AmreekanDesi

The Indian nation grows older by another year today. Happy Independence day.

Let us all take a moment to reflect on what Independence means for us, and work on doing  our bit towards being responsible citizens of this great nation of ours.

For once let’s stop cribbing about what is lacking with the system, and focus on fulfilling our duties towards the country. Let’s try to be vigilant, and not take anything lying down. Let’s not throw that candy wrapper out of the car window. Let’s not try to run down fellow drivers at traffic intersections. Let’s help people in distress.

To use that famous quote – “Ask not what the country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country”

Here’s a video i shot during the Incredible India event back in New York, a beautiful celebration of Indian culture.

Happy Birthday India!

Happy Birthday Amreekandesi!

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Folks, i am still in India and i am also still alive. So far i have not gotten into any road rage related incident, and neither have i got injured in a police lathi charge. Apologies for the long silence on this site.

A lot has been happening, and overall i am very happy to be back home. Being in India is a fun experience, but i have yet to get fully settled down, which is the reason for the lack of updates on amreekandesi.

I have a lot to share. My experiences, my impressions, my observations, my frustrations, little things that gladden the heart, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

I have sweated like a water tap. I have lost four pounds. I have cursed out loud at the ridiculously idiotic drivers on the roads. I have exhausted the quota of Safeda mangoes, and moved on to the Chausa. I bought a car. I had my dear home theater system’s power supply burn out due to a faulty transformer. I used to sleep less, but these days i am sleeping lesser. I have had occasion to call up 100 (police) for the first time in my life. I travel across three states to get to work, everyday. (See how dramatic i make it sound!)

I have been in India for a month now, and have yet to have a day of complete relaxation. But i am enjoying every moment, and now it feels like i have always been here.

There is so much going on, and i cant wait to write in more detail. Don’t give up on me yet.  I will have some longer (and less hastily written) posts soon.

Last week your favorite blogger moved back to India after spending some many happy years in the United States, adding another dreamy returnee to the reverse brain drain statistic, assuming my brain hasnt evaporated already in the superheated Delhi.

You may ask – why? What the falooda is wrong with me?

I’d say I was missing the safeda mango too much. In the few days I have been in town, I have used up half the city’s supply of Mango. There have been days when I had Mango for breakfast. Only Mango.

Mango Mango king of fruits
How I have missed you.

You are awesome
You are juicy
Without you I was so messed up
I was turning all goofy

(more…)

It’s time to start a new chapter in life
So after all these years
Lets go to India, i said to the wife.

In America there’s many a whistle and bell
But something’s missing
I cant even curse in the language i know so well.

India is nice. India is great
To get to India, i can hardly wait.

You may have never seen such a player
But the wait’s over India
Amreekandesi 2.0 is here!

(more…)

Unless you have been living under a rock these past few months you would have heard of Twitter.

Alright alright, don’t come down so hard on yourself…main hoon na!

So Twitter is this new micro blogging platform that has taken the technology world blogging world entire world by storm. Suddenly there’s celebrities going around touting their twitter accounts. TV personalities are being measured in terms of the number of followers they have. News is being disseminated via short 140 character messages (including blank spaces).

Essentially everybody and their grandma’s cat has a twitter account these days.

You can tweet from twitter.com. You can tweet from the million odd applications created for this very purpose. You can tweet from your iphone. And then, you can tweet via plain old SMS.

You can get news. You can find out when your friends woke up. You can find out when your friends went to sleep. You can follow famous people and find out what they are upto. You can talk to famous people and feel famous yourself.

You can tell the whole world just what the heck you are upto.

Biz Stone, one of the co founders of Twitter, was on the Colbert Report show last night. Here’s a video. Watch and enjoy.

Twitter is the messaging service we didn’t know we needed until we had it.

Twitter is great. Twitter is awesome.

Of course, we are on Twitter.

Follow us for some inciteful  news and updates on what’s right and what’s left in this world.

http://twitter.com/amreekandesi

Here’s the famous 25 random things tag; Some about amreekandesi – the blog, and some about amreekandesi – the writer. Enjoy!

1. The first choice for the blog name was americandesi, but it was taken. amreekandesi turned out to be so much cooler.
2. Ultrabrown (Manish) was the inspiration for this blog. I didn’t even know about blogs before i came across UB.
3. This blog has had three lives since it started last year. There’s usually been a burst of a few months before work catches up, then silence for a few months, followed by another rebirth. In the current life, this blog is about three months old. Hopefully the current burst will last a while.
4. For the newer readers, amreekandesi started off on wordpresss. By a quirk of fate, Google still ranks that site higher than this one!
5. When this blog started the idea was to write stories related to India and Indians. The original tagline  was Stories about India. Since those early days, we have diversified.
6. Sometimes i pat myself on the back for the current tag line “India…from the eyes of a Non Resident Insider”. Its sheer genius.
7. For the folks who cant sleep at night wondering what the hell this site’s name means – amreekan is a play on how punjabis might say ‘american’, and please tell me you know what desi means. amreekandesi is a desi in amreeka.
8. The first big feature on amreekandesi was the coverage of the Incredible India event, held in New york in 2007. That was some fun stuff.
9. Those elephants up there – aren’t they nifty?
10. It is hard to make me do something i don’t want to. Except for, maybe god. He finds a way, when he is not showing one. (more…)

So yeah…i have been thinking about doing this for a long time. About Time.

Diwali would be an auspicious enough occasion to get back to writing. So, Happy Diwali  dearest readers, and i am back.

Take care, enjoy good health, have a happy and satisfied life, and i will talk more about me in other posts following this.

Now that amreekandesi has a new address, it was just fitting that we had a new symbol. For those who noticed the new header image on the page, here’s more comments/thoughts about it.

About the Header

We would keep cycling the image to capture new ideas/events as and when they happen. As always, your feedback helps us make things better.

amreekandesi.com is up and running now. I am still trying to iron out some glitches. I was able to import my older posts from wordpress, but the youtube links are messed up; images are pointing to the wordpress links; having some issues with the new theme…

But this is so much fun. I am finally running my own website where i am the boss and can do whatever i want.

For the inquisitive, i signed up with bluehost which seems to be on top of most best web hosting providers’ lists. Their offer included a domain registration (yay!), and a bunch of other features. Hopefully they will live up to their impressive reputation, though sometimes my page takes a while to load.

Thanks lekhni for your helpful post. I used fantastico to install the wordpress software which i now use to manage the blog. Currently i am discovering the incredible array of plugins available out there to make it a better (blogging) world.

Once again, if you find something not working on the blog please dont mind. Even better, send me a note.

I am considering going Big…getting my own website and doing a whole lot of fancy stuff with it. Just wanted your take on this…yes yes you reader..i am talking to you there.

What do you think?

Would be very interested in hearing from people who have made a similar switch from Wordpress to their own blog. People who didn’t make the switch? Would i lose everything (my readers, my pagerank(!?) etc)?

Any tips?

Any recommended hosting services?

Above all, would you still read the blog? Visit more often?

Yo fellas…i am back! With a bang. I have a wife now!!!!

OMG…this feels so different. My life is never going to be the same again. Actually, it hasnt been the same since i got married to this lovely angel a couple months back.

Anyway..i have been thinking of getting back to business for a while now. And guess what, today is your lucky day.

AmreekanDesi is back. And Better than before! Please un-forget me now!!

Dear Readers,

Subject: I am not Dead

This is for you the millions of you crazy people who read this blog and appreciate my writing, and adore me and dream about me and want to build temples for me and have come to expect so much of me. I have not been able to keep up the professionalism that this job requires, and have not been able to write as often as you (and I) would have liked to.

You see, i am in Love. This blog’s got competition.

But yea, i will keep trying to sneak in a few minutes here and a few minutes there to create my masterpieces. So don’t you worry, main hoon na.

So come on in, take a seat. Here have some tea. Some gulab jamuns? Oh..they’re fat free. Don’t you worry. There…thats more like it.

Yours Sincerely Humble Pathetic Lazy-Ass Servant,
Um Reekin Dizzy