About wish-lists.

The problem with me is that at any point of time, I live with a never ending wish-list. If your to-buy list of electronic gadgets and appliances was as deep as your list for the weekly grocery requirements to be fetched from the nearby store, you definitely would be in a woeful state. Cameras, car-stereos, ACs, mobile phones and i-Pods come much costlier than the bag of "aata" you need to buy every fifteen days to ensure you get your dinner every night. So, if you have an average of one addition per fortnight in your weekly electronics-to-die-for list, you might have to do just that: die for the electronics.

Why do people always have to make things better? Six months back, I was quite satisfied with my camera. I took nice pictures, I still do. But like everything, my camera has its short-comings, and ever since I have discovered them, the desire to buy a Digital SLR has become very nagging. I mean, okay, this is quite logical to want it, because I need it. Well, I almost do.. am being honest. But then, it doesn't end at the camera.

My cell is ramshackle. It's working on God's grace. Thanks, God. But please give me something besides the grace. Not that I don't want the grace. But I also want one of those snazzy little things with large 64000 color displays and mp3 players and GPS and crappy digital cameras that you can also use to talk to people. How do you think I am supposed to exist without one. Everyone has it. You're being mean, God!

It doesn't end at that. There are things that I don't currently have on my desperate-to-own list, but are waiting on the benches, in my if-I-could-have list, and quite desperate to be promoted to the former. For this reason, once I have bought the camera, and have treated myself to the mobile phone, something else would get added to my list of woes. I would soon want a laptop, a pda, a big capacity i-Pod.... It would not end. It never does.

When I was in high school, I would think, the only two pieces of electronics I would ever want in my life would be a nice CD player, and a good camera- a humble analog one, for who had heard of Einstein-headed, miracle-performing digicams of today. It stayed that way for very long. But now, I feel I have been invaded. To not want would be a miracle. How can you not-want!! To not-want is to not-exist. I guess much of what we do, what we say and what we think is guided by what we want and how much we want. As for me, the end of the want would be the end of a big part of my definition of myself.

And I have my cute little way of justifying it, as I have cute little ways of justifying every folly of mine. Its like, I work for the EDA industry, which helps the electronics industry "make things better". So, if they come up with something so good that it makes me burn with desire, part of the fault is mine too. If I have added to the fire, then being the benevolent, big-hearted saint that I am, I must take a share of the burns too. So, its perfect to want. Its perfect to crave until it leads to agony. After all, I started it, didn't I.

So.. I want my 40 GB i-Pod! Now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why I don't blog.

Going by what I make out from what I have already published on this blog, I don't think I am really bad at it. Then why don't I post more often? Let me use my ponderings on this question as an excuse to write.

In my opinion, a blog writer needs to be particularly crafty so as not to make too much of his private life available in technicolor to everyone on the net. He/she must take care not to let a lot of detail about their lives overflow into the blogs. That, I think is a pretty difficult thing to do if you intend to remain honest with what you write. I intend to do so, with the sad result that I find most of what I write not fit to publish. Well, I sometimes think I am extra-withdrawn, because I have problems with publishing stuff that most people would deem alright to. But then, thats the way I am, and call it my folly if you want to.

I consider my two earlier posts to be just the kind of sly writing that I just talked about. Both are poems, and were both born out of depression and confusion over completely private matters. But then, I succeeded in channelizing the emotions to get something which has a general appeal. One who reads these poems would relate to them, but would get no glimpse into what prompted me into writing these. For this reason, I consider these two poems to be some personal blogging achievements of sorts.

But then, there are other things people write about in blogs. What about views, opinions, thoughts, stories, reviews, even small details of their day to day lives. As for the last, I can state that I am not someone with an eye for detail unless the object under purview is of some particular interest to me. So, at night, I would not like to put down in my blog what I had for breakfast, what travails I faced in office, at what time I reached home, and what troubles I had parking the car, though I agree that many people have an uncanny ability to make such colorless detail very interesting.

As for blogging views and opinions, I call it "online thinking", and that is something I don't habitually indulge in. I have my own, very unstructured way of thinking. I think at the oddest of times, while eating, while walking, while working, while driving. I consider that to be a nice way of thinking, because that way, you don't force the ideas out of yourself, but they just flow out of your gut. Yes, your gut. I consider ideas born out of the gut to be far superior to those born out of the mind. Those are the REAL ideas.

Huh.. I have a nice way of fooling myself to keep a clear conscience. Hell, just blame my bad blogging record on my laziness!