Twenty- five Seven

Why I signed up for the Super Blogger Challenge #SuperBloggerChallenge #instacuppa

February 8, 2019
The Challenge of a challenge?

I am one of those suckers for challenges. Especially, blogging challenges. I love participating even if I know I’m stretching myself. Besides, the name SuperBloggerChallenge is very intriguing. Will this really take my blog to another level? Apart from this passion to jump into challenges, there are three reasons why I signed up for the SuperBloggerChallenge.

Working with structure, working towards a goal

Quite simply because I am one of those people who needs a structure to work with. I like to write but I sometimes get stuck. What do I write about? Am I really an expert at anything?
- [bctt tweet=”As a Jack of all Trades and Master of none, a challenge gets my writing mojo going, hence I signed up for the Super Blogger Challenge 2019″ username=”viaunishta”]
Working towards a goal is always more inspiring and motivating than just working aimlessly. While all writers write for themselves, they also want to be read and appreciated. So when I work on a platform like a blogging challenge, I know that at least for as long as the challenge lasts, I will have readers reading what I write.

Life is life long learning

As a full time Stay At Home Mom, I recently discovered my Ikigai: helping others. But in the course of this journey, I also discovered that all women need to have an identity separate from their family. To this end, I have made sure that both my girls grew up to be successful professionals.

Women who work outside are like superwomen. After all, all women have to multi-task and to work outside the house is doubling the work. And working women who blog? Having a full time job, a fulltime household to run, other activities to deal with like shopping , cleaning, socialisng etc and still have time to blog? Wow! Those women must be superwomen.

Anna Shetty, my younger daughter is a doctor and I know how busy she is. In fact, I play a major role in baby sitting her kids so that she can attend to her patients. Which is why I know how hard it is for doctors to find time to do anything that demands more of their time.

So when I find dedicated bloggers like Dr. Amrita and Dr. Bushra ( I first came upon their blogs when I did the A to Z Challenge) my jaw just drops!

These are two super busy professionals who still find time to blog and time to coach other bloggers too. Most blogger gurus who give advice give it for a price. And very often the blog advice is just re-hashed old posts. Byt this blogging challenge is offering FREE advice. Can it get any better?
- So part of the reason for joining this blogging challenge is to learn something from the tips that they give during this challenge.
Never leave a job half done

Last year I signed up for this challenge largely because I was intrigued by this challenge (as indeed I am curious about all challenges). Sadly, I had to give it up even before it began because the grandbabies were a whole year younger. I was travelling overseas and found it difficult to blog on mobile. And lastly, there were some family health issues at the same time.

So this year round, I decided to actually participate in the challenge and see if I can really do it.

So this is my first post and I do hope dear Doctors that I’ve got it right!

“Note: This article is written as part of SuperBloggerChallenge conducted by HealthWealthBridge.com and Allaboutthewoman.com and should not be repurposed, republished or used otherwise. The content herein is owned by the blogger. SuperBloggerChallenge is not responsible for any kind of infringement caused.”

Ciao
What to do when you are battling the flu #MondayMusings

February 4, 2019

Battling the ‘flu

January has been a cold month even for us lucky folks in Mumbai. The cold weather which alternates with hot, however, is great for ‘flu germs that are just waiting to attack. The first week it was sniffles for me. Then it was a stomach ‘flu for Wow Dinga and Little Po. And in the last week of January, the germs got hold of me again.

For a while, I thought I’d battled it successfully as I still managed to have a busy and social January.

But I was wrong.

After a hectic weekend, I woke up to the realisation that the ugly flu bug that I’d suppressed last week, reared its head once more. Yes, despite all the doses of Cheston, all the hot toddies, the flu came back with renewed vigour.

I woke up this morning with a heavy head, an itchy throat and a general feeling of malaise.

Preparing myself for a boring afternoon of enforced rest, I began reading my backlog of blogs and came upon this delightful post ” I Write Like Me ….or Do I? ” by Holly Jehangir who always comes up with a Different Perspective.

Write Like a Man

In her post, Holly analysed her writing styles by feeding in various bits of text to I write Like and got fascinating results. This site compares your writing style with that of the greats.

So I decided to try out the tests myself.

When I fed in Unpacking January , The Union Budget and the Banana Graph, and an earlier post of a decade ago Shopping in the time of chaos, the result was hardly flattering:

All these analyses revealed that I wrote like

I write like
Arthur Clarke

About Arthur Clarke | Analyze your text

Dear Liar, written at a time of great emotional upheaval in my life revealed that I wrote like :
Leo Tolstoy

About Leo Tolstoy | Analyze your text

Oh no! Leo Tolstoy was a boring old fart ( according to me). How on earth could I sound like a man ?

So I tried one last time and filled in a poem Rush Hour Morning and another post Finally a New Look Blog my writing was comparable to
Cory Doctorow

About Cory Doctorow | Analyze your text

Flattering though the comparisons may be, I was shattered!

OMG ! Did I really write like a man?

This was disheartening to say the least.

So I decided to analyze my Twitter feed through Personality Insights and this is the report.

While the Sunburst visualisation made a pretty picture, the outcome was not. It was yet more proof that the Internet considered my writing very masculine.

The nail on the coffin was, however, the following result from Hacker Factor Gender Guesser

Alas ! That possibly explained why my distinctly gender biased grandsons accept me as one of them…..and allow me to drink and drive ( not in that order of course ) because according to them these activities are only for BOYS.

It also explains why I am not getting my target audience of older, mature women. Perhaps I should now change my style to something more flowery, more feminine and softer.

The upside to all this is that this,however, is that I learnt to use the snipping tool and take screenshots on a PC! Look out for a post on this soon.

Also, it was a great way to drive away the boredom while the ‘flu germs were at work.

Linking this up with Corinne’s #MondayMusings

P.s Do try out these tests. They are a lot of fun if not very accurate or favourable.

And Holly , thanks a ton for the idea….

Ciao
World Read Aloud Day

February 2, 2019

I was just going through my Twitter feed this morning when I came across a tweet from @obsessivemom about #WorldReadAloudDay. Like World Pakoda Day, I was shocked to learn that there was a day dedicated to reading aloud. I mean I read aloud every single day!

As a regular babysitter to Wow Dinga, Ms. Papaya and Little Po, I read to them every day. And I enjoy it as much as they do. But wonders never cease and every day, as I grow older, I learn more and more new things.

World Read Aloud Day is one of them. And also, like most things in life, I am always the last person to know about most things. [bctt tweet=”Did you know that #WorldReadAloudDay was celebrated on 1st February? ” username=”viaunishta”]

I didn’t but thanks to Obsessive Mom, I know about it now.

The benefits of reading aloud to children

Reading aloud has the benefit of grabbing their attention. After all, when you modulate your voice, talk like Mr. Mouse or Mrs. Hen, make sounds like a tapping door or zooming plane, a story comes alive. And especially for the little ones who still don’t know how to read, seeing the words come alive perks their curiosity. It isn’t long before they want to read too!

And reading is a way of learning so reading aloud encourages learning too!

Why older people should read aloud too!

But while WorldReadAloudDay is meant for making readers and learners out of little ones, I find that reading aloud helps older children and older people too!

I’m talking about white-haired, short-sighted older people like me who prefer reading in silence. Very often I find that when one reads in silence, one speed reads. This means that words are often skipped. Of course, words like ‘and’, ‘but’ and ‘the’ are skippable and reading each and every word doesn’t always enhance the reading experience. But I find that in my desire to read fast, I often misread. For instance, I was for the longest time, reading a movie title like “Love, Sex and Dhokha” as “Love, Sex and Dhokla”. It was only when I read it out loud did I realise the difference!

Similarly, when I am speed reading my Twitter Feeds or even newspaper headlines, I find that I have completely misread and hence misunderstood the content!

Reading aloud also helps with pronounciation. For instance, for the longest time, I thought that the word ‘lascivious’ was lasvicious. This was because I had only come across the word while reading. Till as late as two weeks ago when I heard Yo-Yo Ma use the word. Then, I realised that I was saying it wrong all this while!

An added benefit of reading aloud is fluency in speaking. By reading aloud you practice articulating thoughts and when you have to tell a story, your narrative won’t be beset with ‘umms’ and ‘aahs’.

Lastly, I find reading aloud a great blessing to old people who can’t read anymore or those convalescing. Hearing a book while you are sick is calming. Feeling the presence of someone sitting by your bedside while you recuperate is reassuring and helps in a faster recovery.

So even though it is no longer #WordReadAloudDay in my part of the world, I would strongly recommend that each of us reads aloud at least once in the day.

Thanks, Obsessive Mom for telling me about this wonderful day!

Ciao,