Here we go again - Bloggers' Meeting V3

Dudettes and dudes, the time has come once again where we've got to leave aside our desks or laps or palms or all of them (OK you got it) to get together in our usual informal way for a Bloggers' and Tweeps' Meeting.

Tentatively, the venue of the next meeting has been set at Phoenix Les Halles on Saturday the 3rd of April at noon. 

It's not official yet because it depends on you guys' responses and availability. So we expect your feedbacks regarding the date and venue.


There'll be 3 free places for anyone wishing to ride with Jev and I from the North to Phoenix and back. 




You can read more about the previous event on Yashvin's blog.


So, are you people in for the event?

Are you an equal opportunity friend?

I haven't really been up to blogging lately. There've been lots of stuff going on. I went through the HRDC training sessions and came out of it full of knowledge and backaches. All in all, it was an interesting experience. The long weekend helped me recover totally from it.

Talking about the long weekend, on Friday 12th we celebrated our country's Independence day. I spent mine with Jev at Choisy with Mauritian foods and drinks. And on that day I got to know something great about him, that he is a patriot. You see, I am a patriot too but I guess that those are the things that we don't really say out loud. It's kind of hard to start a conversation with "Hey honey I'm a patriot! Did you know that? What about you?". And so we ended up not saying this to each other. But it was on Friday when he was buying flags and quadri-coloured ribbons that I actually got to know this aspect of him. And so it was while we were hanging out in the car watching people making the most of their day at the beach that we talked about what the independence day means to us. This brought me to comment on Eski's Independence Day ad campaign.

Our "national lemonade" brand has plastered billboards all over the country showing hands of people from explicitly different races and religions doing friendly gestures. All this is fine and I'm sure many of us are already befriending people irrespective of religion or other differences that society has created, except that it feels wrong and quite hypocrite when you actually show people doing it in advertisements. 

Taking my own example, my friends are varied, in a lot of aspects but I'm not about to pronounce myself as an equal opportunity friend. Friendship just happens, it does not happen because of the colour of someone or his/her religion. It just happens because something clicks. It did not occur to me that "Hey Deborah we are so different, let's be friends because I have to befriend someone from your religion." It just happened that Deborah is a foodie and so am I. 

And so I thought why not show real friendship? Friendship as it really is? Sometimes it would be with people from the same religion or caste as you are and sometimes it would be people from completely different religions. Because friendship happens with the people and not with the religions or races. The sooner we overcome the religion, caste and race barrier, the closer we would be to the actual state of equal opportunity...

It's all about certificates.

I hate it, I absolutely despise it, when the only motivation that people have for following a course or training session is the certificate. There's no harm in wanting a certificate. It is an additional garnish to your CV. But that is certainly not all. What about the experience? The knowledge acquired? Your own personal development? The certificate won't prove that you just became more efficient, it's how you apply the knowledge that will do that.

Remember when Gmauritius was going to be held? I'm sure some of you must have heard people asking about certificates. 'Cause it seems that they would not be able to learn much from Google, so they might just have a certificate to prove they were there!

Just last week when some buddies were talking about a training that the HRDC would be offering, some people dared ask about whether we're gonna have a certificate. I'm sure they did not register for the training because we don't know as of yet whether there will really be certificates.

Forget about the certificates dudettes and dudes, make the most of the experiences...

Hope...

Hope is great! It sometimes makes some stuff happen. But not every time, and certainly not for people who sit around wishing for hope to set every situation right. I'm just telling you that sometimes when everyone calls something a loss, hope can bust in and suddenly everything is doing great all over again.

I've never always been a partisan of hope but I've often been a positive person. I'm saying "often" here because sometimes some situations make it difficult to adopt a positive approach. 

Anyway, I like to think that good things come to those who deserve it. Despite being called a cynic by people around me, deep down I can be a hope freak. Just last Sunday when Jevin told me matter-of-factly that our printer would never work again, I told him it would. I told him there's hope and he silently acquiesced, perhaps because he did not want to hurt me. To cut the story short, the printer worked...

Maybe it was bound to work but I feel great to have kept my hopes high and not losing faith in the printer. 

There are several more instances when I did not lose hope and good consequences prevailed; for my academic results, when my dogs got very sick and the list is long...

I might be called a fool for believing in hope but well... I like the little mystical element that hope brings in one's life...

So dudettes and dudes, do you usually keep your hopes high or are you more likely to lose hope in tricky situations?

Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day is crap. The sooner people learn this, the better it would be for all of us. And maybe, and I say maybe, in a decade or a few years, if we're lucky enough, everyone will forget about valentines and we'll see the end of that torturing "special" day. And that's coming from someone who's been in a serious relationship for a long time...

There are so many stuff that annoy me to no limit about this day but I'll go with the most annoying ones.

1. The plush toys. 
First, those things are freaky. What kind of psycho would want to sleep with a plump thing that keeps its eyes open and constantly wears a stupid smile? And second, they give me allergies.

2. The fake flowers. 
Fake flowers should be banned. They cause allergies with all the dust and crap that they attract and are horrible to the touch and smell. I wonder why in all those years of technological advancement no one has ever thought of making a fake but realistic flower for Valentine's Day. It's because no one cares. This day is not important. Period.

3. The mushy couples. 
Yeah it's awesome to proudly hang out on Valentine's Day with your fake flower and plush toy, looking like a total idiot who's just got some kind of trophy. Except that in a few weeks the gifts won't mean big deal. You might even forget the name of the person who gave it to you.

But if you really wanna celebrate the day, for an absolutely crazy reason, do it originally and as inconspicuously as possible. For instance, I'll be making him a dessert tomorrow. Crap, it's not inconspicuous anymore! Oh well! I know you don't care. 

Happy "special" day anyway dudettes and dudes...