I know I’m not blogging enough on Critical Thoughts. I wondered why. I didn’t get the answers. I absolutely want to keep this blog going. I had to break this bloggers’ block. All that I could do was to seek the advice of a professional consultant to solve this problem for me. The professional consultant Vijayakrishna is a very renowned man in this field and has a history of problem solving, especially that of others. Now, Critical Thoughts becomes his latest project. After a couple of days of study, scrutiny and review of the case, he has come up with the below report.

Project Critical Thoughts

Problem definition: Of late, the client has not been blogging much on Critical Thoughts. What started with many blogs a week had to be reduced one blog a week upon feedback and now the last blog was about a month back. This results in an onslaught from the millions of regular readers and they demand more frequent blogging. Client needs a practical, scalable solution that would put the blog back on track.

Goal statement: To create solutions that would help me blog much more frequently – at least weekly.

Possible causes: (List down all those possible causes that would result in similar situations. This may or may not apply for the stated condition.)

a) Lack of time: The time that’s available for blogging has considerably come down since the client’s daughter started going to school. This may not have to mean that he’s putting in an awful lot of efforts to send her to school everyday. Client’s mid-night awakening behaviour is also undergoing a change which leaves time only during the weekends.

b) Domestic activities: Client does have multiple interests and is pretty active in all his interests such as blogging, gaming, reading, television, socialising and shopping (not of self). Clients has very little control of some of the activities that take bulk of the time. There are too many domestic activities which leaves more sophisticated activities such as blogging down the list.

c) Multiple blogs: Client does have two blogs including this one, the other blog being the more dominant one. Because the other blog is the flagship blog of the client, whatever time is available for blogging acitivity is being spent on that blog.

Possible solutions: (List down all solutions and recommendations that address the causes or help the goal)

a) Short posts: The client himself is a strong proponent of short posts. He can post short blogs with a couple of paragraphs or so. What’s important is the stance of the blogger which would trigger the debate and discussion in the comments area. Short posts are a viable solution.

b) Multimedia posts: The time factor is key when the posts have to be text-based. It is market practice to post blogs with images and vidoes that contain the message that the blogger wants to send across. As we know, a picture speaks a thousand words.

c) Mobile blogging: If the time in front of the computer is a rarity, the client can use his mobile. With a no-limit internet connection and high tech mobile, moblogging is a very practical solution. This would be especially useful during long shopping sessions or prolonged family events.

d) Reclaim time: Client must find ways to reclaim his time so that they can be spent on blogging. For instance, if he appoints a driver for his car, he could reclaim about 2 hours a day that he can spend on blogging while in the car. This would also help him given his driving skills.

Final recommendation: We suggest the client that while he must attempt to reclaim his time by eliminating wastage, he must attempt to write short posts or multimedia posts, and use the mobile phone much more effectively.

This is exactly why we need consultants. They come up with entirely new ideas which we were always aware but were lazy to implement. They help us with these ground breaking solutions that are picked up from our own past history and renew our interest in these ways of resolving the problems.

Critical Thoughts now stands revived.

I can’t believe I have not posted for a month now. I can go on about why I haven’t written but that hardly matters. I just want to write something today. Not that today is an auspicious day for re-starting things. You know that right? There is an auspicious day to resume things that have once been abandoned. As far as I can think, I never cared too much about auspicious days and all that. You know that I’m a believer when it comes to astrology but auspicious day . . erm . . no.

Sometimes people follow certain things not because they believe in it. May be they follow just because they are superstitious about it. Well, there are two terms – belief and superstition – which go very close to each other and can be misunderstood for each other based on from which side you’re looking from. Let me clarify like this. You can truly believe that certain days are auspicious and certain days are not. If you wanted to do certain things only on auspicious days just because it has worked everytime for you, may be you can call it superstition. The thin line here is, you might want to do certain things only on a Friday because you think it has always worked for you. Then again, it might be called supersitition.

They way I define it, belief should have rationale – for instance one might believe in auspicious days because he believes that the daily movements of planets have an impact on the earth and its inhibitants. Whereas superstition is just blind and irrational. Even preferences and choices can be blind and irrational, or just subjective to put it gently. I can wear my white shirt for every important occasion because I like it or because that would look good on me. That’s choice or preference. But if I wear that white shirt because it brings me good luck, that is supersitition. The dangerous thing with superstitions is that it sometimes borders on obsessive compulsive disorders (OCD). But I’m talking here only about the lighter ones.

I have beliefs as well as superstitions. I can talk to you very proudly about my beliefs because they are backed by rationale. The superstitions can be a bit embarrassing because they are stupid and baseless. The funny thing is, I very well know that they are stupid and baseless but I just do them. May be, that best explains superstitions. It’s also embarrasing because we think we are very rational, objective and thoughtful and then come up with some nonsense as supersititions. I have a superstition that full moon day is always the best day of the month for me.

We love to hear the superstitions of each other because they can be unique and they can be funny. I’m not planning to give you the exhaustive list of my superstitions but I can give you one. Ever since I heard (15 years back) that Sachin Tendulkar wears his left side of his kits first, I’ve just been following it. Sachin always wears his left shoe before wearing his right one and same with socks, gloves and everything. Strangely, even I’ve been wearing my left shoe or sandal first before wearing my right ones. That’s harmless anyway because you would wear them in a gap of few seconds so it does not really catch anyone’s eyes or look ridiculous. In other words, it’s not the same as not changing your posture on the chair because keep scoring.

What kind of superstitions do you have? Do you always wear your watch on the right hand so you can get the movie ticket? Or do you watch cricket standing because your team is on a rampage and you don’t want that to stop? Or you always carry your lucky handbag so you can get a job? We might even find out that some of the superstitions are not, after all, unique. Tell us more.

Gosh! That must be about a hundred thousand people watching me now. Where is this? Looks like Camp Nou. This is a fantastic stadium. I have great memories of this stadium. I’ve scored dozens and dozens of goals here. This must be a very important match. Who are we playing by the way? I see that the opponents are wearing yellow. Man, I don’t want to be playing Wigan. Give me something better. Hang on. I see little Messi walking in. That must be Barca then. At Camp Nou stadium and playing in yellow kits. Yes, they are. Am I playing for England or Chelsea? I see Didier around. Ok then, it is Barcelona vs Chelsea at Camp Nou. I think I’m being put in my usual attacking midfield position. What? Me? You know me. Frank Lampard. Still wondering? Googling always better than wondering.

We’re waiting to kick off. It won’t start until that man wants us to. No, that’s not the referee I’m talking about. I’m talking about the gamer that’s controlling us. Who’s playing us today? Ah, that’s vjkrishna. Gentle gamer. Knows his football. And he likes me too. Would always play me and never subs me. I hate to be played by players who don’t know how to use me. Vjkrishna adores me. I think I’m like his idol. He puts me in right areas and makes full use of my capabilities. But you know what, he makes me run and work. He uses me in attack as well as defence. That normally makes me tired by the 75th minute but that’s football.

Why is he not starting the game yet? What’s stopping him? Let me see. Okay, his controllers are out of batteries. He’s gone to check his daughter’s toys to see if he can quickly get a pair of batteries. The funny thing is, we’ll have to be on the pitch, in the positions, waiting for kick off until he resumes the game. That’s the case for all the players including me, Terry, Ballack, Drogba, Messi, Eto and Xavi. We’re all the same. One interesting thing is, we can stand here for ages with no impact to us, it’s only when we play we get fatigue. We’re still waiting for him to back and resume. No idea where he’s gone. The other day we waited for about an hour and suddenly the power went off. Such disappointment.

He’s back. Looks like he’s got the batteries. He is in his couch. Ok boys, we might start any moment. Oh wait, he gets up. For what? Strange. I’ve been played by him more than a thousand times and he’s never done this. If he loads us up, he’s always played the match. What’s wrong today? I see him opening the DVD closet to look for something. Is he going to watch a movie? Probably not. That closet has only games. Goddammit, he’s picking up the tennis game. The bloody new rival. Vjkrishna has always played football, every single time he’s loaded the xbox. I think so. Anyway, if he doesn’t play football on xbox, I don’t exist. I think he’s gonna pull us out of the box and load tennis. God, that must be some insult. He’s still thinking. Ah, he’s leaving the tennis game exactly where it should be – the shelf. Let’s have a kick about.

There he starts the game. I’ll catch you after the first half.

Half time. Great game so far. We’re trailing by a goal but we did dominate the game. Barca are very good but in this match, they are controlled by the AI programme and not by humans. I love to be controlled by humans. They bring the best out in me, especially gamers like vjkrishna. With the way the game’s going, I think we might turn it around in the first half. Vjkrishna has subbed Anelka and he’s bring in on Mikel. Very strange considering that we are a goal behind. Oh, he wants us to play 4-4-2. Because Mikel is in, he’s put me in the left midfield. Not to my liking. Catch you again at full time.

Final whistle. 1-2. We’ve lost. We came back and scored that equaliser early on. But Messi wreaked havoc and finally found the net at the 80th minute. We’ve lost the game. This is such an important game. Playing Barcelona at Camp Nou. We should have won or at least have drawn the match. I might just be the electronic clone of Frank Lampard but I hate to lose these big matches. But there is one big advantage I hold over my flesh-and-blood clone. I get a second chance to get things right, probably, every single time. There you go, vjkrishna is arranging for a re-match. He’s not gonna end the session until we win. We’ve never finished losers. Super Frankie Lampard! I’m sure you envy me on that one!

Writing something when you have nothing to write is not that easy. I told you that. Today I have nothing to write but I want to publish a post. I can do this because something to write and something to publish are two entirely different things. Why can’t write anything today despite having time? Call it the blogger’s block. Complete lack of ideas. What I’m gonna do is to revisit and relink some of the earlier posts that I had published on this very blog. That’s easy isn’t it?

Remember typewriting & shorthand published on 15-Feb-09

Do you have those memories of the typewriting/shorthand institutes? Before the birth and death of computer institutes those were the centres of development of career and romance, not in that order. I loved shorthand but I just could not cut it in typewriting. Practice makes perfect. I’m sure it does. Otherwise, how can a typewriting institute drop-out like me can type a post in a few minutes?

Winner takes it all published on 23-Feb-09

It’s hard being a runner-up. You can say ‘winning or losing is not important but competing is’. If you say it as a winner, you’re gracious. If you say it as a loser, that might be seen as a poor excuse. Ask any loser, they’d know how important it is to win. As someone said, ‘winning is not everything, it is the only thing’. If so, spare a thought for the losers.

Critical thinking: Have we thought about our thinking? published on 02-Mar-09

Why is this blog titled as ‘critical thoughts’? What are critical thoughts? For the first week or so, I was calling this random opinions and then changed to the current title. ‘Random opinions’ was an apt title but it was sounding a bit ordinary. On the other hand, I thought ‘critical thoughts’ was just perfect and also sounds better as a title. But this post was all about the concept of critical thinking.

Playing to the gallery published on 20-Feb-09

The phrase ‘playing to the gallery’ is very commonly used in football. Sometimes you see footballers playing to please the crowd without any consideration to the situation of the game or the tactics advised by the coach. That’s when they are said to be ‘playing to the gallery’. But life is not a sport. It’s life and it’s yours. We don’t need to play to the gallery. How much we live our lives for ourselves? Or do we play to the gallery as well?

Are you game? published on 08-Mar-09

I love gaming. In fact, I’ve been a gamer for a very long time. Before I bought the computer and the xbox, I always played board games. With computers, I started playing the strategy games and some really good shooters. With xbox, it’s been football all the way. I last played a football game on xbox this morning and the next time I’d play would be tonight.

That’s it for today. I have a huge responsbility of informing all the bloggers I had tagged in the previous post. Cheers.

I’ve been tagged. If you don’t know what that means, it’s a practice in blogging society whereby you can ‘tag’ fellow bloggers and have them write stuff like 7 facts about yourself, 25 things you hate, 10 things that you’d die for and such stuff. I’ve been tagged by Lisis. What she’s basically done is to write a post in her blog in response to someone tagging her and also to pass on the batons to seven other bloggers. As the smart brains have figured out, I’m one of those seven tagged bloggers. Thanks Lisis!

Why do people tag all? It’s fun, it improves blogging network, it’s fun, it’s revealing and it’s fun. So then, I’m expected to write 7 facts about myself.  There are some self-imposed rules in tagging practice. I’m in full compliance as I’ve linked to the original tagger that is Lisis, I’d share seven facts about myself, I won’t forget to tag seven fellow bloggers and I’d let them know because they may not know otherwise.

I have about 7,000 things to write about, from which I’m writing about seven. These are not the most important seven things I want to write about. These are the seven things that came to my mind when I went about writing this post. So here are seven facts about myself. Some of these are top secrets, keep them to yourselves. To the one who knew all these: you are me.

Village: I want to live in a village like place, preferably atop a mountain. A place where there are fewer people to know, fewer houses, no multi-storey buildings, sound infrastructure, beautiful roads with very less traffic, gardens everywhere, cool weather/climate and lots of greenery and lakes. I’d like to retain all the technology I would want plus my pollution-free car. I’ve seen such beautiful places. I don’t know if those people there realise that they are living in such a divine place. Life there is simple and beautiful, not hurried and hassled.

Dreams: I don’t get dreams at all. Okay, there have been some very rare occasions but I just don’t get any dreams or nightmares. Of course, I base this conclusion on my morning recollection. It’s quite possible that George Bush was trying to hang me to death because I was hiding weapons of mass destructions in my pocket and I completely forgot about it when I woke up. Most people can remember their dreams or nightmares. From that norm, I say that I simply don’t get any dreams or nightmares. Did I say that I exclude those daydreams?

Blue: I love this colour blue. When I was a kid, I loved yellow and I don’t know when I ditched yellow and started dating blue. I’m a big fan of Chelsea Football Club but that’s not the only reason why like blue. For some reason, I like blue. That does not mean I wear blue shirts and pants with a blue underwear beneath. Sitting at home, I’m looking around to see if there is anything in blue. None except my daughter’s bicycle. But still, that’s my favourite colour. That’s the colour that’s most pleasing to my eyes.

Chess: I learnt to play Chess when I was 8. There was this house in our neighbourhood which had a chess set. That family did play a lot of chess. Watching them play and getting beaten like a fool, I learnt playing chess. Over the next few years, I think I improved from being pretty decent to pretty good at chess. We didn’t have computer at home back then but I had bought my best purchase – a chess set. Then there are these books and magazines (just in case you didn’t know) on chess with which I used to re-play the moves to improve my game. I could have taken it up as a profession. I think I was at the brink. Still, I love chess and I have a special liking for premium chess sets.

Academics: I was certainly a topper material. I had my way around in studying and cracking the exams. As long as I understood what I was reading/studying, I could knock it off in the examinations. I was never a student that studied all day all night, six months ahead of the exams or something. I was always a bit lazy, never too compromising when it came to how I spent my time. But I think, over a period of time, I had developed a formula that suited me so well in my academic life. Couldn’t top anything after school because I was also growing up.

Exciting habit: Nail-biting. Whenever I watch football or cricket. Whenever I play board games. Whenever I’m reading something in my laptop. Whenever I’m thinking about the next word. Well, I don’t really bite my nails off. Let’s say, I remove nails with the help of other nails, biting may be required on a case-to-case basis. This is one habit that disgust people but they should not have a problem as long as I don’t bite their nails. I know I end up getting very ugly fingers but that’s allright as I don’t plan to stick them up on my face.

Football: The only thing I don’t do about football is, playing on the pitch. I watch football. I follow football. I read football news all the time. I play football on the xbox. I talk about football. Now, it’s a part of my life. I was a huge cricket fan once. Football has blown me over with its charm, simplicity and excitement. What would I do if I had X million dollars? I’d buy a football club.

That’s about it. Now I’m tagging seven other bloggers. Some of them I don’t know. I know their blogs but I don’t know those bloggers. Here I go:

Venky’s Diary, Accidentally on purpose, What to name it, Life is just a bowl of cherries, My quest, 18,000 rpm and Happy Lotus.

I hope to contact these people to let them know that I’ve tagged them. By the way, I like this idea of seven this and seven that. I plan to use this structure more often.

My internet has finally broken down. It’s been three days and there are no signs of a better tomorrow. I badly need internet but there’s little I can do about it. I hate these helpless situations. Is internet not as essential as air, water, xbox, food and shelter? I want to read all those election manifestos to see whose has the promise of uninterrupted high speed internet. What do I do now? I can’t stop browsing and blogging. Of course I have my sweet little Nokia N95 which allows me to use internet but that’s never enough. With almost a sense of self-pity, I decided to do something about this. What are the things I could do?

Call up the service provider: It may not really help me, still I can try. So I tried. The number kept ringing and after half a minute I got to listen to a strange music. Phone ring sounded sweeter. And the music went on. Nothing else happened. I hung up. I tried again. After a couple of rings someone picked up the phone and banged the phone down. Not my idea of customer service. I kept trying. Finally, I got to listen to the live voice of a human being. He informed me that I’ve dialled the wrong number and directed me to another number. I was puzzled. I had dialled the same number I’ve been dialling for internet problems. Anyway, I consoled myself that number might have changed. I called this new number. Guy at the other end told me that I should be calling a different number which happened to be the number I originally called. I gave up.

Try to fix the problem myself: It’s true that you don’t necessarily need to go the himalayas to get a humbling experience. While I was trying to fix this internet problem yesterday, I realised that I had no clue how to fix it. First of all I didn’t know what the problem was. All I could do was to perform certain actions over and over again and hope that I get connected. So I restarted the laptop. Nothing happened. I restarted the modem. Still nothing happened. I disconnected and reconnected the phone cord. No signs of internet life yet. I even allowed windows to diagnose and repair the problem. But it did neither and left me where I was. I didn’t know what else to do. I was helpless. I was wasting time. I gave up.

Go for a workaround: I remember that I can use my Nokia N95 as a modem and have my laptop connect to the internet via my mobile. I needed to have an application installed in the laptop. Fine, I think it must be there, oh wait, didn’t I uninstall it when had nothing else to do? I did. No problem. I can re-install the application with the CD that came with the phone. Problem. I have no clue where that CD is. I have the laptop, the mobile, the chord that connects them both but what I don’t have is the application or the CD. Why can’t I simply magnify what’s on the mobile screen into a laptop screen with the help of bluetooth or rednose? May be I’m a decade ahead of our times, technologically speaking. Basically, I gave up.

Come up with a creative solution: I’ve heard about those. You run around the solution and away from it so much that you get lost and then suddenly the simplest of all workable ideas looks like a creative solution. Here it is. Open notepad. Type the stuff. Save it and send it to the mobile using bluetooth. Save it as a notes item in mobile. The copy all the text. Open mobile browser and go the blog admin area. Create a new post and paste all the text. Publish. Not bad.

Blogging is all about writing and publishing. Bulk of the time normally goes in writing. Publishing is a minute’s work. For writing, all that I need is a computer. Computers don’t think, so I need to have ideas too. To execute the ideas, I need to time to write. Time is not an issue as I constantly withdraw some time from my wife. So, ideas + computer + time = writing. Blogging = writing + publishing. Publishing what’s been written, as I said, is a minute’s work and that can happen from my mobile. I can do this every single day until my internet is fixed. Cool eh? There is a slight downside as well. Because the internet access is a bit restricted, I may not get to read stuff as well. It’s not that I write well-researched articles but it certainly helps. Also rationed internet means no pictures in blogs. I know you like text better than pictures. A word is worth a 1000 pictures. Let’s concentrate on the text, that thing in black and white, that thing the author screams.

I’m struggling for a good last line so let me just say that the normal service resumes

Aren’t you getting tired of these news channels? It’s all getting a bit obscene now. Everything is a breaking news. Everything is a sensation. I don’t take any of these headlines at newsvalue. Something becomes a headline because there is nothing better to report. Unfortunately, there should always be a sensational headline, a terrible crisis, a shock report etc. What’s more unfortunate is, if there is none, there is an attempt to create these. Make a news out of nothing. I realise it’s not easy to keep giving news for 24 hours non-stop. But you have a choice of creating news or being responsible and educate people otherwise.

When the Bangalore blasts happened, I was in Bangalore. I was staying in Shivajinagar which was one of the several places where the bombs exploded. It is, of course a big news and a terrible news. But I can confirm that it was not as bad as it was made out to be, by the news channels. I was shopping around that weekend because things returned to normalcy in a matter of few hours. If you had followed the images and footages on the television, you must have been thinking that Bangalore was burning, while I was exploring the city on foot and by taxi.

We have too many private news channels. And there is a dog-eat-dog competition among them. What this results in is a cheap competition of who can best sensationalise the happenings. Sadly, that’s what it all boils down to. You can see that if you keep switching across channels while something worthwhile is being reported. I guess there must be a mad rush to fix a catchy deadline that can run for days and weeks. It is purely a business. It is just a matter of who sells more copies or who gets more viewership.

The crudeness, the cheapness of reporting is one. Worst is, the joy, more than the duty, of reporting terrible incidents. Sometimes it makes me feel that if they hear about a serial bomb blast somewhere, they might scream ‘yesssssssss’. The news channels’ job is a bit like that of the doctors. If everyone’s healthy, he’s got nothing to do. That shouldn’t mean he’s hoping for the cholera to break out. If it does break out, he can’t be spreading the scare and fear instead of awareness and alertness.

Journos question everyone. News channels are omnipotent. They are so bloody powerful. They question politicians, economists, sportsmen, artists, celebrities; they can question anyone. They have the God-given right to ask anyone the tough questions. They have the privilege of embarrassing anyone in the public eyes. They might even score some brownie points when they get someone to walk out on them from the studio or when someone was made to weep. I guess they would also weep if it helps the TRP.

Who can question the news channels? Who can evaluate them? They can name and shame the politicians for not doing their job, they can question the commitment of a player when he is not in form, they can brutally criticise an artist and his creations and pretend that they know more than the learned economists. Now, who’s checking if the news channels are doing their job? Who’s going to report them? How do you evaluate the news channels is an interesting topic in itself.

You must know about this blogger Chyetanya Kunte who wrote a post titled ’shoddy journalism’ about the coverage of the Taj incident by NDTV. He was not a well known blogger or anything. He wrote about how the terrorists used the NDTV’s live coverage of the whole Taj incident. He was particlarly singling out Barkha Dutt for the ’shoddy journalism’ and questioning her ethics. He was tracked down by the NDTV and Barkha Dutt. He was sued and made to issue an apology in his own blog for his post. Below is his original post for which NDTV sued Kunte. Make up your mind.

I think it was a very good post (though with a poor closing line) which should have been responded by Barkha appropriately instead of a libel. He has raised some very vital questions which require answers more than anything. Those were the questions on everyone’s lips. When this argument continued in facebook, Barkha herself responded there in facebook, again with no valid response. You can read the whole history of this battle here. The whole episode was seen as a breach of freedom of expression. The bloggers were enraged. Many many anti-Barkha communities were created in Facebook. Finally, we all realised there is a way to talk about the Press. I think the answer to who can evaluate and if required, criticise the news channels lies in this very incident.

It is in the internet, and it should be the bloggers. Who else can do that and using which other medium?