This one might look like an awards post, but it is not. It is just a bunch of thoughts concealing a childish wish.
Meeting new friends is always great! No, I am not talking about Facebook type of friends. We just have them on our friend lists, not in our hearts. Those I have in my heart are from my real life and from WordPress. It might seem a bit odd that I am equating worth of real life friends and those on WordPress as same, but actually there is nothing strange about it. Let me explain. You see on FB, we like,comment, show off, feel jealous, congratulate and humiliate each other with status updates, photos and all that. But on WordPress, we just we just go on writing our own thoughts. People who resonate, follow on. Thus a good and healthy friendship is born. I am not undermining the worth of real life friends. I am just saying, my WordPress friends are almost as close to my heart, as my real life friends. Here’s a list of few of my favorite blogs. Read on to know why I like them..
Vighneshacharya is always ready with Speedy Sparks to preach and inspire. His inspirational posts have helped me a lot. Next my mind points to DrChristy from Nashville. Her posts about Jesus and the almighty, those are abrasive enough to rub the veils of materialism and ego off our eyes, yet soft enough to gently touch the heart and show us the right way. I have gained a lot of patience and peace reading them. Currently she is doing some posts on medicines and vaccines. Next I should mention THATlou, short for “Treasure hunt at the Louvre”. Her blog is always full of historical facts objects and artifacts. Even though I hated history, I love her posts. At Atranquilplace, the photos and words take me to heaven the moment I read them. Awesome! At semi coherent ramblings and such, he just talks on and on and on and in the end, you realize it wasn’t him talking. It was you reading! I love going through his mind . At Angiestoeklinblog, she is a simple girl of tween, living in San Francisco. You have to read her blog to know why I like her. So is Lexical Tapestry, she mesmerizes all with her posts and poems. I should mention, the author of Indrakatha is my best friend. Now for poetry blogs, one is Madame’s Tea Party and the other is Camilla Carron. Madame’s Tea Party posts so many each day that I can’t catch up, and Camilla Carron, she can get you cracking with laughter with just a few lines. Enough with the list.. There are around 30 other bloggers whom I follow for some reason, but I don’t wanna make this post too long. Now, lets cut to the chase!
Just this morning I had an idea. Why not go on a world tour to meet these wonderful people in person? It isn’t that bad an idea and I spent my whole day dreaming of meeting them. I saw myself in San Francisco, looking at that huge red bridge. I found myself laughing at Camilla’s poems. I saw myself in Nashville listening to some spiritual talk by drchristy, and so on.. By evening reality dawned on me. It isn’t quite possible to realize that dream, not at least in my present situation. That made me sad. The chain of thoughts went on, till I settled on a nice climax. I am a human being right? I am bound to be judgmental. What if I don’t like something about them. Instead of being enchanted, I might get a bad taste in my mouth. It might spoil their images in my heart and if that happens, then what is the point of realizing such a dream?… I said to my mind, “No reality check please, I just wanna keep dreaming”. Dreaming and wishing that one day, I will be meeting these wonderful people. I want to preserve their images as it is, in my heart and keep resonating with their thoughts for ever.. 🙂
Santu Online! 
Really a very nice idea..hope dat day comes very soon..but 1 ques wt will we do when we all meet?? is it blogging?? hahaha jst joking..
Nah, anything but blogging. Otherwise it would seem like chatting over the internet with a person sitting next to me 😛
Hahaha!!! Believe me! If you met me in person, you’d either be bored to death or club me to death! 😉
Thank you for saying such sweet things about my blog 😀 and I really do talk a bit too much on my blog, don’t I? hmm… 😉 😛
😀 😀 really?! I might be bored but killing somebody, I cant do that even in my day-dreams 😉 At most, I might doze off listening to you. I am a very tight sleeper, u know!
Oh, you’ll doze off alright!! But not by listening to me, but because you’d have nothing better to do! 😉 😛
😀 😀 😀
It’s a good idea. I’ve met some of the people I’ve been blogging with. Three years ago I did some travelling, just within the province, and shared meals or drinks with five people I had met through the blog I’m using right now. Not all at once, but just some one-on-one time. I’ve also had people from overseas — Finland and the UK — stay with me while they were travelling through my part of Canada.
Mostly we spent the time gossiping about WordPress and some of the people we blog with but, for the most part, it was a lot of fun to meet them. As long as there’s no pressure, no giant expectation of immediate connections, meeting blog friends offline, and getting a glimpse of their offline lives, can be cool.
Now, that I have a first-hand experienced guy talking in favor of my idea, I might give it a try! I wont change the title of my post though. 😉
Thanx a lot for the comment!
bdw, any feedback on my new blog design? I changed it the way u advised 🙂
Hi again. First rule of keeping a blog interesting to you: your blog must change as you change.
Also, nothing will break if you experiment with the widgets. Add in a bunch of them, take out the ones you don’t like, but the longer you blog the more likely it is you’ll like some of the ones you don’t like now, and be bored the ones you’re using.
Personally, I think mine is perfect right now, but I know in six months it’ll look completely different.
The one widget you might like right away is simply called “RSS” (different from the ‘RSS Links’ widget you’re using). If you have a favourite blogger, or a blog you’d like to share with others, you can put their feed in your sidebar. The feed for any WP blog is simply them.wordpress.com/feed, so yours is santuonline.wordpress.com/feed.
But every blog platform has an RSS feed you can use.
Personally I like the Recent Comments widget because people put a lot of time and thought into their avatars, and it’s important to give them a place to show off.
You’ve got a great blog, I love reading about India… actually, one of my very first blog friends used to blog at A Wide Angle View Of India: http://nitawriter.wordpress.com
Here are a couple of things you might find handy / fun:
This link is a WP secret, they used to have an arrow on the grey bar. It was their coolest feature ever: when you pressed it you were taken to a random WP blog. You could press it for hours and never see the same blog twice. They took it out, but this is the link (just right click and open in a new tab) :
http://wordpress.com/next/
These are the WP codes for adding video (YouTube & others) and audio:
en.support.wordpress.com/shortcodes/
And this is a site that’ll teach you about every feature of every WP Theme:
wpbtips.wordpress.com/list-of-posts/
Man, ur advise itself is as long as my blog post, took around a minute for the whole thing to sink in! 😀 Thanx a lot for such useful tips! i am gonna use them for sure once these rotten exams come to an end.
Yeah, I agree with u that blog design should change. This is my 3rd theme change. About the rss widget, I am still working on it. And I wanna ask u one last thing. U said “You’ve got a great blog, I love reading about India”, but I myself cant remember what have I written about my country? I do nothing but blabbering about myself here. I am asking this coz, one of my favrt bloggers has even given me the “sunshine” award for the same reason, and I myself dont know!! 😉 🙂
A nice post Somesh.
I liked the thought that we connect easily with people who reflect and resonate with our ideas. This is so true, of the blog world, as you said.
If we connect, we feel so good, there is no strings attached, and I enjoy that sense of friendship , we establish.
You design is so easy on the eye, for me.
😀 Thanx a lot for the visit, the comment and finally the compliment! U have done me a favour without asking! I was a bit apprehensive about this new theme and design, and u verified it for meee!! Yayyyy! thanx again! 😀 someday I might visit ur garden also! 🙂
Writing about your life, writing about the music you and your friends make, the food you’re preparing, the education you’re receiving, is you writing about what’s it’s like living and growing up in India. It’s as important to learn from individual experiences as it is to learn about culture and life through things like newspapers or encyclopedia’s.
For example, I rarely write about Canada specifically on my Salted blog but, if you want to know how the health care system works in Canada, or about how life is lived in general in Canada, you’ll find out if you read long enough.
I do have another blog where I write about issues facing Canada / Canadians (abortion, education, inventions, politics, wars), or about things Canadians have done, but rarely about myself. But, again, if you read long enough you’ll eventually get an idea as to who I am as well as (hopefully) get an idea about the culture of the country I live in.
You, me — the rest of the online Global Village, we’re educating each other.
WAAAOOOOOWWWW! 🙂 🙂 🙂 I never would have thought of that! Until today I used to search my own blog by the keyword “India” and never found much of anything! 😉 . I used to be kinda mad thinking what had I written? I was like searching for my specs, firmly planted on my head 😀
Bdw, I love this idea of “We are all educating each other!”, sounds like we are doing something important after all! hahaha! 😉 😛
Very inspirational and thoughtful.I get the feeling you will get there,for the very simple reason you have purposed to.Have a great week!
Thanx! 🙂 U know, now I am having a feeling maybe this dream is worth realizing!
😀 I m fickle minded! cant help it
Thank you Somesh, for your kind words and consideration…very encouraging.
Well, I had to! I follow each and every post of yours, although I am not able to comment on each due to lack of time.. Thanx for the comment! and u r welcome! 😀 😀