Dear Great-Great-Great Aunt Bottledworder,
I cannot believe it’s mid-April already!
We’re nearing the end of my Spring semester. It makes me quite agitated to think that I still haven’t gotten my act together about even the first of my new year’s resolutions. That blinking reminder keeps mocking me from the corner of my screen — “Ten for Twenty: Ten Resolutions for 2199” ! Continue reading Letter from 2199: On E Reading, Books and Learning Technologies
I’m reminded of an old post called “Dinner and a movie-alone!” just because it’s Friday!
Enjoy!
For the past few weeks, I was posting quotations that I like on my Facebook page.
Many of them were from my witty friend Oscar Wilde. Then I thought why not quote Bottledworder? All I need to do is to look inside. So here are some words of wisdom from BW’s Good Angel and Bad:
As I noted yesterday, I’m not feeling particularly clever these days. Or as Americans would say, feeling particularly smart.
This was a source of great discomfort at first. Particularly since I’m here in the States now, where everything is so smart. You have smart phones. You have smart washing machines. You have smart apps for grocery lists. You might even see a smart car parallel park itself far outsmarting you very soon.
All this smartness makes a person feel rather dumb. But feeling dumb was not helping as I was trying to write. I was still the writer-frog staring at the big green leaf-blank page in expectation of the fly-words to come by when a thought struck me.
When everyone else is smart, perhaps the smart thing to aspire to is dumbness.
Perhaps dumb is the new smart.
Continue reading On dumbness
The morning was bright. Birds were singing in the solitary tree jutting out of the concrete next to his mezzanine floor apartment. Children were playing happily on the slides and monkey bars on the small patch of cemented park-like space in between his building and the next.
The man was absolutely determined as he got out of bed. This morning he would write. Nothing could stop him from writing. Continue reading The Man who would Write
When it comes to writing, different people do different styles well. No style is easy be it reflective or expository or informative.
Writing to entertain can take various forms but the most challenging to pull off, according to me, is the humorous.
Why? Continue reading Writing Humour: Seven Challenges of Style
These are the records of the Earthling Bottledworder (henceforth to be referred to as EB in the third person) trapped in the spaceship Over-Enterprise for several months on its voyage to the Blogosphere.
Continue reading Sounds of the Blogosphere
Continued from yesterday’s post, predictably, “The Writer (Part 1)“
The writers were at work.
The process of work seemed rather curious. It was a great big library in a great big school in a great big country where escalators went up and down a very spacious, gigantic room with a ceiling at least three floors high.
It was called, predictably, the library.
Therefore, most people seemed to be there for the wireless internet.
Some seemed to be waiting there for their next classes looking over printed course packs they’d obtained from a copy store nearby.
Some were concentrated on updating their locations on Facebook.
In the library.
A place with rather existential dimensions.
Continue reading The Writer (Part 2)
In my wanderings through various cities and university towns, I encountered a strange creature called the writer (and its close cousin, the critic). I was told that it is an endangered species. The world does not need it much any more having advanced to higher levels of the human condition thanks to the blessings of technological advancement.
Now that the governments of the world are only nurturing STEM’s– Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics–to pave the way to the future, no one quite knows what to do with these writers–these fruits of civilization.
In writing
Excerpt:
We really appreciated your piece. We think it has great potential. We hope you find a better fit.
Excerpt with notes:
We really appreciated your piece. [Writer of the piece is a boilerplate template hiding behind the royal we. No, it probably doesn’t have the eye to appreciate a cold piece of salmon, leave alone a piece of prose.]We think it has great potential [as fuel in a camp fire]. We hope you find a better fit [We are too good for you].
What to think:
Continue reading Random ways to accept rejection
So for the past six weeks or so, I’ve been trying to figure out my blog persona.
I know a lot of you will clamour–just be yourself! Sure, I would’ve been myself but it’s just so hard to figure out what that self is. I’ve been looking, I can assure you. No doubt, I’ve been irritating a lot of folks, first, by promising to be a rather lightly heavy handed blogger (you’ll know what I mean if you see an older post), and then an overly easy one, becoming one of those people who are always able to think discretely: 10 ways to do this, 5 ways to do that (sort of like God who just managed to create the world in 7 days).
I’ve tried to be funny too in several posts, rather sad in others, and quite inspiredly emotional in some, the sort of purple prose that went out of fashion with the Victorians (ones you can experiment with only as Mr. or Ms. Bottledworder).
But will the bottle get out of shape with too many of us/ me’s? Continue reading Writing my blog persona or brand
You’ve worked hard. You’ve gotten a degree. And then you start looking for a job.
You skim through thousands of job ads. You encounter buzzwords and concepts that whizz through your head like bullets.
Each one is a paradox. Or a tautology.
Or whatever. Continue reading 7 Job seekers’ conundrums
I had the unique opportunity to go furniture shopping with two exceptionally gifted geeks the other day. Continue reading So two geeks walk into a furniture store
The Ex archives and the archiving process–the meaning of storing, filing, classifying and communicating about exes and the final, ceremonial, cathartic exorcism. That could be a good subject of contemplation today.
Why do we keep returning to the Ex-Files in life and literature over and over? Continue reading The Ex-Files: Ex Boyfriends and Girlfriends from the Twilight Zone
Have you ever tried to tell someone that you had an engagement Friday night?
“What are you doing tomorrow night?”
“I’m going out for dinner and a movie.”
“Who’s going?”
By that, they mean who’s going with you?
Try saying “Me.””Myself.” “I.”
Look of incomprehension. Then understanding. Then pity. Then the inevitable desire to “reach out.”
“We’re going bowling. Come with us!”
Why is it so difficult to understand that it might be possible to enjoy one’s own company?
Why can’t a person go for a dinner and a movie by themselves? Continue reading Dinner and a movie– alone!
Being from a fairly removed species somewhat alien to Geekdom and the Geek life, I was completely clueless as to how to interact with the Geek species of humans. But having spent more than my share of time in the natural habitats of Geeks for the last few years as a non-Geek, I’ve had the opportunity to closely observe, interact, feed (yes, they like all cuisines!) and even friend a fair number.
This has been hard work but unexpectedly rewarding.
After being indoors several evenings watching countless reruns of The Big Bang Theory and more than my share of a certain shaggy haired character in the habit of repeating “Oh the aliens did it!” “The aliens did it!” on the History channel (with an especially geeky one of the species), I was very pleasantly surprised to see that Geeks are, in fact, an extremely endearing species who are really very likeable once you get to know them, sort of like a Hippogriff from Harry Potter. Continue reading How to date a Geek
Since my rather sociological observation on Geek dating habits last week, I realized that a need exists in the world regarding more research on this topic. A brief review of existing literature to augment my (erstwhile) ideas to supplement my first-hand experience observing Geeks in Geekdom, from the disinterested perspective of a non-geek, revealed a misdirected focus in said critical analysis of this highly misunderstood and somewhat neglected species.
Moreover, a few brave voices from Geekdom (in the form of comments and other indicators) that were able to rise above the clamour and noise of long preserved stereotypes, on both sides, to reach the Geek researcher’s ivory tower compelled me to think about the following question:
Even if the common woman (oops, didn’t mean that kind of common woman) did reach out to the Geek, how would the Geek, the semi Geek, the uber Geek, and the ultra Geek not manage to chase her away? What pearls of wisdom can I share to bring about mutual intelligibility?
Continue reading How to date a non-geek woman: Advice to Geek men
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