Category: About

Winter solstice (Northern hemisphere) this year occurs around 6:08 UTC on Dec 22nd. Wish you all a Happy Winter Solstice. Happy Christmas as well.

I think this post is close enough to be the 1,000th post on this blog (give or take a few.) It has been a good run and thanks for your support. Perhaps it will see the 2,000th post one day.

Traffic Rankings for Business and Economics Websites lists this blog number 33 with 1753 page views a day for November. For comparison, the site notes that if this blog were a newspaper, it would be the equivalent of the Mobile Register of Mobile Alabama. 🙂 But it drops to rank 37 with 981 average daily visitors, which puts it in the same class as the Springfield News-Leader (Springfield, MO). See this for what the newspaper comparison means.

In the past, I used to try and respond to all comments. Time constraints do not allow me that luxury any more. I sincerely appreciate the comments, however, and my thanks for those thoughtful comments. Some comments which call for a clarification or further elaboration of the subject, I will respond in subsequent posts.

I generally don’t censor comments and I don’t remove comments, however irrelevant to the post, unless it is pure spam. Some comments test my resolve about not removing comments. Those are the type which clearly indicate that the commenter has not bothered to read my post carefully, or has read it with sufficient prejudice that my point has been utterly misunderstood. Those comments are pure bullshit and against pure bullshit, even the gods struggle in vain, leave alone a mere mortal.

Usual rules of courtesy apply. Consider reading someone’s blog akin to visiting them at home. You are a guest and generally welcome. If one wishes to abuse the host, one should have the decency to leave the place, and do the abusing from a different place.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

The problem with the typewriter monkeys has been solved. An entirely new crew has been hired because the older bunch were slackers and did not produce enough posts. I am back on the road, vagabonding in Paris today. Here are some pictures of my afternoon in Paris with my friend Courtenay. Tomorrow I leave for the San Francisco Bay area.

Needless to say the new crew of monkeys are going to be hard at work while I am away. Posts will be regular and well considered — none of the low quality stuff we had been seeing of late.

Being lost is worth the coming home, as Neil Diamond observed in his song “Stones” many many years ago. Traveling to Delhi and Patna was worth the leaving behind of those places, I feel. Now I am back in Pune, the weather is awesome, and I am fully charged up with all sorts of interesting tales to tell. Well, if not to tell, at least to contemplate at leisure since for the past ten days I have been extremely busy. For every hour of observing I do, it takes me many hours of reflection to fully understand what I need to learn. This is not just a thinly-veiled attempt at justifying why I have not been blogging, mind you. I am sure that if you are a regular, you too are grateful for the break.

So now the weather. Pune must be centrally airconditioned. At 5 pm, it is about 25 degrees Celcius — there is a gentle breeze blowing under an overcast sky. Here’s the view from out the window (11th floor).

Will be back with a real post real soon.