Someone  called Alok Gogoi is a plagiarist who is ripping off content from both my blogs, this one and Amlokiblogs.

I have tried to contact this person, but he has no contact email on his blog. I will file a DMCA complaint against him, if he does not take down the posts immediately.

Since Alok Gogoi comes here to Plagiarise, I’m sure he would be notified.

Margaret Atwood's Blind Assassin

Sometimes I write down an excerpt from a book I’m reading, and in reading Margaret Atwood’s Blind Assassin, I feel like typing out the whole book on my blog.

Of course, I can’t do that, so here’s a para I read last night:

She did understand, or at last she understood that she was supposed to understand. She understood, and said nothing about it, and prayed for the power to forgive, and did forgive. But he can’t have found living with forgiveness that easy. Breakfast in a haze of forgiveness: coffee with forgiveness, forgiveness on the buttered toast. He would have been helpless against it, for how can you repudiate something that is never spoken?

It is nice sometimes to be able to pick up a pen and write about nothing in particular. A river of writing, brooking no argument, obstacle, or dead ends. And years later, to find those lines and realize they were about something, after all.

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Visit my website: Amloki.com

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Philosophy and Fiction: Writing Ideas

“It has been traditional in much of our culture to view God as omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing) and perfectly good. The existence of suffering poses a tough challenge for a theist who believes in such a God. How could a God who is perfectly good, can do absolutely anything he wants to do, and knows everything there is to know, possibly create a world in which so many of His creatures suffer so terribly?”—from Omnipotence and Contradiction, an Introduction to Philosophy by Thomas D. Davis.

I’m going through all the arguments and counter-arguments, and find the whole process quite engaging. The best part is, some of the theories are explained through fiction, and that opens a whole new world of possibilities, i.e, possible stories.

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Visit my website: Amloki.com

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Pablo Picasso's Woman with Yellow Hair

Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living.

—Anais Nin

You know a dream is like a river, ever changing as it flows.

And a dreamer is just a vessel, that must follow where it goes.

—Garth Brooks, “The River”

The Fascination of Autobiographies

Often, when I begin a post, I have this urge to make it a really, personal, intimate confession. I want to make it about the way I feel now, things I’m happy or unhappy with.

But I know this is not the place for it. My personal, private journal is.

I can’t understand how so many people can put so much of their life online. For the same reasons, I do not understand autobiographies.

While honestly written autobiographies can be intensely fascinating, I always wonder about the cost to the author.

Personal revelation has always taken courage, we humans are nearly not as personable as our personas. But in an age where criminals thrive on identity theft and more, I disagree with people who blog about personal lives, upload hundreds of pictures on Facebook, and generally live a public life when they don’t really have to.

There is a certain beauty in looking inward, rather than continually flowing outward. I don’t want to lose that. And in some cases I feel my fiction lets me do both: look inward and introspect, and flow outward as I write. So back to the story-writing board, and happy writing to all.

Writing Exercises

While writing on writing the last few weeks, I have been caught with a dilemma: to write everyday or not…

If you listen to writing coaches, writing everyday is elementary, the more you practice, the better your craft will be, you can be your own best teacher, and so on.

To me, I’ve been writing more on the inside, sometimes for days things would float about in my head, connect and disconnect, like atoms hitting against each other, randomly, attracting, repelling. And sometimes, most times, they form something. And then all I have to do is give myself a pen and notebook, and watch myself write.

I know that one part of me suspends itself while the other is writing. This part, that suspends itself, can write everyday, and mostly come out with inane scribbles or articles for my bread and butter.

The other part, which only comes out when the first part is suspended, which makes all those connections in my head, is where the real writing comes from, and I have about as much control over itself as I have over my bloodstream. It comes out once in a while, and not daily, like clockwork.

Is the idea for daily writing meant to coax this one out on your bidding? Not sure.

For now, I try to scribble something everyday, not worrying too much about word count, also hoping the part of me that really writes comes out of hiding more often.

Oh, and I’m also hoping  I’m a plain old writer, not schizophrenic. Thoughts?

Writing, notebook, blogging

Life has taken over, maybe work. Sometimes I feel my notebooks have become the repository of all the things I see, the way I remark on someone with a fly-away hairstyle, try to think how that mannish-looking woman, short hair, bra-less, in a loose t-shirt and cargo could become a character, or how a run-down palatial hotel I visited could be the setting for my ghost story.

Life has become about writing and work, and most of the writing gets done in the umpteen notebooks I keep buying, unlined, crisp. I even found a sketchbook with thick white paper, and when my pen runs on it I feel alive, so in there in my head, connected. Someone asked me, why do you even need such paper? Try writing on it, I replied, go ahead, just try it.

I wish I could write my posts on my paper notebook, and they would appear on my blog, flying out of the heavy white pages, and settling on the screen, like flies settling down in neat rows. Sigh.

I was about to post my draft on a dray tip in Tokyo, Japan, with descriptions of Imperial palace, tea-ceremonies, bonsais and so on, when I happened to take a look at the keywords that landed people on my blog.

The top keyword, to my surprise, which brought about 70 % visitors to this blog, is “Donatella Versace”.
I know I have a post or two which mention her name and have her pic, but feel a little guilty because they really provide no info on the actual person.
During my work, I have written about Versace here and also about Donatella—I thought I should provide the links, so interested people can get to the right stuff. I’m not sure this is the sort of info they’re looking for, because usually the searches include the terms “without make-up” and “fake boobs”, but I can’t please everyone, can I ?

Donatella Versace, with her brother Gianni

In other news, I’ve been struggling with a brain in which random scenes and lines keep bubbling up, as if I had a cauldron deep within my sub-conscious brewing up story ideas.

So I think is down to the notebook with me, I’m dying to fill up the new one I bought yesterday. To my writer friends, happy writing, and if any bloggers still read this blog, happy blogging to you all.

And people looking for Donatella Versace? You know what to do.

Life had taken over the past month, and I had kind of forgotten I had a blog. I had drafted some posts, but forgotten to schedule them. I won’t waste the posts, so here are the rest of my posts on Tokyo, Japan.

I would begin my account of Day 3 in Tokyo with the following picture I took :

Japanese Toilet Instructions

Well, if you’re wondering what that was about, here is some info on the subject under scrutiny: Japanese toilets. Japanese are quite manic about cleanliness and hygiene, which are not necessarily bad things, but you get the picture. Massage? Front? Back? They got it all. Thankfully the one I had at my hotel was less hi-tech, and er…’convenient’! If you’ve seen the video I linked, you know more about their “toilet control panels.” Ahem. Enough said.

A Waitress on Akihabara Street, Tokyo

At Tokyu Hands, I had to keep waving in front of all the walls, before a gleaming panel emerged, with a number of buttons rivaled only by a cockpit. Well, at least I was able to flush.

Once I got over the stupefaction of its high-tech loos, Tokyu hands was a delight. Especially the stationery section. Trust me, you want to go there. I went crazy buying pens, organizers, envelopes, and letter-writing sets.

The Takashimaya mall was my next stop, but since I’d already frequented one during my stay in Singapore, it had nothing new to offer.

By the time I found my way back to the hotel, I realized it was time to set off again, this time to Akihabara, the Tokyo destination for all kinds of gadgets, new and used. Multi-colored neon-signs beckoned us into tiny, but multiple-storied shops.

My husband and his colleagues proceeded to drool, while I bought myself a handy voice recorder, which can transfer MP3 files to my Mac. I can now repeat my tutor’s Italian lessons ad nauseam.

The interesting bit was the geek bar, though, in front of which pretty young girls dressed in Victorian-maid-inspired costumes were holding big placards in Japanese, presumably welcoming the geeks that frequent this part of the city. I requested a waitress to pose for a picture, and she obliged.

Day 3 in Tokyo came to an end at a restaurant which only serves Unagi, i.e, eel, eaten in a variety of ways, with rice and condiments. Yum.

Stay tuned for Day 4 in Tokyo.