Now that I’ve written out my plan for 2015, going forward will not be complete without a review of the last year. I’m repeatedly told not to dwell in the past but I believe the path to the future lies in the past. One must deconstruct and understand to past to move forward into new mistakes and learnings. So, a 2014 review post just has to happen. 😀

Then the other day I came across Vidya’s post on ’Thank Outside The Box With Gratitude’ and I was like ‘Hey! That’s a nice way to approach the 2014 review.’ Vidya and Corinne host the Gratitude Circle, a way to share gratitude for at least very thing once a month on the 4th Thursday of every month. 😀 ( I’m looking forward to joining in)

As I sat thinking about all I am grateful for, it hit me, being thankful changes things, the good starts to look great, the bad shrinks and fades to back. The world and life starts to look all shiny and new. Ok Ok, enough of my philosophy, now onto thankfulness. 😀

2014 for quite a year for us, we had some sticky situations, tight spots, crazy days, mad upheavals and yet we also had moments of intense happiness, thrilling achievements, successes that make us proud and awesome memories to take away.

We started the year with moving house, getting 5 dogs together and settling in. Life seemed like madness as we all learned to live together and work it out. But looking back I am so thankful for those days, it has made me stronger.

Walking the dogs everyday seemed like a chore, now it’s something I look forward to everyday, it’s my time with the dogs. I am so thankful for my pack, they complete my family, they are my friends, confidantes and they know me better than me.

Our first house was lovely, all stone and without corners, but our second out does it, or so the dogs think. We moved house mid year and went through the whole logistical nightmare again. The madness of packing and unpacking was just a part of it, moving five dogs is another thing all together. But we survived that and have moved up a level in the Pro-packing team.

‘Pawsible’ is a lovely place. As I sit here and write I have a spread of lawn a step away in the shade of coconut and arecanut trees. Dogs passed out in dappled sunlight. A largeish house where granite dominates and keeps it all cool. There is so much to be thankful for here.

I’m thankful to the powers that be for giving my Granny a long life and to all who helped me be there in Bombay for her 90th birthday this year. It’s was a immense joy to be there.

With 6 dogs overnight holidays are almost impossible but in 2014 we did this too and not once, twice! I am so grateful for Devisri who is amazing with dogs and someone who I can trust my six with.

And now since we’re are already on the fringes of people let me dive into the sea of people I’d like to thank this year.

My Mom and Bro; there is just so much i couldn’t have done without them. Two moves and settle-ins would not have been possible with out Mom’s excellent skills and Bro’s logistic handling.

Doggie friends that helped us make it Pawsible – Parinita, Raji, Devisri, Preeti, Anitra, Chaitanya and anyone I missed. These people jumped in when the going got tough and helped me make sense of a lot of the chaos.

My Dogs – We started out with one 5 years ago and now have six. Each one brings so much to my life. Senti, my forever baby, Buddha the one who teaches me peace and calm, Cuckoo who brings the chaos in her wake, Max whose all about food and love. William the only dog who ever made me pee in a garden, and Elu the little heart of it all, she is a free spirit, a bridge between worlds and a calm before the storm.

And lastly the man who I come close to throttling quite a few times each day. The shore to my sea, the boat to my river, the polariser to my sun, … and more such cliches. All said and done Che has his moments and I’m thankful. 😛

P.S. – Vidya and Corinne, Thank you for getting me started on the Gratitude Trip. 🙂

I’ve received so many email reminders from IndiBlogger about the CarConnect.in contest that I finally decided to check it out. Well, the content would do my blog some good and if I won one of those vouchers they keep shouting about I’d be happy. Who wouldn’t when the first prize is a Rs.50,000 voucher, second is 2 Rs.25,000 vouchers and then there also are 80 Rs.1,000 vouchers; I’d have preferred cash though 😀

Disclaimer: This is a long post. If you want the quick and dirty, scroll right to the end now. 😛

Ok, onto checking out the site… Here’s what the home page looks like…

Positives:
The layout looks clean and fairly simple with enough social proof on the right to get me interested.

Negatives:
The only way to login is Facebook. Personally I don’t like that, I prefer to keep facebook out of other sites I use. Logging in with facebook requires me to be very careful about permissions, one mistake and the site will be plastering their info all over my facebook stream. There is also the fact that Facebook is not forever, so what happens to my CarConnect login if facebook disappears tomorrow? I would have liked to see another login option apart from Facebook.

Apart from the forced Facebook login, without giving CarConnect.in access to my Facebook details by logging in, I cannot see or do anything on the site. Every click only brings up one prompt.

“Please Login with Facebook to proceed…”

Oops, Wait a moment… All links at the bottom of the site work without login. 😀 So, you can check out the site’s About Us (which has some errors in language), How to Earn Badges, etc. without a Facebook login. But the one that caught my eye was the Contact Us.

The page is just like any other contact us page except for the 200 character limitation. Hey CarConnect.in, this isn’t a twitter status message. If you expect a more than 200 word review of your site, wouldn’t I be entitled to more than 200 characters in a complaint?

Positives:
This pops up when you hit the ‘Login with Facebook’ button, which isn’t so bad since the fine print at the bottom says, CarConnect.in cannot post on my behalf.

Positives:
After login completes the Profile page loads with all *fields populated from Facebook (these are editable though). There is not much information being asked for and I like the fact that I didn’t have to fill a lengthy form about myself.

My profile created and saved, I clicked on view profile to see what it looked like. The my profile page is simple and short with a note in bold asking you to share your experiences. So that’s where I headed next.

The Share Experience page gives you two options at the start. Car Experience and Long Drive Experience. This choice doesn’t change much on the page except for giving you car selection options or destination options.
Once past this selection I filled in the other details – caption, description, keywords/tags. I didn’t have any images or video so I skipped those fields.

Positives:
Simple and user friendly to fill up with the right fields and choices being given.
Options for Photos and Videos make for a nice touch.

Negatives:
The start point and destination drop-downs have very few options. I’d have liked to see more here. As of now there are just the metros, major cities and common holiday destinations.

Clicking the submit option brings up the above message. Moderation of posts isn’t bad and will help make sure random nonsense does not get added to the site, but I would have liked to know what parameters would be used for moderation, ‘appropriate’ isn’t enough to describe it.

Now that all login essentials are done, here’s what the Home Page looks like –

The home page now shows Top Car and Long Drive Experiences and all tags in the clouds lead to pages with more entries from users.

That concluded the login process I guess but before I wind up lets look at the various options in the main menu of CarConnect.in.

‘Home’ is as above, ‘My Profile’ we talked about earlier, ‘My Friends’ as expected is blank right now for me, and ‘Share Experience’ takes me back to the form for travel details.

Then, there is a ‘Leaderboard’ which gives badges and ratings of users. ‘Car News’ which gives news from the automobile industry and ‘New Launches’ which I assume gives info on new car launches.

Aside from all these, there is a ‘Long Drive’ option. The page asks you to select start point to see all route options. At first glance I thought this was a cool system for mapping. What it actually is, is a another tag cloud. A click on the city will take you to entries made by users starting from that city, not a map or route options.

Lastly there is the ‘Compare Cars’ option. This also sounds cool but when you get to the page you realise it isn’t real-time. Results will be emailed, now that just makes for more waiting and processing. There are other sites that do this real-time and would be so much better to use for this feature than what CarConnect.in has to offer.

Overall Thoughts –

Positives:
Most of the site is user friendly and straight forward.

Negatives:
My over all experience was marred by a few things like the Facebook login being the only option, the site layout being too rudimentary (more bells and whistles would have been nice), the reading experience of write-ups and news being more easy on the eye (at the moment it reminds me of Orkut), and other things where they have said one thing and delivered another like in the Long Drive section.

CarConnect.in as a concept is pretty cool since India is right now bursting at the seams with cars. (No point in arguing about there being no road space for these cars in this post) With the right incentives and a lot of clean up, the site would definitely gather more users.

Phew! I’m finally done with the A to Z Challenge. And I was so happy about that yesterday that, when Che asked me to take the day off and chill with him, I did, forgetting all about my post. Freya, bad girl! 😀

When I started out on 14th April it felt like it would never finish the challenge, I’d never get 26 posts done. But here I am 26 posts later and it feels good to have completed my challenge.

Wasn’t a clear win, and there were many hiccups. Days when I couldn’t sit down to write, the words just wouldn’t come, I couldn’t find the right word; it took me 34 days to get 26 posts done and that’s one too many a holiday in-between posts.

But anyway all that aside, this challenge was a learning experience at various levels.

I learned some new words and their etymology in the whole exercise. Days where I couldn’t find a word I learned to use Google better :D, I thought out of the box for some letters, reached into my heart for some and even my past for some. In some cases I learned something new and amazing like about Rastafarian or that the SCUBA we use today was first co-developed by Cousteau in 1943.

There were days when I had so much to do but I was confident I would find the time to write everyday. And some days I did, I wrote a fair number of posts on the mobile phone when I couldn’t sit down at a computer. Writing, editing and publishing through the mobile phone was a first for me. Need to learn how to do this better though, since I couldn’t figure out how to add images to my post on the mobile.

The other thing I learned is not to take for granted that I will find the time to write everyday. I have to learn to write ahead of time and schedule the post. [Crack that whip, I need to get my act together! :D]

The most important lesson though I think was that when I make up my mind I can do things. I wrote posts on days when I though it would just not be possible to do it. I relearned will-power and determination, and the possibilities it opens up.

This challenge had me push my limits and helped me find a little bit of me again. I found writing and it’s joy again. So here’s to me being more active on my blog. Cheers!

Here’s my 26 posts and words for 2014 –

A for Alpha, A for Aspire
B for Bravo, B for Balance
C for Charlie, C for Celebration
D for Delta, D for Determination

E for Echo, E for Explore
F for Foxtrot, F for Friends
G for Golf, G for Gratitude
H for Hotel, H for Hope

I for India, I for I
J for Juliet, J for Josh
K for Kilo, K for Kismet
L for Lima, L for Labour

M for Mike, M for More, Maza
N for November, N for Nature
O for Oscar, O for Orgasmic
P for Papa, P for Positive

Q for Quebec, Q for Quirky
R for Romeo, R for Rastafarian
S for Sierra, S for Silence
T for Tango, T for Time-out

U for Uniform, U for Unique
V for Victory, V for Vitality
W for Whiskey, W for Wisdom

X for X-ray, X for X-factor
Y for Yankee, Y for Yummy
Z for Zulu, Z for Zero

I last used the phonetic alphabet over 8 years ago while I still worked in a BPO, though the A to Z I tested my memory and I managed to get 24 out of 26 correct. Not a bad show, eh?

Have you done an A to Z challenge? Did you enjoy it? What did you learn from it?

Gangs of Wasseypur part 1 released on 22nd June 2012 but Che and I were busy winding up and packing to leave for Thailand so it was almost impossible for us to see the movie. Now imagine our delight when we got back a month later and found that one of the multiplexes was running part 1 along with part 2. This was not to be missed so off we went to a back to back screening of the two parts of Gangs of Wasseypur.

These are hindi movies so as it is they are long but with two parts they are beyond longer. That said there is no part of the two that you will not enjoy. Anuragh Kashyap delivers again with a set of movies that are not to be missed.

There is a lot of violence in the movie but even that was fun to watch. Jeez did I just say I enjoyed violence? Well, yes I did. It was tastefully done and went with the story.

The story is set in Wasseypur near Dhanbad in North India. This part of India has got tossed around between states and that has had an impact on its people. Wasseypur has a large population of Muslims of two different castes and the story is about a vendetta between the two with a third benefiting from it all.

The actors have done a good job in portraying the characters. The women in the movie are shown as strong women and have a role to play. They are not just there for scenic purposes. I loved watching Nagma played by Richa Chadda as she berated her husband and stood by him too. There is a domestic scene between Sardar and Nagma as she vacuums the house that is just adorable. Then there was Moshina played by Huma Qureshi who has character and style.

Don’t miss these this set of movies and preferably watch them back to back as there is a lot of detail in part one that helps you understand part two.

Aside – Overheard in the toilet during interval – ‘Kya bakwas film banate hai aaj kal’ ‘What rubbish movies they make these days’. This has kinda become my test for movies. If people think its rubbish it might just be good. After all people want to watch mindless movies these days where you can come to the theater leaving you intelligence behind at home. Not necessarily a bad thing, I watch mindless movies too but then I wouldn’t watch an A. Kashyap movie on a mindless day!

Read more about the movies here –
Gangs of Wasseypur – Part 1
Gangs of Wasseypur – Part 2