Punctuate the mother!

IF I were a mother, and English, I would be ashamed of most of my children. Honestly, when will they ever learn it is Mother’s Day and not Mothers Day?

Everywhere I go I see special offer signs. The butcher, the pub-owner, the postman, the mechanic, the gas man, the garbage man, everyone’s got a deal for Mother. And everyone seems to have more than one mother, bar W H Smith and a few other worthies who I am sure hired a professional proof-reader.

For fucks –- I mean, fuck’s -- sake, get that apostrophe in.

Hook me, I am available

AMAZING what happens when you throw a crusty old subject at a bunch of young minds and ask them to write. I did that a few times in the last two years and came away pleased.

The subject was always the same. Childishly simple, the kind you would expect to write an essay on in school: your hobby. Difference was, you needed to produce a feature article, a piece of creative non-fiction, informative and interesting, capable of carrying the reader through to the last word.

Result? Some very pleasant surprises (also some quite, um, unconventional use of punctuation and grammar, but more on that in another post), to prove, yet again, that there’s nothing called a boring topic. It’s how you tackle it that makes it boring -- or not.

Naturally, how you begin is crucial. So here’s a sample of beginnings I found interesting…

Helen Smale’s hobby is not reading, nor dancing, nor singing. It’s mentoring school kids. She begins thus:

I have just helped someone change his life. How? I went back to school.

Crisp. Dramatic. Now I want to know why, and how. She’s got me all right.

Mike Goodeve wrote about driving tests -- to be precise, how he routinely fails driving tests. That’s not really what you would call a hobby, but, hey, he got away with it. This is his reworked lead:

I have a hobby, a rather unusual one: I fail driving tests routinely.

I don’t know how long I will be able to carry on with it. But at the moment, I am giving it all I have got....

Point is, you can pull off darn near anything as a hobby (I remember a piece in Esquire magazine in which the writer decided to bargain for everything he bought, including hotdogs, then wrote this absolutely riveting piece on his haggling experience), provided you peg it up.

Leonie Wilson did something similar:

I have this hobby I love to talk about. In fact, I’ve made talking about it a hobby in itself. This is why I jumped at the opportunity when a stranger contacted me and asked me to talk to her about my experience last summer.

Enough suspense in there to get us reading. More about how she keeps us hooked, and what her hobby is, in the next post. Now for another interesting beginning, clever pegging, from Sophie Pascal, who didn’t think she had a hobby –- till she looked the word up…

This made me wonder what a hobby is. So I looked it up. The Oxford Dictionary describes a hobby as ‘a leisure time activity pursued for pleasure’.

In that case maybe I have a hobby. It’s not your average sporting hobby, but a highly developed fondness for cats. In my leisure time I enjoy cats and collect cat-related objects for pleasure … this must technically mean my immense love for cats is a hobby.

And now for another, from Katrin Kerber. Katrin’s hobby is video games, quite conventional compared to the ones we have discussed till now. She gets us with a saucy summary sentence:

In the last couple of days I slept with at least four guys, married a girl, stopped a restaurant from going bankrupt, helped a musician get into the charts, and became vice-president of a big company.

Gemma Gilbert works along the same lines. Here’s how she teases us in (lightly edited):

We’ve all done it, many of us more than once. Some of us do it in the bedroom. Some in front of mirrors. Some like to do it in clubs, with their mates watching.

Curious to know what she’s been up to? I was.

What makes these work? They grab my attention, one way or other, through surprise, shock, sheer sauce. You can also get me with information, description, action, conversation… anything really. Fact is, I am available. Up to you, how you hook me.

Bugger, I got the blog bug!

I am sick, and terribly-terribly infectious: I give people the 'blog bug'.

That, from Emma and Kate, two new converts to blogism. Emma blogs at Little Miss Sunshine about "anything really" and Kate would like to have "something of substance" at Kate’s Place. Do check them out.

I did some nosing around and came up with a few relatively new -- and not so new -- blogs around us. There’s Timmo’s How Soon Is Now, Lucy Meakin’s Blogging Along, Katie's The Multitasker, and James Rivington’s The home of corkball.

All of them, so far as I can see, are having a good time online, and, as Kate says, it doesn’t matter if anyone’s reading it or not, because it has a "strange sense of worthwhileness about it".

Nice way of putting it. I like that. Makes us think what we find ‘worthwhile’ about blogging. Is it because it gives us a voice, an opportunity to sound off? On anything we darned well please? Or is it because, as Emma puts it half-jokingly, it is a "good distraction"? Or..?

My reasons might not be yours. But, if you are blogger, you do have a good reason for blogging, and I am curious to know yours. So drop me a line below, could you?

What do you find satisfying about this little exercise?

How does it help you?

And if you are non-blogger, why do you not blog?

Now ‘scuse me folks, I got to go spread this bug some more...

Because there’s no escape

WHY, oh why, my web-shy friends ask me, do I try to bully them into the blogosphere? Why do I insist on talking blogs at the drop of my non-existent hat?

Short answer: because there’s no escape.

There’s no escape from it the same way there’s no escape from the web. Ten years ago, we didn't believe the web would tie us all together the way it has done. Today can we imagine life without email (hell, even my technology-challenged father in the heart of rural India threatens me with emails now), without online shopping, without Google?

Not. And that’s how it will be -- is -- with blogs.

For us blogizens, the blogless are the have-nots, the unprivileged, the underclass. Mere muggles, boring and non-magical. The unenlightened.

But enlightenment isn’t hard to come by. Not with easy-to-read sites on blogging like this around. Before I pass you on to such, let me tell you why I blog.

Because it’s fun. It allows me to engage, experiment in writing, an activity I enjoy. It allows me to practice my craft.

Because it lets me be my own writer, my own editor, my own publisher. I get to decide. I get a voice, and it is all my own.

Because I am in the business of communication and this is communication, up close and personal, one-to-one, one-to-many. It’s a channel open 24/7, easy to use, economical, fast, far-reaching. Open to everyone, me, you, anyone with Internet access, to communicate darned anything -- from what it is like when your convoy is attacked in Iraq and how to help communication in big businesses to celebrity gossip from the streets of New York and what it is to have tumour cut out from your brain.

Because I am in the business of education, and blogs can be effective learning and teaching tools. They provide for collaboration, for sharing information not just with students -- and students certainly will find them helpful -- but with other faculty across the world. Check out these scholars who blog.

Because it puts me in touch with people, contacts, sources. People I would never have met otherwise. It can be the ultimate networking tool, used intelligently.

Because it is a wonderful news source. Not once, not twice, but many, many, many times have I come across information on blogs I would otherwise have missed. Latest instance, this story on why the old media should embrace the new, which I came across on my favourite half-Estonian's media blog. Fact is, there's so much happening around us that we possible can't keep track of everything on our own. Blogs like this, which are nothing but specialised newsletters, do that for us.

Because… oh, never mind. That’s enough reasons. And guess what? My hunch is that every reason I mentioned above applies to you too, especially if you are interested in media, in communication. If you are still sceptical of this online uprising, here’s some stats:

There are at least 10 million blogs already out there. Every day, at a conservative estimate, some 35,000 blogs are created, and the blogosphere doubles itself every five months. You can't outrun such a phenomenon.

There really is no escape, you see.

PS: Am I talking rubbish? Would love to hear your views. Also, if there’s any particular aspect of blogging you’d like me to blog on, drop me a comment, willya?

She’s lucky. She lost only an eye

NOT in two years, not since I stepped away from a minefield called Kashmir, have I been so moved as I was last evening.

A handful of talented people, dressed in white, did that with their road-show, Beyond Belief.

They made a Gaza Strip of my mind. Brought to life, on the cramped podium in Allsebrook lecture theatre, a conflict we all know about but don’t know about.

They didn’t tell me about Ariel Sharon and Ismail Haniya. They told me, instead, of Hasan and Noura and Rachel and Basma.

They told me about the girl who is lucky because she lost only one eye and the boy whom soldiers shot in self-defence.

They made me angry, upset, hurt. Wince, cringe. Think.

Do watch, all, if you ever get a chance. It’s live multi-media communication, powerful and poignant.

It’s about people like you and me.

Striking news

SOME dampening news, people: not on strike tomorrow.

Striking colleagues, apologies. I support the cause -- more money is more than welcome -- but I can't afford to join you for a very practical reason. Hope the exercise brings results.

Students of mine, apologies to you too: you will need to turn up. And, oh, watch this space for a post on blogging tomorrow, will you? We'll discuss it this week...

In passing, I find the strikes -- or at least, this one -- in England fascinating. So...controlled. A far cry from some industrial actions I have had the, um, pleasure to witness back home. Wonder if it is because this one involves academics?

Your name, please

THANKS, all, for stopping by. Now a quick request...

Mind using your name when you comment, rather than the 'anonymous' option? Makes life easier: you'll spot my response easier among other comments if I addressed it to you.

If you haven't yet read the assignment tips, scroll, do, see posts below.

I goofed: Is 650-700 words

A bloomer in my tips for web critique post, folks.

Namely, the word limit for the web critique assignment is 650-700, not 700-750 as I intially posted (have corrected it since).

Do note, you cannot fall below or above the word limit -- no '10%' error margin here, I am afraid.

PS: Apologies to the kind students who let me off for not handing back their last assignment yet. Will work on myself, I promise. :-(

When you critique…

A few pointers, in no particular order, for those of you rolling up your sleeves to critique that web site for me…

• You need to assess its usability. That is, critique it for how easy it's to use. Does it give you what you want efficiently, without wasting your time?
  
  
• Since usability is a component of quite a few things, you would look for all those. Thus, check out the site for its quality of organisation, navigation, labelling, content, searchability, etc. And, yes, before you ask, you can organise your essay under subheads.
  
  
• A caution: you have only 650-700 words to play with (do not exceed or fall below), so you need to make your points quickly. What I suggest is, test/assess each element, then write a tight para or two on each based on your findings.
  
  
• Another caution: focus on the allotted sub-site -- namely, Accommodation. In other words, limit your criticism to the pages within the section. Leave the rest of the site alone (though you can mention how this section fits into the whole)!
  
  
• Talk about what you would change, why.
  
  
• Do, do note: this is an academic essay. In other words, you need references. Web resources are fine. Use Harvard style. See Matt Holland's notes (PDF) on citation. Not asking for many, but would like to see a few of the names/texts we’ve discussed in our workshops mentioned.
  
  
• Ensure you conclude the essay. Be bold, take a stand.

Hope this helps. Any queries, leave a comment, or shoot me a mail.