I got this video via email, not sure what it’s origins are but thought I would share it here since it’s pretty funny. And it involves a dog, how could I resisist 
Asking For Directions
What Lies Behind My Digital Moniker “Mapetite”
Soul4Real recently bared her soul and shared the story of how she came to adopt “soul4real” as her digital persona. Much like her, “mapetite” and variations thereof, has been my digital moniker since the time I established a digital identity.
If memory serves me right, someone else came up with it, a French tourist no less . While in college, I learnt French as my second language, and one day, while my classmates and I were rehearsing some French songs to perform at a reception, we were “discovered” by an elderly gentleman, a tourist from France, visiting Chennai at the time. He had heard us singing and followed the voices to where we were. Of course he took pictures galore, and sent us all copies, all the way from France, and in the accompanying letter, he referred to me as “ma petite Vidya”. And the moniker stuck .
Now, the comical sidebar to this anecdote is that I tried to perform a high kick during dress rehearsal – we were all attired in natty blue pencil skirts with crisp white shirts and red bows for the colours of the French flag – and I fell right on my derriere; we decided not to include it as part of the performance .
And The Meme Goes On…
I’m cutting to the chase here because, it’s my first time being tapped/tagged for a meme – I need to work on the online efficacy of my E personality, it’s taken this long? . And so, here we go!
1. This is the first time I’ve been tapped for a blog meme. Given that I’m social networking junkie, one would think it would have happened earlier, but I have blogging arrhythmia, I blog when I feel like, and usually after long intervals of time, so it’s really not that surprising 
. And yet, it happened, and I went giddy with delight, followed by a state of decision paralysis: What five things about me do I want to share? What do they already know so I can steer clear of being repetitive? And so on and so forth…
2. Which brings me to my second thing (is it good English to start a sentence with “Which”? Gardner, Barbara, don’t go English prof” on me ): Most of you have seen the extroverted, fiery me (according to my Indian horrorscope, my rising sign is Leo and my moon sign is Sagittarius), but few of you know – I think – that I can over-think things (like above) when my anal, perfectionist, detail-oriented Capricorn/Virgo side kicks in (according to my Western horrorscope, my rising sign is Virgo and my moon sign is Capricorn, or is it the other way around?). On the other hand, I inevitably cry at the endings of each episode of Ghost Whisperer, actually, any teary scene in any movie or TV show. That’s the sappy Pisces in me, my sun sign. Thankfully, both my Western and Indian horrorscopes agree that I’m a Pisces.
3. And thence to my third thing: We didn’t get a television set at home till I turned 15, but our neighbours in Mumbai had one and every Saturday, as a child, I would head over to watch the Saturday night movie. If it was a tear-jerker, I wouldn’t cry there, but I would come home, settle into my favourite spot behind the door leading to the balcony, and bawl my heart out to my heart’s content. Its family-lore now, and my aunts and uncles take great delight in recounting that story over and over to my friends, my husband, and I suspect my nieces will hear it eventually too!
4. Speaking of nieces, mine turns one in a few months, June to be exact, but what’s really exciting is that her name – Diya – is contained in mine and we also share the same Indian star sign known for its obduracy, I beg your pardon, tenacity . In India, naming the child is a significant event and name are chosen with great care and deliberation. My brother for instance, was named “Arvind” because when he was born, he was so fair, his pink feet looked like little lotus petals (Arvind means “lotus” in Sanskrit). So I asked my parents why they chose Vidya for me; they don’t remember. But here’s what it means: Knowledge and wisdom. And my last name loosely translated is “eternal god”. So I guess that makes me “Wise and Eternal God(dess)”, at least in this lifetime .
5. And so we come to family. I wrote a post a while ago about how I was blessed to have had a liberal arts upbringing, and consequently, music was and is a big part of my life. At one time, we had seven musical instruments at home: two sitars (I learnt Hindustani music on the sitar for five years), a tanpura, a harmonium (I would accompany my father on the harmonium while he sang), a tabla, a harmonica, and a flute (these latter three were my brother’s musical passions at the time). My maternal grandmother still plays and teaches the veena, my mother is taking singing lessons at this time, and I hope to start taking guitar lessons soon.
And that my friends, are five things you didn’t know about me before, I hope. Here’s who I’m tagging to keep this meme going: Sarah Robbins, Barbara Ganley, Laura Blankenship, Jennifer Navarette, Brian Yuhnke.
Goodbye 2006, Hello 2007
Dawn is breaking outside my study window. The light is still grey; it will be time to take Chewbacca on his walk pretty soon and feel the first rays of the sun on my face. It’s January 2nd, but with January 1st being a holiday, this day truly feels like the dawning of the new year. As I look forward to what lies ahead, so do I look back to what has been, and what a year it has been!
It’s been a year of renewing and deepening friendships and bonds: Gardo, Bryan, Brian, Cyp, Alan, I look forward to learning and laughing with you in RL and in SL more this year. It’s been a year of crossings as friends lost parents and pets; I’ve grieved and mourned with them. It’s been a year of finding community and sisterhood with RCGSA as I balance the spiritual with the material. All in all, it’s been a year of blessings.
For 2007, action beckons. As Gardo says, it’s time to heed my callings as well, and find once more, their true patterns. Where I go from here, I know not for sure, except that the path I tread will stay connected to education and academia in some fashion. A PhD beckons on a still-distant horizon, but I can feel the call to action churning in my bones. Status quo no longer works, and I suspect, the Universe will find a way to push me out of my comfortable little rut as well.
So goodybye 2006, and hello 2007!
The MultiPot
Let’s face it, I’m a gizmo gal. As such, I’m always on the lookout for a device that will let me charge my various technology gizmos in a simple and efficient manner and look great while doing so – a functional objet d’art as it were. Well my friends, it appears I may have found just the thing! Called the MultiPot, it’s essentially “a hybrid, multifunctional
lamp, which combines a LED ambient light, a Multisocket,
and a lower vase-shaped, containing space to tidy
away any extra cabling.” There is no way to order it online at the moment, but the website does provide a toll-free number you can call for more information.
As a side note, in the process of writing this quick post via Performancing, I discovered that Option+arrow keys (I suspect this might be Command+arrow keys on a Mac keyboard. My setup is a little different as I’m using a Microsoft wireless keyboard connected to both my MBP and my PC via a switch) lets me scroll back and forward in my browser window. Yayyy! Aren’t keyboard shortcuts the greatest?
Technorati Tags: multipot productivity tools
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Bluetooth for Motorcycles
The reason I switched to riding a motorcycle was to get away from listening to music, answer my cell phone, and generally be safer on the roads. This, notwithstanding the fact that my Legacy 250 is equipped with a radio unit and also features a USB port so I can plug in my MP3 player. And now I discover that there are Bluetooth products to facilitate answering your cell phone or speaking with your pillion rider while riding. As if we didn’t ahve enough people driving with their cell phones glued to their ears already, we now may have a new breed of riders who are equally distracted.
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Guess What, I’m Spiderman!
KnightHawk’s blog led me to the “Which Superhero are you” quiz, and as it turns out, I’m Spiderman, well, Spiderwoman if I had my way.
Your results:
You are Spider-Man
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You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.
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My Identity Trajectory
Visiting friends in Washington State last year, I happened to refer to India as “back home” in the course of a conversation, and was gently queried if there would come a point when I would call this country I choose to live in, the United States, my home. Not too long after, in my women’s spiritual group, Re-formed Congregation of the Goddess, the question of identity arose again, this time in the context of the spiritual path we travelled. And now, here I am, in St. Paul, Minnesota, participating in the Al-Musharaka Summer Seminar, whose theme this year is Identity Trajectories: Teaching the Culture and Society of North Africa and the Middle East at Home and Abroad.
I’ve never given my identity much consideration other than from the perspective of who “I” am. Understanding and establishing my core essence as a person has been more important to me than examining my Indianness, or my womanhood. But coming to the US has changed that. To some degree, my identity in this country is still about who “I” am, but I now find that perceptions of that identity are textured by my ethnicity, or my notions of the religion I was born into but do not practice. A faculty member in the Religion department at my university calls me “an anamalous Hindu”. I suppose he’s right in that I’m a cultural Hindu but not a religious one. And whereas I took my Indianness for granted back home , here, I am eager to share my experiences, my culture, my heritage.
And then there is the question of citizenship. I am eligible to apply for citizenship this year, and I find myself wondering about what it means to me exactly. Is it a practical choice? After all, my husband is an American, I’m building a life and career here, and it does make sense to walk that route. Is it even necesary? My green card gives me practically all the rights a citizen has, except the right to vote. Do I want the right to participate in the governance of this country? Would I become less Indian if I gave up my Indian citizenship? And do I really want to apply for a visa every time I wanted to go back home to visit my parents and extended family? Fortunately, India’s new dual-citizenship policy mitigates that concern to some degree.
Citibank ran an ad in India many years ago whose tag line has stayed with me ever since: You can take an indian out of India, but you can never take India out of an India”. I suspect I will walk the path to American citizenship, but I will do so in my Indian shoes.
Improving my blogging performance with the Performancing plug-in
Can somebody remind again what browsing was like before Firefox? I don’t know about you, but I have rows of toolbars and link bars that provide me with ready access to the information resources I need or tag the resrouces I need to add to my ever-growing knowledgebase. The latest addition to my stable of toys is this handy-dandy plug-in called Performancing, a “full featured blog editor that sits right in your Firefox browser and
lets you post to your blog easily. You can drag and drop formatted text
from the page you happen to be browsing, and take notes as well as post
to your blog.”
So will it improve the frequency at which I blog? I certainly hope so. For the most part I’d have an “Aha” moment in the middle of a task, but not the energy to log in, and blog about it, and I’m hoping having an editor sitting right there in my browswer which is open all the time, will be an added impetus.
And so there it is:
Dear Firefox, how do I love thee, let me count the ways
I love love thee to the depth and breadth and height
Your screen can reach, with all else out of sight.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most intense need, by fluorescent or even lamplight.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old browser griefs, and with my geekhood’s faith.
I love thee with the keystrokes and URLs
Of all my working life; and, if I were to choose,
I shall but love none but thee best all my life.
