My previous blog was called ‘Got Time to Blog…’ It was made in 2004 and I knew I wouldn’t get much time to blog. And I just entered my 20’s then and that was the best title I could come up with. I have been thinking to restart blogging again. I made couple of new blogs also – one for Hindu scriptures, 1 for entrepreneurship but then it was going to be difficult to maintain all of these. I hence collated all my previous blogs into one and today, in the shower, I came up with the title for the blog – Because Self-Experience Matters.

Why: Being a ardent believer of  Simon Sinek’s Start With Why,I was trying to find a reason to blog, something that mattered to me more than what or how I do it.  I want to publish this blog about my experiences. My Self Experiences. I believe that Self matters the most and I want to encourage others to do that as well. It is important that we all understand our self (self-study) and understand what we have experience.

As I mentioned earlier in this post, Internet was once a beautiful place and even in this vast network each person had a sense of individuality. But now our sense of being an individual is losing day by day with the advent of social media. Many of us are becoming blinded by the advertisements thrown at us, the statistics shown to us, by academia, corporate, news and even government. In all this, how much does your experience on a subject matter? The millenials are getting more confused as they are born into a world where a person can’t hear even his own voice. Social media sites like Twitter and Instagram give a false sense of identity. We think we are speaking up but actually our voice and thoughts are bundled into a hashtag which becomes a statistic in itself for sentiment analysis.

What: What is self experience – A man is born into this world and experiences the world with his 5 senses – sight, sound, eat, touch and smell. What makes a man depends on what he does with his 5 senses, mind, intellect. All this constitutes the self. This opinion of the self is important than what the community & world thinks or believes. Self experience includes everything from mundane tasks to views on the world – my daily routine, the books I read, the movies I watch, the places I visit, the way I work, my views on religion, community, world and life itself.

How: I plan to start writing on this site more regularly (to the extent that it might look like my daily journal). I also plan to have YouTube videos and podcast later.

I just called Airtel Customer Care to register my Home Landline for National Do Not Call (NDNC). When I say ‘just called’, I meant I called them at midnight (too busy to do these things during the day!). I called from my house in Pune, India and am sure the call was received by some Indian working at some call center in India. He asked for my landline number and where I am calling from. Anyways, it took hardly 1 minute to do that, and there were no issues in getting that done, but at the end of the call, the fellow at the other end wishes me ‘Thank you for calling Airtel, Have a Nice Day’. You see where I am getting at ? For God’s sake, its midnight, you know I am from Pune, why can’t you just wish me good night, instead of wishing me a good day. I guess a IVRS might do a better job at it (you just need to program it to wish a customer according to the time he/she is calling).

I know all these BPO operations are a huge source of revenue and employment generation for India. It has changed the whole demography of many small towns and Tier-II cities. We have better spending power now. It has given a rise to all malls mushrooming all over India, which in turn generates more jobs. Good for us! But then we don’t use our common sense any more. Even though the guy from Airtel who recieved my call was trained to say ‘Thank you for calling…’, I think he should have wished me good night. But thats not the way it is.

Yes. If you are reading this on my blog (and not through a RSS feed), then you will notice that the URL in your address bar is http://blog.rishiagarwal.in.

I never believed in all this domain business, but lately I realized you need to have your identity in the online world, some sort of presence in the virtual world. After you meet people at social gatherings or after networking with people, some might want to go back and know more about you. They might want to contact you. Some might need your help after a few weeks and they might just remember your name. In today’s world, they will go online and search you (on LinkedIn or Facebook) or else just google you. And the best way to be found online (other than blogs) is to have your own website + a good URL.

So now I have my own domain – rishiagarwal.in, which cost me a lot, as the .com one was not available (even after requesting), and .in (India) ones are double the cost of .com domains. A .com domain is the most preferable, as thats what started it all. But apparently, these country code Top Level Domains (ccTLD) like .in, .us, .uk are more expensive than the generic .com one. Searching on Godaddy, I found that the most expensive international domain is .jp ( Japan ). I guess I paid quite less compared to some ‘Rishi Agarwal’ from Japan who will have to shell out $99.99/yr for rishiagarwal.jp 🙂

Note : Only http://blog.rishiagarwal.in works and points to my old blog http://darkcloud84.blogspot.com. I have not put up any website yet, hence http://rishiagarwal.in will take you to ‘Work In Progress’ page.

Continuing from my last post, I have seen that traffic in Mumbai is because of the high number of vehicles in that metro. There , you have traffic jams only at signals with long queue of vehicles waiting at a signal for 15 mintues ! But , as the number of 2 -wheelers are very less compared to number of 4 -wheelers in Mumbai , the situation doesnt worsen as it does in Pune .

Also, in Pune , the traffic is not because of increase in number of vehicles in past few years, but because of the bad condition of the roads and the 2 – wheelers and rickshaws who drive very harsh here. Of course , the vehicles have increased , but that is obvious, isn’t it ? That has happened in every city in India , because as the nation is developing, as the population is increasing, the lifestyle has improved, the per capita income has become more, and hence people are obvioulsy buying vehicles rather than depending on the public transport. ( Public transport in Pune, Bangalore is one more issue which I wont go into now ) . Shouldnt the government have anticipated the increase in vehicles and tried to improve the infrastructure in Pune ? What were they thinking, that ” why not call more and more IT companies in Pune , and our roads will still be able to bear the additional burden “.

Right now, the traffic situation in Mumbai is still bad, but atleast it is better than a decade back because of so many flyovers built in last decade.Why didnt the PMC ( Pune Municipal Corporation ) think of this situation long time back ?

Pune is already going the ” Bangalore ” way and companies are already opting for other cities like Ahmedabad and Calcutta. Many industries already left Maharashtra in 90’s , and now the same thing will happen for IT.

I am very desperate to write a blog. I can’t find a good topic to write on, but I just want to write something, any crap , but something. So this blog is more out of desperation to write , and not about something that has occupied my mind from sometime, because that is the time when I usually write.

Speaking of desperation, people are getting desperate day by day. In this country, people are just trying to run and reach their destinations without even thinking with their brains whether their desperation to reach there will create problems for others. Now, I am not writing about ‘ life ‘ and I am not being philosophical here.In the literary sense, I am talking about people on roads. ( Now read the line in bold again) .Anyways, I am talking about Pune traffic here. Most of the traffic jams , actually all of them are created because no one wants to wait. If there is a junction with no signal , and vehicles coming from all 4 sides, then there has to be a traffic at peak times. And the worst thing is , when there is a traffic jam, show that their getting very very late and act as if out of all the people stuck in the traffic jam, they are the ones who need to get out first. And in that pretext , they stick their vehicles more and more into the heart of the traffic jam .

Now, whenever there is a traffic jam, if there are 4 roads at a junction, 3 sides have to wait, and let the 4th one to go or allow the vehicles of that road to clear away . But , in Pune , all hell breaks loose and everyone just tries to move their vehicles nearer to the center of the traffic and occupy any space that is available. They dont even listen to some volunteers , or individuals who take matter in their own hands and try to release the jam. I had 2 experiences today of a traffic jam. And one more I had at Prabhat Road 1 month back in which I was stuck for 20 minutes, on bike. I dont know what would have happened if I was in car !

I am writing after a long time. I have gone through lot of changes since my past blog. I am an engineer now ! And the biggest change is I have started working now. Yay ! After 4 years of hard-work and competition, I am now earning. So , been doing 9 to 6 ( or rather 9 to 9 ! ) job at a company in Pune. No time to read books, no time to meet friends, no time to do things that I want to do or that relaxes my mind. Maybe thats the reason I havent been blogging.

And so from now on, I will change my style of writing. I will try to write small blogs, but as frequently as possible. It will encompass a variety of topics ( more on me 🙂 ) . If you visit my blog and dont find any new addition, then please leave a comment or buzz me ! I will try to update the blog for my readers …….Ok ?

P.S. : I wrote this blog from my office, with my colleagues staring at my monitor all along, so will try to write from home only !!!