Daily (w)rite

Writing, blogging, browsing, all of these had just disappeared from my life for about a little more than a month. It seemed like ages.

Yesterday, a tall, wiry guy came in, and within half an hour, turned my life to normal. Oh, the joys of a continuous, fast internet connection!

Cannot believe that I actually introduced myself to the internet about 10 years ago, at an internet cafe with a hotmail account. Blogging was then an unknown concept.

For the umpteenth time, thanks to those of you guys on my blog-roll who have not deserted me even when I have had to desert you!

In other news, I have been reading Anton Chekov’s short stories in my free time. Having read them once as a teen, I can now appreciate the different perspective I have as an adult.

I have been working on a few short stories of my own, and understand how difficult it is to tell your stories in such a short span.

I am off now…. hop, skip, and jump to my other blog!

I will be back again tomorrow, and try to keep this blog a daily (w)rite, which was how it began.

I am feeling helpless and isolated. Writing is a thing of the past.

Reason?

I do not have broadband!

I have to sneak in time between potting plants and putting on cushion covers to rush down to the Coffee Bean across the road to do whatever little freelance writing work I can still do.

I have been approving comments and not replying to the ones so generously left on my blog, I apologize to each and every one of you who has commented in the past week or two.

Thanks for visiting, caring, and leaving those comments. Those really cheer me up!

I have been running from pillar to post doing all kinds of things these past two weeks, and the lack of broadband means that there is no late-night browsing or blogging. I did not know I will miss it so, but I do. And I miss each and every one of you

Here is to getting back on broadband by next week!

Writing about making chicken soup was not on the top of my list of things to do today, but then I thought, well, why the heck not?

It was like this: I heard some really, really, really bad news. My uncle lost his battle with cancer.

(more…)

Writing about rain comes naturally to me,  it is one of the things I can write about and never run out of things to say.

It always makes me a little sad, fills me with an unknown longing, it throws me sometimes into a spiritual trance in which all the life  around seems to take on a new meaning.

With each clap of thunder I can sense the retribution against injustice, with each drop of water that touches the earth I can feel the benediction of goodness, the blessing of plenty, the promise of well-being.

Writing about rain is a pleasure.

Letting myself be bathed in it is a greater one, one that I have denied myself over the years.

Maybe today is the day I should indulge myself?

I am sure only I could have written such an unprovocative title: the art of being provocative does not come easily to me.

I read on a fellow-blogger’s post today that being provocative is a great way to win an audience: get a controversy going, encourage discussion, spark debates.

While I agree at one level, the rest of me does not.

I’d rather read delightful, delicious posts like this one: Wonka is my reality or like the one that made me smile so many times within the space of minutes: F is for Frustration and Fridge Freakouts

I’d rather write posts like this one: Writing about winter sunshine, peeling orange

Or like this one: Life, death, and finding immortality through writing

I can’t help it, I like savoring a post, I like to twirl my mind around the aftertaste it leaves. I like blogs that touch me, not rouse me.

So, I will leave debating to those who are better suited to it. For me, I love writing, and I love reading, and having an argument is essential for neither.

Having a huge audience is a different matter altogether. But if you are reading this, I do have some audience, don’t I now?

Enough said.

I have put Google Analytics on my writing blog, just to figure out what kind of keywords get the most visitors and the visitor count, because that one is on Blogger, and does not have the kind of extras that WordPress does.

And I discovered that Google Analytics also tells me things like how many visits I have had from which city!

I have visitors from Melbourne and Stockholm, from Milan and Paris, and these I am excited about, but they are somehow the expected.

What I am really intrigued to know is that someone from Ellicot city or West Rutland in the U.S., or Kirkintilloch in the U.K. has visited me. I have a visitor from Novi Beograd in Serbia and Montenegro, I have visitors from Bandar Seri Begawan in Brunei, and I am thinking, wow, what completely fascinating names! I don’t even know whether most of these are towns or cities, what they look like, and so on, and yet, here are these people who have stopped by.

I have always known that the internet has a degree of omnipresence, and that complete strangers from across the world visit my blogs, but somehow seeing the names of those cities and towns, the date when the visits came and so on makes it so very real!

As you can see from the links, I have looked up a few of the places on the internet. I now have a new pastime (when I am taking a break between the gazillion things I have to do): every time I get a visitor from a place I have never heard of before, I will look it up, and take it from there.

For example, Wikipedia tells me: Anthony Burgess’s Brunei novel Devil of a State is set in Bandar Seri Begawan. The construction of the Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin Mosque is a major theme in the book. Maybe I will look up the book, next time I head to the Borders bookstore!

While at my writing desk I have often wondered about the sort of view writers have from their desks when they write.

It really makes me curious as read bloggers describing biting winters, flurries of snow, or walks by the bay, as to what it really looks like from where they write. Is there a television around, a pet or babies underfoot, or the post from an office cubicle, an airport, a (Bob, from Tokyo) hotel room ? Some of the bloggers (Cliff) offer an insight into where they work from, others talk about the feelings set off by their urban lives.

I love these tantalizing bits of information, and I find myself imagining the circumstances and surroundings from where a post was written. Someday, when I have the time to spare I am going to start off a photo blog just about this!

For now however, I’ll have to be content posting a picture of the view from my window as I write. This is from the gallery of photos I have talked about in my post Writing inspired by a Digital camera on my other blog.

I have come to a clinic without an appointment, and have been warned by the matronly secretary that I have to be prepared to wait. So here I am, all armed with my notebook and will fill the hours by filling the notebook, I guess.

Singapore mornings are crisp and beautiful, but most people here do not seem to have the time to enjoy them. Not being a regular office-goer myself, I do not have the poker-faced attitude of most commuters who simply tell the driver their destination and are lost in their newspaper, cellphone or ipod for the rest of the ride.

Since I often smile at people, I smile at the taxi drivers as well, and they immediately come to the conclusion that they have found themselves a good listener. I have heard several dozens of life histories of taxi drivers, some of them genteel old men who say they drive taxis to keep from being bored, even tho they don’t “really” need to, women who drive taxis to keep up their lives as single mothers and today I met a taxi driver who is actually a magician!

He declared in typical Singlish: “Today your lucky day! I the only magician in Singapore who drives a taxi!” and then proceeded to show me various sleight of hand tricks with coins and rubber bands at each traffic light where we came to a halt

Since I nodded and smiled at everything he had to say and replied “I’m sure you are right..” he told me in his nasal Chinese drawl:

“You got sweet face, you know, not angry waan, not like most people lah. They angry all the time lah, never have time to listen!“

I reached the clinic and am now sitting surrounded by people with faces absorbed in their papers, magazines or pattering away at their phones(Singaporeans love texting, and do not make as many calls), and realize that indeed the people around me do have grumpy faces…not that any of them is in pain, they are plain self-absorbed.

But maybe all that is just a front, because every time I look up from my writing, I meet eyes that get hastily turned away.

They must be wondering what on earth I could be scribbling into my notebook. But I don’t mind, I have got the post for my blog, and this is not the first time I have been writing at odd places at odd times!

Well, writing the first post on your blog is always an interesting experience. For the first-time blogger, it could even be a memorable one.

There is the trepidation on how your opinions or writing would be received, the eager anticipation for readers, an occasional scratching of the head on what to write, the indecision on the page theme….with each person it is different, but somehow the same. Whether the blog is going to be professional or personal, based on travel or interests or on random thoughts or bubbles of imagination, the first impression is important.

An introductory note on what the blog is about is traditional if not de rigueur, but I think I will skip that part.

I will just get on with writing, and see exactly where it takes me. As the title suggests, this blog is set to be a daily rite kind of thing: let us hope I keep my word to myself on this one.

For as we bloggers all know, there is something a lot more demanding than the first post, and that is not merely the second post, but also the ambition of daily posts afterwards.