Twenty- five Seven

Personally speaking

Recent Posts

  • Am I ready for the ride of my life?

    The all new Zica

    I was awake earlier than usual,  thanks to Miss Papaya’s early morning feed,  when I realised that I just couldn’t sleep any more. So I did the only thing one can do in the morning without waking up the rest of the household – flip through my iPhone. I then came across a Fantastico blog post  by none other than the peppy Shalzz and was inspired to see what this marathon was all about.

    Curiosity got the better of me and before it killed me off, I thought I’d hop across to Indiblogger and see what all the fuss was about. It seems there was a Blogging Marathon going on. Since I am not the type to train for a real marathon ( just thinking about running makes my feet pain) so I asked myself, am I up for this challenge? Am I ready for the ride of my life? Especially since the grand prize is a Tata Zica Car.

    Now I could do with a new car, considering that my trusty old Santro is now looking old and worn out. It is no longer as  peppy as it was when Shah Rukh Khan first took it out for a spin on all the TVs in India.

    Frankly I can’t understand how a car can be peppy. I mean peppy is an adjective that means lively, energetic, vigorous. Can an inanimate object be lively, energetic and vigorous?  Particularly , a car like mine which is lying waiting in the garage for me to take it out for a spin most of the time?

    Imagine this: One day I get into my car and just as I turn on the ignition, it gasps into life and  begins moving at top gear! That won’t be fun would it?

    Which brings me to the question I ask myself, am I ready for the ride of my life? Or is my blog ready for the ride of its life? I can’t answer for the blog but definitely I can speak for myself.

    Last year, Tata Motors had launched a new car BOLT. Once again Tata Motors had invited bloggers (in conjunction with Blogadda) to participate in a drive to promote their car. I was one of the lucky ones to have been chosen for the activity and truly it was the ride of my life.

    To begin with, the other drivers in the car weren’t regular drivers: and since I was female, eldest and a the most regular driver amongst them, I volunteered to drive first, sweating at the thought of driving a car I had barely seen. No sooner did I lift my foot off the clutch, it zoomed off! That was a car with some pep!

    Without my spectacles, I couldn’t read any of the indicators or signs on buttons, nor could I locate them. So with the help of my co-driver’s assistance (showing me where the knobs/buttons were located) I managed to drive out of the city and on to the Highway.

    Before I knew it, I was speeding on the Express way and overtaking trucks and buses! When I reached the first pit stop, I was relieved that my leg of the journey was over. That truly was the ride of a lifetime.

    Am I ready for another one?
    Sure ZICA bring it on!

    This blog post is inspired by the blogging marathon hosted on IndiBlogger for the launch of the #Fantastico Zica from Tata Motors. You can apply for a test drive of the hatchback Zica today.

     

     

  • What’s in the name of a Blog?

     

    Or how my blog got its name.

    rose_white_rose_flower Dear Mr. Shakespeare you seem to have got it all wrong. A rose by any other name just doesn’t smell as sweet. Indeed, poor Juliet tried to argue that it really made no difference whether Romeo was a Montague or not because her love for him would remain the same.

    However, there is a lot in a name. After all a name can make or break a blog.

    The top most tip on every blog adviser’s list is to choose the right name.

    In the beginning there was…….

    The name should be witty and pretty and say everything that there is to say about the blog. I mean you’re hardly likely to visit a blog named 5 Spice if you wanted to find out more about the weather!! So I named my first blog Penelope Potty Snooper because my girls used to consider me a mother who looked into their potty to see what they were up to. ( Yuck!)

    But that name was so clever that no one got it but them.

    Then it became…..

    ChowMiaow which I thought was very clever – the word was a pun on Chow ( Food ) and Miaow ( Gossip ) which was the focus of the blog. It also meant “something to nibble on” in my native language Marathi. But then again, very few people got it. Also, according to my daughters it sounded like a website for dog/cat food, so I changed the name yet again.

    ANd

    Then I changed it to a blog of my own name which again was a bad idea. After all , I was a nobody with no name and no fame. So who the hell cared what I had to say? But then on the other hand, wasn’t Ariana Huffington a nobody before she became a somebody? However, that argument didn’t cut any ice so I decided to call my blog “Mumbai Daily” till I discovered that someone from Mumbai already used that name for his photo blog.

    Finally

    I decided on “Mumbai On A High” because I live in a really tall building and thought that this would be another clever title – playing on the fact that I lived in a flat so high up. But sadly, the buildings around me are now slowly dwarfing my building so perhaps I will have to change the name all over again.

    Word association

    But to get back to the original point, names are very important and have strong associations. For instance, no one will ever think kindly of a blog called “Hitler’s World” but on the other hand a name like “Candy Kisses” would be better received, won’t it?

    So be careful when you name your blog. Choose a name that

    • Closely describes your blog
    • Is catchy and easy to remember
    • Is universally appealing 

  • Good God It’s Friday!

    Yes, you aren’t reading wrong. I don’t mean to say Thank God It’s Friday, I am really amazed that yet another weekend is upon us. It seems like just yesterday when I welcomed 2016 and it is already three weeks down!

    I woke up this morning with a sense of wonder especially as the sun was shining brightly. You may wonder why I’m talking about sunshine from Mumbai when it is always sunny and bright – well this is because we’ve had some unusually cold weather this past week and a lot of sniffles that kept the baby and me up most of the night. So I was glad to see the sun come up even though it was milder and warmer than it usually is.

    I grabbed my iPhone before the sun got any higher and the sky changed from bright blue to a misty, dirty pale, almost not there blue and managed to capture these birds flying loops in the sky. The Black Kite is native to Mumbai’s sky and these birds can be tempted to fly closer to you by flinging bits of bread at them. If you manage to throw some “meaty” stuff, they swoop down even faster, sometimes close enough for you to catch their steely eyes staring at you.

    Doesn’t this make you envy the birds flying  free above the noise and the din below?

    Wishing all of you a happy weekend.

    I’m linking this to Skywatch Friday and Blog Commenting Tribe.

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