I think

Consumer is Queen

Last weekend has been considerably taxing on the collective pockets of the extended family. First came the darn Landmark sale. As if the shop is not content with our money otherwise.  We bought books that needed a crane to be delivered at our house. At some point of time, I promise to list them for you, but right now it seems like mission impossible (which btw, we bought).  Personally I am not the book-buying kind, as a kid I subscribed to libraries that survived on me.  But the husband and kid are not just voracious book readers, but voracious book buyers as well.  The kid seems to surpass the dad now.  I am not complaining though.  I would much rather that she splurges on books than dresses and the like. The kid amazes me.  She is almost through with "The Immortals of Meluha".  Please remember that we are talking about a six and a half year old here.  I first thought that she was skimming through the book, but it seems she IS reading it and actually understands most of it.  Her review is here.

For all my pride on the kid splurging on books rather than looks, I seem to be a hypocrite.  I splurged on a solitaire last weekend. Actually,  to be fair, I did not.  My mother-in-law had promised (bribed?) me a diamond nose stud if I pierced my nose (I am not sure if I mentioned earlier that nose piercing is a "tradition" thingy in our family, that I kept avoiding until midlife crisis crumbled my defenses).  So, a carbon sparkles on my right nostril right now.  I love the ray of light that catches my eye when I look down.  It is a massive rock and made quite a dent in the in-laws bank balance, but heck, it DOES look good. After that weekend of retail therapy, I open my mailbox to see three papers to review, eight proposals to write (in 10 days, FYI), two quotations to be sent, two papers to edit and a bunch of comments to respond to.  As ever, I set my priorities straight and responded to the comments first.  No further excuses to put off the rest, now that this post is done as well. So, until you hear back from me, rest assured that my diamond-studded nose will be buried deep in work.

Second day

...at Wordpress. Feels funny. Also, naked and exposed. After five years, I imagined I knew EXACTLY who the 32.5 people that read me were. Now there is an entire world out there. Of course, the entire world, I am sure, has much more important work to do than visit me, and the 32.5 people would be all that would continue to come here. Still, the feeling of having left the compact, watery womb for a vast, air-filled world is a bit overwhelming. But rebirth is inevitable.  Else it is death.  And I don't fancy the latter.

Setting Shop

I lived at lakshmi.vox.com for the past five years.  Now, Vox decided to shut down. So, I am moving my stuff here.   I have been at wordpress before my vox years, and don't remember having much trouble before. With time, it only ought to have gotten better. My only regret is that I will not be able to protect posts with pictures of my family like I did at Vox.  True, I can password protect posts, but I am not sure I want to do that. I will figure out a way to work around this. For starters, I reproduce below, my profile from Vox, just to give myself an identity here.  I hope to be up and running as soon as I can get a hang of this wordpress thingummy, and if you know me, you'd know that it would take a while. So, here goes:

Lakshmi is a science writer/publisher, lives by deadlines and pretends to be the life and soul of the party. Between deadlines she is comatose and needs to be scraped off any horizontal surface she may be on . The companies she works for believe that she specializes in advanced materials, but she thinks that she is just having fun with words and ideas.  And it actually pays.

When she is not writing and publishing, she is running behind a second grader  or incinerating stuff in the kitchen or going for long long long walks with her dude in the protected forest area she lives in.

Points to remember:

1. Lakshmi is her real name, and she takes pride in her thoughts in this blog, however profound or banal they may be. 2. This blog is also a journal of her life with her daughter. I still need to figure out the logistics of privacy on that one. 3. Any time her daughter indicates that she is uncomfortable having people SHE does not know, read about her, all entries pertaining to her (which is 80% of this blog) will be removed without further ado. 4. People trying to find women on the net for non-platonic purposes, please look elsewhere. Lakshmi is happily married to a fantastic dude, has the sweetest child that can be, and is happy with her love life in its entirety.  She requires no more romantic gratification. 5. She usually refers to herself in third person, when she thinks she has to sound profound, but she knows it does not work most of the time.

Special note to Trolls: This is MY blog, and I WILL write whatever pleases me.  No one can force you to read something that (a) does not interest you or (b) does not match your intelligence and talent.  There is a little red button with a cross on the right upper corner of the browser that can be clicked more easily than being rude here. If you still want to leave your excreta over my space, I will throw it out and disinfect my blog by blocking you.

End of Vox

I understand that Vox is going to shut down.  Have a feeling of deja-vu - from the many times in the past, that, when I got comfortable with a company, it shut down and gave me the good bye kiss. I am sure Six-Apart has its own reasons to shut down, so, without sounding too much like a dumped lover, I just thank it for the great times it has given me over the years.

I have been at vox for five years now.  What I really love about Vox is that it gave me the option to restrict specific posts to people I trust, thus protecting myself and my family in the big bad cyberworld.  Vox gave me a lot of new friends, some of them for life - Doug, Vijay, that means you, made me reconnect with some old friends whom I would have never found otherwise - Mathangi and Ana Karin, and helped me share news and views of my family with people geographically distant.  Vox has also been a journal of my daughter's life. And has given me respite during the days my work or my hormones threatened to tear me down. 

I need to figure out what to do next.  I would like to continue to write.  I'll probably opt for wordpress, which would give me the option of password protecting posts.  However, I understand that the password can be shared only with restricted number of people, which shouldn't be a problem, since I don't think I would have more than 35 that I want to share personal info with.  Or maybe I will just buy myself a domain and host my own blog (meaning, bug dude to set it up for me), but I am not sure if my writing is worth it.

I still have a couple of weeks to decide, adn Vox will allow me to post here until 15th. So, I shall keep you informed.

If people in my neighbourhood do not have my personal email id, please send me a private message and I will share it with you.

So long..

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