vaa[come home]. 7:00ish.
Me: hmm.. Let me confirm with the LH. He might… [Get cut off..]
YY: Idli, sambhar, rice, rasam, chutney.
Me: okay. See you at 6:30. If LH can’t make it, I’ll come with the kids.


The thing is that I did not grow up eating S. Indian food all along. Growing up days, our staple food was daal, roti, one or two sabzi’s, salad, rice. Sunday’s were special though. Mornings we would have idli with sambhar, coconut chutney and onion chutney. Afternoon’s chicken biriyani and veg biriyani. [My mom does not eat meat, I would go back and forth, until one fine day I did stop completely]. Sunday nights would be masala dosa, onion dosa with left over sambhar and chutney from breakfast. I am all teary while writing this, its brings in memories from more than a decade ago. I miss my whole family sitting in the table and eating together. Memory’s still fresh on how we would fight for the next dosa. Poor mom, she would be the one burning in the stove. We kids would refuse to take turns and we would all demand dosa at the same time. Now, we are grown up, married, kids of our own, scattered and busy. The best we manage is the conference calls with speakers on, all of us talking at the same time. Even this we don’t get to do that often as our timings across the globe don’t suit. Anyways!! I feel so much better when I compare to those days with no internet to broadcast videos instantly, sophisticated phones with 3-way calling, and relying on snail mails to even see pictures of loved ones.
okay, I digressed. I did not grow up eating S.Indian food, but I think this craving started during college days with south style mess. And after marriage, the more I am away from it, the stronger the craving gets.


And for the records, we had a bay area bloggers meet at utbt’s place. Yaadayaada, Boo, Utbt, Sundar and Self. I know, I know, you all know by now. Still, here is my loyal contribution to keep the J quotient up. Subset of the items in the potluck: Pita bread, falafel style cutlets, home made guacamole, salsa, nachos, mediterranean style baked potatoes with oregano, pesto pasta, spinach quesadilla, vada, idli, sambhar, pineapple rasam, pineapple cake.
The best sambhar I have tasted lately, made by YadaaYaada/Boo’s mom. Beats Saravana Bhavan even without the addition of one quart ghee! Pineapple rasam by Boo. Was really good, but dear, I am sorry to say it took a back seat when compared to your mom’s sambhar. It reminded me of my mom’s rasam. Somehow I never feel the same with any other rasam. Why doesn’t the chai, rasam and many other dishes made exactly the same way, following instruction to the micro level, still does not turn out as good as our mother’s? For no logical reason! Someone in the group said – The main ingredient in mom’s cooking is Love. Ours, is stained with frustration and anger
To keep the cycle going, someday it will turn around and my daughter will feel the same way about her mom’s cooking, just the way I feel about mine She has to !!

I don’t blog for few weeks and here I am struggling to get back into circulation. Too many things to write, not able to decide which one to pick first… Its like deciding what to cook the day of grocery shopping. Too many options directly proportional to decision time .
Kick starting with a bit of this and a bit of that..

*****

Got a hair cut over the weekend. My requirement to the lady was simple – chop it off as much as you can. Must say she did a good job. Me getting compliments left, right and center. Now ya’ll be nice and don’t ask for a pix – ok? [It is on my To-Do list to send pix of the pea pod and the princess to all who asked for it]. Anyways, before I digress, coming back to the hair story. Am at 5+ months post-partum. About a month back it started shedding, lately it has gotten to the point that I carefully avoid the mirror, as all I can see is the receding hair line. I think I got so obsessed that unconsciously I have been telling D, I only have 4 hairs left on my head, girl. Don’t you dare mess with them. Every now and then she asks Mumma, how many hair do you have now? bah! I so baadly wanted to have long hair after years of having them short. I watered them, gave them nutritious food for about 2 years! Wasn’t enough I guess. GONE!!! Am back to my original style… sob.. sob..

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The Good, The bad and The ugly:
The Good: Am back to a size 4. Yipee!! Back to the weight I was 4 years back – 113 lbs. Double Yipee!!
The Bad:
The Ugly: Though I could fit into a size 4 jeans, I have to stick with a 6, damn the hernia. The LH was commenting the other day that I looked like the kids here, wearing their pants at the knee line instead of the waist line. Whatever! Doc says I need to wait another year for the corrective surgery, as there is too much fluff there. Fluff? Yeah sure! On a positive note, I could get a tummy tuck done at the time of surgery, I think. hmm….

*****

The LH has started a new venture with couple of other guys. We are[I am] still adjusting to the new timings. As with the new venture, he does not have[want] the luxury of working from home. He leaves at 8:00AM and is back around 7:30PM. I know, I know thats probably the routine in a lot of households, might not sound like a big deal. He worked 16 hours a day before and its the same now, not much has changed. Its more of a perception thing. Before he was only few stairs away, once or twice a day I could hand over Dlittle to him to get a breather. Don’t have that luxury anymore. Add to it, Dlittle’s day nap getting shorter by the day and my role in the company getting wider by the day.
Not really time pressed, but chaotic. Utter chaos in the house from the time we wake up to the time we hit the bed. Its definitely getting better, so much better that I am back blogging!

******

Thanksgiving:
Thursday: We took the kids to the park in the afternoon. We packed sandwich, fruits, carrots and cucumbers with a cilantro dip. The park was pretty much empty, the kids train was not operational. We ended up playing soccer. Not really soccer, we were just kicking and running around the park like crazy. Had fun. That evening we had spinach soup, pasta with pesto sauce and a fruit salad for dinner.

Black Friday: Set the alarm for 4 AM. Plan was for the LH to hit the store at 4:00 AM, be back by 6. Me to leave at 6AM and return by 8:00AM, so not to bother the kids. Over the period of time, I have mastered the art of switching the alarm 5 minutes before its scheduled to ring, all while sleeping. Friday was no different. D woke us up around 8:30. The LH finally hit the furniture store at noon. We wanted to replace our dining table with a more kid-friendly one. Only for him to stand in the long line for 1/2 hour and hear the set is out of stock and they are already overbooked until Feb of next year.
I did my shopping on Sunday. I am not a shopping person. I only do it on a need basis. The kids were napping in the afternoon, when I suddenly got the urge to shop for jeans. There I went, not sure of the size and not having enough time to try them on. Picked a 4, 6 and 8 size. So, now I have a body fitting, a comfort fit and an oversized jean. One for each occasion – Date, Work and over-eating at restaurants.

******

D turned 3, D graduated to the big-kids class, Dlittle started on solids, Dlittle almost sitting up are the latest happenings at our end. Its only fair to pen these as separate posts. Soon!

*****

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! For the record !

Just for the records, I wanted to write the long due post with a link to the Telegraph article where this blog got a mention. Took another look at the email I got from the author, Tessy Koshy, just to make sure I got her name right. I must admit when I got her email I thought it was a prank. I googled on her name to make sure she was indeed working for The Telegraph. Anyways, she had written in the email that she hit upon my blog while surfing on the net for mommy blogs, and thought it was interesting.
Out of curiosity on how she hit upon my blog, when there are so many others that deserve a mention, I googled on indian.. mommy.. blogger.. daycare.... to name a few, to see if mine showed up on the first 2 pages. Damn! Not even on the third. I wasn’t going to let it go. So, searched on the keyword ddmom, hoping to see my blog as the first entry in the result set. Sure, it was and it did momentarily satisfy my alter ego!
Wait, what is this 5th link? ddmom’s dating an alcoholic? How? When did that happen? Sorry ddmom, whoever you are, this is just to set my record straight, no offense to you!
Only to click few more links and end up transforming into a dog!

Get back to work, lady!

Caught your attention, didn’t I ?

Now that you are here and would like to have fun, leave me a hint in the comments section. Will send an invite[to keep the session private to the group] to the masti zone. [The software's invite is via email.]

Edited: Wordpress sends me your email address. Feel free not to mention it in the comments, just say if you would like to participate.

[PS: Swati, Moppett's mom, Mystic Margarita - Will take up the tag soon, I had to get this out first ]

Moved my blog rbdans to DD Mom’s Weblog…

[Still working on the links...]

Left a comment on Pop-moms super duper post, that is about to hit the century. Thought I need to jot it in my own space for future reference, only to be in use when I am at my low!

Using face recognition technology, you can find which celebrity you look like is what the site says.
Yeah right, says utbt in her comment that got me rolling ** copied from Pop-mom’s comment space **

I was really, really, majorlu bumped cos the first match that showed up on the image recognition sw was Pedro Martinez. Then it showed Michale Jackson. What @#$%^&?. I kind of cooled down after it showed Uma Thurman and Katie Holmes. But Michael Jackson and Katie Holmes??What kind of connecion is that?
Anyways, I tired Chula’s and Mieja’s pictures, Katie Holmes was one of the match.
I always thought that the girls didn’t look like me. But, hey there is a some small bit of me in there!!!!

Here is the link in case you’ll missed out the comment:

http://www.myheritage.com/FP/Company/tryFaceRecognition.php

God, I am supposed to be working! Help me!
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Long long ago, very long ago the wonderful noon, the charming Sunshine’s mumma and the sweet Kiran tagged me on Indian Writing.
It had completely slipped my mind and also needed me to THINK!!
Today while reading the latest post of noon, I read the first commenter honoring the tag and realised I had missed it too. Though I don’t read a lot and don’t have much to add, I had to write just to honor the tag!

I am not a big book reader, particularly fiction not my up of tea. I like to read books that are loser to reality, go ahead call me boring!. The closest to fiction is Calvin and Hobbes, with an exception I Love it!
I love to scan magazines and surf the net.

My all time favorites are Amar chitra katha and chandamama.
This was the first book I got introduced as a child. Probably why I love it to date. Though I have outgrown it, if I see one in front of me today, I got to read it.

- Malgudi Days by R.K Narayanan.
Does it need a mention?

- Five point someone by chetan bhagat
Wonderful book, its a story of three friends Alok, Hari and Ryan who rank the toughest exam, get into IIT only to get frustrated with the system.
Dislaimer: No, I am not from IIT. But those who made their first best friends at college can very well relate to it.

- The Namesake by Jumpa Lahiri
Beautifully written, my kinda book. Not sure I an relate to the character as of yet, only time will tell.

- The Elephant Paradigm by Gurucharan Das
Talks about India rising as a steady elephant based on the potential of its hungry youth. Though I don’t agree with few of this theories, it was a good read.

- The Glass palace by Amitav Ghosh
Read this as it happened to be in my house.. I am not a big fan of historic tales though this one was well written.

I am not tagging anyone as I am writing this really lateee.. If there is anyone reading this and not yet been tagged, please consider yourself tagged!

Whats in a name? How far would you go to choose a meaningful, yet unique, yet easy to pronounce name?

Check it out:
Chinese parents choose to name their kid ‘@’

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What’s in a domain name?

The more I read about it, the more it freaks me out! Domain names are like real estate in the internet world. Hundreds of companies getting into the domain names auction/resale business. DomainTools , GreatDomains, ebay to name a few. Interesting thing worth noting is that now you can take a LOAN based on the popularity of your domain name(which is mostly measured as a Google hit count! ). If you haven’t freaked out as of yet, scroll down one of the above sites and check the price tag. OR google on ‘domain sold million’.

Why am I not frantically buying domain names and blogging about it instead?
1. Ran out of topics to write. (Pun intended!)
2. We own about 100+ domain names already and are starting to loose track of it.
(We are not cyber squatting here, these domain names were bought with the intention of starting a business, some for personal use involving us and family, some as the name just appealed to us. One business idea translates into 10 or more domain names. The .com, .org, .net and few other mumbo-jumbo combinations. Even if we were to domain squat, whats wrong? Whose ever gets there first wins. Isn’t that the rule. Don’t you buy real estate as an investment only to be sold later with NO intention of using it?)

Mommies: If you have a business idea in mind, this might be the time to claim your space. Even if the business does not become a reality, the domain may be worth. And when you make it big, remember !!ME!! and do drop a line
It only takes a few dollars to register and few more to host a site from US, not really sure of the logistics involved to host from India.
I think almost all the dictionary words and readable combination of < 5 letters are taken. But the Indian market(Hindi and other regional language domain names) seem untapped. Alright not untapped, but still has a lot of potential.

This post is just my view on this topic and is open for debate.

Just couple of days before poppin’s amma posted on anon blogging, I was debating if I should put my daughters pictures on the site. The sheer number of comments explains this is something that has crossed peoples minds at some point or the other.
Decided to write a post as the comments would be too long. Hope poppins amma and utbtkids don’t mind.

Folks who are able to publish pictures on the net are probably pure at heart and trust others easily. Maybe not so easily, but I can trust people as well. What I am scared of is todays technology and the speed at which it is advancing. For example, Like.com uses image recognition technology to find items of your interest sold on the net. How would this technology emerge in 10 years from now? What could it do with a simple innocent image that google has indexed and archived forever? Only time will tell.

Roll back 9 years, when I created my yahoo ID, I very sincerely gave all the correct profile information. Just few days after that I started getting lots of emails from “real” people from my community who would want to be friends/ take the relationship further kind of crap. To the extent that they would give out their company name and phone number. After a really long time, did I realise it was because of my public profile combined with yahoo’s person search. ok, agreed I might have been naive at that time. The point I am making is that new technologies emerge every day. And at the speed that we simply cannot imagine/catch up. I wouldn’t be surprised if some kid writes a software “for fun” which can scan through blog posts, gather enough keywords from various posts and give a history of my life long dwellings/personality etc. Combine that with a picture and the possibilities are endless.
To add oil to this flame, the p—r-n industry is a billion dollar market. What does it take for somebody to start a site, use software to take pictures from the net, combine, massage them with ther images? ok, I don’t want to go there. But this kind of thoghts gives me sleepless nights.

The other thing which scare me is the camera on cell phones. I might be scratching my butt in my backyard thinking nobody’s watching and next thing I know is this dude having a 10x zoom camera phone takes a picture from his upstairs windows and uploads in youtube.

That said, how far and how long can you protect yourself? Here is a picture of google’s street view, an afternoon snapshot of our office parking lot.

If you zoom within the street view, you can clearly see the name plate of the car. It changes a lot of things we take for granted. Imagine a combination of the like.com’s image recognition technology and google’s search technology. You can pretty much search for my car number plate and find out where all I go. I do not have a control over this, as of now that is.

My personal view is that we cannot do much about google indexing and archiving content without our consent. But I could blog anon to give me peace of mind.

Again, this post is just my view point.

I have never beleived in “virtual” friends, talking or chatting to people whom I have never seen. Probably because I have a decent number of friends I already struggle to keep in touch with as I have been really busy with work. Partially because I never felt comfortable sharing my personal side to anybody I have not met. Most likely because I am terrible when it comes to putting my thoughts in writing, be it a work email, or casual writing.
Funny thing is our business model(H and me own a software business) is completely virtual. I have not met a single client of ours personally, all communication is via email/skype. I am comfortable with that part of the “virtual” world, but when it comes to friends and sharing my personal side, I am a different person. Until now…

After quitting my job and being a stay at home mom/working from home mom for the past 2 years, I have started feeling lonely. H is the “thinker” kind. He can sit quitely gazing at the sky for 2 hours. It freaks me out at times as I am the “talkative” kind. Initial years of marriage, I would think he is disturbed or stressed. Later, when I got to know him “better”, realized thats his way of bringing his creative aatma to life. Out of my bounds. I consider myself a number-crunching person, zero on creativity.
Some of the friends I used to hang out with have either moved out of state or busy with kids, just dont have that much time anymore. This includes me as well. Last 2 years, though I have been working from home, managed to maintain the discipline of work hours/ chat hours/ outgoing hours etc. That took a toll on keeping up with friends. At 35 weeks into the pregnancy, doc advised to go on bed rest. I had officially declared maternity leave and routed all my emails to H’s account.

Last couple of weeks, its been me, my laptop and the couch. Feels I have all the time in the world, hence the umpty number of posts
I must admit it is very relaxing to write and read. Kudos to all you bloggers who somehow find time to blog inspite of working/taking care of kids. I am going to try and continue doing this after baby is born. Only time will tell.
I am enjoying this virtual communication and sharing thoughts with people I have not seen and probably wont see my entire life.