Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Blogs We Read Regularly

Which is another way of saying, we're updating our broglorr, sort of

This is the height of laziness in the blogging world, this writing about other blogs. Even so, we're doing it after two years. But then we're the Sultans of Laziness. Can't even be bothered to make this remotely amusing. Without further ado...

The Top 10

These we check more or less every day, in no particular order.
  • The Spaniard In The Works - The Spaniard, when she can take a few microseconds out of her busy daily schedule of vampiring and zombieing and defenestrating, always and regularly has poems worth reading, movies worth watching, books worth buying, and links worth clicking.

  • Nanopolitan - It's a blog, and it's also a portal. An almost one stop shop for all kinds of happenings, especially in science, engineering, and academia. What we've actually done is outsourced our bookmarks to Abi, who does (apparently a lot of) triage on the messy world that is the Internet and only lets the latest and the greatest slip through. This one is a must if you're remotely interested in science/technology, academia, debates on policy, especially in the desi context. Go ahead, bookmark it.

  • Fanaa - CSM is to the world of development what Abi is to the world of sci-tech. Updated regularly, always something interesting going on.

  • musings from mumbai - Kenny was our senior in college, and co-infested a couple of Massachusetts campuses with us. She writes about life in Mumbai, journeys, stories, and about this kid of hers. Who appears to be absolutely delicious and kidnappable.

  • sElecting a President in New Hampshire - Longtime Asha buddy, and co-conspirator in world revolution, Melli has just started a fascinating and regularly updated blog on the election process in the US. The Democratic primaries in New Hampshire will get underway in January, and then there's the presidential election in Novembar, and this is one blog we will stay glued to.

  • Of shoes -- and ships -- and sealing-wax - Our blogs are actually siblings (observe the names) that got lost in some blog mela when mine went to buy inji mittai for hers, and the fireworks accidentally went off, and the elephant stampeded, and the rangula ratlam flew off its axle and rolled towards the elephant, and the heat, and the dust, and the screams, and Rakhee and...and... You get the picture. Sheetal writes about travel, and birding, and sports, and writing, and whatnot. Woh kya kattey ji, horizonaan broadenaan ho jaate.

  • k'uvvat-e-guftaar - Another almost bachpan mein bichad gayaa blog. If the Choultry wasn't named after something from "The Walrus and the Carpenter" or "Jabberwocky", and didn't have utterly obscure sayings from the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, it would surely make a ghazal type statement. Even more so, it might've made a k'uvvat-e-guftaar statement, seeing as one of our all time #1 ghazals is Mehdi Hasan singing ek bas tuu hi nahiin mujhse khafaa ho baitha (see footnotes). Shweta also writes about travel, birding, music, and Federer and will occasionally let fly little nuggets of shaayiri

    But the siblings Vyas are somewhat overly fixated on Harry Potter and his lethal salutations, and being very hoity toity, we deplore!

  • Blogical Conclusion - Read without fail every week for Baradwaj Rangan's sometimes funny, sometimes sober, always thought-provoking takes on the Indian cinema.

  • Yossarian Lives - This woman is on ayahuasca. Fullto fun will come here. If you see a somewhat harassed, academic looking Bong who answers to the name of Bill (Billabong!) in the vicinity, be nice to him. He needs it!

  • A writer and his web-blahg - Samanth holds forth. Very erudite. Discourses with equal Felicity on Herodotus, the Poincare conjecture, Brecht, maayamaalawagowlam and so on. Poor Felicity. He's either very learned, or very very very good with search engines and typing. Lives some kind of latter day Caligula life in the fleshpots of New York, and occasionally infests these parts to win most quizzes he attends, and once safely back in Manhattan writes about such intensely annoying things as how to spend Rs. 10,000 worth of Landmark coupons. Bah.

Blogs We Check Regularly But Aren't Updated So Often(1)
  • Not all who wander are lost - No indeed they aren't. Some are merely very very jobless. They should write more often. Ram Ram.

  • Muesli harmless - The only blog in the world known to be written by an Irrawady dolphin. Nowadays a very very lazy Irrawady dolphin. These conservation types have made life too easy for some species!

  • Da Black Mamba - Why for she is not writing more often? Is she engrossed in researching shades of pink, perchance?

  • Phantasmagoria - Is becoming distressingly irregular. We will get to the bottom of the matter. Is it wrong for a blog whose name ends in goria to annoyingly trigger off a song from Coolie No. 1 in one's head?

  • kufr - Actually boy is writing quite often nowadays, and we're visiting very regularly too. But we're placing him under observation, if he keeps up the good work, 2 years down the line we may bump him into the other list. Blog is about a lot of diverse policy type issues, and we seem to agree on many things so we likes to read.

  • Dev's Walden Pond - Writer, journalist, author of Touch Play which is a must buy book if you're into inspirational sports stories and are looking for an Indian hero.

  • Horse product - Utterly irreverent, and utterly funny. Seems to have utterly stopped writing.

  • I *heart* Bombay (and well..Boston) - The Vikster has recently moved from Bombay to Bangalore, and consequent angst is in progress. Sekk it out.

  • Last Man Blogging! - Is where Rithesh writes about many things including the life of the Hyderabadi entrepreneur, but not so often...

  • Flying in a blue dream... - Is also updated only irregularly, is by a Hyderabadi quizzer, and has one fantastic post (read comments also) on food joints in the city.

Other Ones We Check Reasonably Regularly
  • these amiable drifters - Srini who is short, squat, bespectacled, bewhiskered, and from Tiruchirapalli used to blog at cha-biskoot, but then Japanese Martian monkeys took over and now she's recuperating here. Her hairstyle rocks.

  • Mango Indian - Just Kishore's "Death by PJs" (be very afraid) website, spiced up by the occasional rant!

  • Raves and Rants of a Demented Cinephile - Promises to be the last world on definitive cult movies!

  • Dangling conversations - Sudhir Pai writes about everything!
  • Dhammonia - D-man about books, running, and quizzing usually. This boy is the Energizer Bunny of Bangalore middle and long distance road races.

  • Zoo Station - Dr. Abraham about economics, entrepreneurship and so on. When he can find the time from hanging out with George (Soros), Montek (S. Ahluwalia) and so on.

  • Easy Bedtime Reading - Mr. Google himself. Once in a while write something, lep.

  • Rajni's Blog - Rajni about life in the US, in India, education, travel, Deathly Hellos, and so on.

Excellent Blobs We Used To Read Very Regularly But For No Particular Reason Seem To Have Stopped Looking At (Which Is A Bad Bad Thing)
  • A Walk in the Clouds - What to say? :( It's really her fault, though. She keeps disappearing for inordinate lengths of time.

  • 2x3x7 - Can't blame the boy, he posts regularly and copiously. Then why? Wovon mann nicht sprechen kann, daruber muss mann schweigen.

  • Indian Writing - This also somehow slipped through the cracks. Boo hoo. Too much catching up to do.

  • Who is Buchu? - Used to get our daily Harvard Square fix from here. Alack, those days are gone.

Group Blobs


Few. As in, "Phew!" This is only about a quarter/third of all our bookmarks (including all the boring techy ones). But it'll have to do for now. Have we missed anyone? That would be really bad, no? Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be, speaking words of wisdom...

UPDATE

We forgot to mention (maybe because we only got to know about this one very recently), but Bombay Boy is also being read nowadays. It's about "food, delhi, bombay and chicks". Lesley has a post linking to The Delhi Walla which appears to be an excellent, excellent piece of work that tries to poke and pry into facets of Delhi that aren't exactly the most visible ones.


Notes
1. When we say "we check regularly", we mean to say that we're utter novices at such things as reading feeds and so on. So for us reading blogs means painstakingly navigating from bookmark to bookmark.

13 comments:

Space Bar said...

now all you gotta do is copy paste this into your template in some clever way so it all turns up on your sidebar.

non?

Anonymous said...

one reads one blog. one choutry. one learns all.

regards.
one
(also known as tmkahhi)

Anonymous said...

you visit my blog! lovely. thx!

since this is choultry, and what is choultry without being a treasure trove of information (to be found nowhere else) and attention to detail, we must point out 2 minor details - a) we have moved to wordpress - blackmamba.wordpress.com (there we said it).
and b) Are we intentionally hiding the location of "Electing a President in New Hampshire"? Or are kpbm's musings not really about mumbai?

La Figlia Che Piange said...

Pasand aaya, Musings From Mumbai, vaaki vlog bhi parega samay mein. Aur doosri baat mein, apna parikalpana pasand aaya. Ab humko warmandfuzzy feeling ho raha hain. Ok, tomatopappu, my hindi sucks. Lekin, blog parne ke liye dhanyavaad.

Ludwig said...

[space bar] oui, of course. in due course.

[tmkahhi] once again from chez O-M! they have some kind of Godzilla internet connection here.

[blackmamba] we see that you seem to have religiously clicked through all the links, thank you! owe you for the corrections, should be all OK now, thankoo.

[opaline] astounding command of Hindi you have! blown away, truly. and if we stop calling you Srini, will you stop calling us tomatopappu? actually i'm not sure it's worth it. too much fun is coming by calling you Srini, Srini.


Srini!

Shweta said...

Hey! Everyday blog and all… very pleased I am sure but then how do you explain my not getting a rise out of you for a nicely targeted barb a couple or so posts ago? I am sure you have been all wily and taken the pretend-to-take-no-notice route. Bah! Here I was thinking “ woh theer bhala kis kaam ka hai jo theer nishane se … chuke…chuke…chuke …Re!"(You know how it is done, no? with full action)

Sheetal said...

arre re, this is full hoist up munnakai chettu. but I like your intros and your links - horizonaan broaden horre :)

Preeti Aghalayam aka kbpm said...

i am all teary eyed because i am featuring here in your blogs read thing. senior in college. too much vonly.
i muse entirely from mumbai but i will unashamedly admit that my name is situated squarely in new england, maine, to be precise.
thanks ludwig

Anonymous said...

[shweta] err... you must hit us on the head with bludgeon, not send tangential barbs. we have all the sensitivity of a water buffalo, no?

"woh theer bhala kis kaam ka hai jo theer nishane se … chuke…chuke…chuke …Re!"

bahut kaam ka hai ji. phir se try kar sakte, secondhand main bech sakte!! :PP

[sheetal] arre aise nakku socho. what hoist? donon siblingaan aise shikaayat karingey karkey kabhi nai sochey!

[kbpm] "senior in college. too much vonly." don't tell me you have a problem with that?!! what would you rather be, "aunty from Amherst", "maami from MIT"?

maine pyaar kiya. but you've never heard that before of course. why the "spelling mistake" in name?

Preeti Aghalayam aka kbpm said...

hey no i dont have a problem with being senior in college. it is, after all the truth. aapne pyaar kiya? oh OK! then no sorry no thank you rule has to followed strictly!

Rajni said...

I was about to be offended if my blog was not included...but it was! Yay! Maybe I'll finally update it now with tales from London.

How are you??

Ludwig said...

[kbpm] "aapne pyaar kiya?" oh my! is this line actually there in some movie? what remarkable work of art is this?

[rajni] Raj! so you do lurk here. now they're coming outta the woodwork. of course your blog is included! but you really should update it, especially with tales of Londres. hope you're having ze fun in Piccadilly and whatnot. motoring along here, trying to make ends meet etc. but the stomach gets in the way! :P

La Figlia Che Piange said...

Ptappu, update toh kar. =(