Which is the best blog host

I have been searching the web for the best free blog host and I was left more confused then ever. I always like the feel of a three column template and the look of the other blog providers but I just can't seem to find any. I know I can tweak this blogger template to a 3 column blog but I just don't feel it's right to that as I am afraid that I would screw up my existing template and I am not an IT nerd either.

Can anyone suggest a good free blog host so that I can test drive that. Or should I stick to what I have now and put this thought to rest.

6 years in Hyderabad

Yes that is how long I am in Hyderabad and I can remember my first trip to this city of 6 million inhabitants, the airport was empty and I flew in by Silk Air with my Architect and Quantity Surveyor. In Hyderabad, our local Quantity Surveyor met us and we all stayed in the same hotel.

Since it was a transit flight from Singapore, by the time I got into Hyderabad, I was hungry and could eat a horse. So I went down to the only restaurant that was opened in the hotel, and there they served midnight Briyani and it was also the fasting month for the muslims and hence they had this muslim speciality called "Haleem" and I didn't know what the hell it was. So for the Briyani buffet, after filling my plate with "Gosh (mutton)Briyani", I went to help myself with the haleem and to my my surprise there wasn't any mutton pieces inside the gooey stuff, I thought to myself, hey these people are short changing me since it is mid-night and it could be left overs from lunch or dinner. It was like dal, and I took the haleem and had my supper without complaining as I am in a foreign country.

The following day I casually asked our partner who was a Hyderabadi, what happened to the mutton pieces in the haleem and the hotel is not giving what it promised and to my surprise, he told me that haleem is cooked with flour(maida), spices and mutton over 6 to 7 hours and everything becomes gooey and I had a good laugh.

The most glaring difference that I noticed was the head shaking, they move it sideways for a yes and I had a little bit of a problem with the Indian accent too. I couldn't understand a word they were saying and I guess they couldn't understand my accent either. I got over it now and when I go back home, now they can't understand me.

Visiting the Government offices was a drag, it was just like what the British had left when they left India. And the dressing was casual, the officials wear chappels and shirts not tucked in. I was weary of the water they serve at the Government offices, just didn't want to fall sick.

I stayed in a Hotel for 7 months and I got used to life in a Hotel, I was upgraded by the Hotel management to a Junior Suite with free fruit baskets and a bottle of complimentary beer everyday along with Lays potato chips and other stuff. I also had complimentary cocoktails from 7 pm. to 8 p.m, which I normally extend by double parking on my drinks and the tidbits would serve as my dinner.

When I think back of those days, the streets in Hyderabad was relatively free from traffic and I guess over the past 6 years, things have changed much. Hyderabad has got it's new airport and traffic is chaotic now. The beautiful trees are chopped down now in the name of road widening. And I can feel the heat when I am in the city. More pubs and restaurants have opened up and I see many new shopping malls have opened up too as the middle class has increased in proportion.

The only positive thing that I have gained from Hyderabad is learning to be patient(I can sit in a place for hours like a buddha meditating) and also my tolerance to spicy food has increased ten fold.

Cook "cooked" it

After all the weeks of excitement, David Cook finally won the American Idol by 12 millions votes. I guess this year it must have been the toughest and the closest competition and I think David Cook deserves the title as he has the personality to carry it.

The finale was a drag as 2 hours was too long a wait to find out and also this morning I came to know of the result from a blog posting. There went my element of surprise but I had the feeling about the result after watching the show last night.

I guess after sometime, the show gets a bit jaded and becomes quite predictable. But with the younger viewers cropping up each year and with the advent of mobile phones for the teenagers maybe the popularity would still linger on.

Anyway I enjoyed myself and I felt the most touchy show was when a girl contestant had her dad passed away in an accident just before she came in for auditioning, I just can't place her name, but it sure did bring lots of tears to my eyes.

My best to this years winner and I am looking forward for the next American Idol in January next year.

How many blogs per week?

What do you think is an ideal number of blogs to be posted per week. Should a minimum of 3 be sufficient or should it be 7 (that is posting a blog a day). Or should it be blog, when there is a need to blog, like looking for events or situations that you can blog about.

It's about late afternoon now, and I just felt like blogging but I just couldn't think of a matter to blog and so I had decided to write one on the number of blogs per week. I am amazed with the number of bloggers on the net and the amount of stuff that gets published and are there readers for all these blogs. What strikes a chord with the other bloggers.

I started with a blog many years back, and then concentrated with opera and now on blogger. I don't really see that many traffic at my blog site. I am just pouring out what I am feeling at the moment as I am sure that the other bloggers would have felt the same way too. I even think whether blogger is a right platform to blog or could there be someother better host for the blogs.

It's always the why's that keeps me going and my constant search for that answer. But most of the time, my questions on my blogs are unanswered and it has a natural death, perhaps like these set of questions.

Bad night

Yesterday I attended the 25th wedding Anniverasary of a friend in a five star hotel. He is a Gujurati and the function was fun and colourful. I took a few snap shots on my ppc phone, but I don't think they turned out that good.


At 2.00 p.m., there was a powercut in my place and I thought it was a routine cut, by 6.00 p.m, there was no sign of power and I called my neighbour Lynette, who happens to be staying upstairs, to only wake her up from her sleep, she came back late this morning from her work at the call center. Anyway I asked her about the powercut and to my surprise, she had power. Well what did I do wrong this time, did I burn the fuse or something. I called the electrician and he came over by 6.30 p.m. and checked the wires and informed me that the previous electrician had done a screwed up job. But the snag was that there was no supply to my meter from the Electricity Board and also my next door neighbour confirmed this as she didn't have suppy to one of the phase. Thank God I didn't burn or melt any fuse this time.


Meanwhile, I was running late for my function that I had to attend, on my way I bought a nice bouquet of artificial flowers (for the function) done very well, why give natural flowers, when after 3 days you have to throw it away.


I picked up my friend at his house and we went to the function together and I guess I had one too many to drink of Johnnie Walker Black label, as I was by that time trying to drown a piece bad news that I received. Well I guess, there is nothing that I can do about it now.


We left the function by 1.30 a.m., dropped my friend in his place and it was a long drive for me, lucky I had my driver with me as I guess I wasn't in the condition to drive back.


Reached home about 2.30 a.m., and to my surprise, the damn power wasn't there. Well what am I going to do in the blistering heat of about 31 degrees Celcius. I opened my bedroom windows, as it has a screen to prevent the mosquitoes from coming in, and also I would get some breeze. I lighted a mosquito coil and hit the bed. I was sweating profusely and I was really angry, with the Electricity Board, and the power came back at 7.15 a.m., this morning. Maybe it was because of the drinks that I was able to sleep in the furnace and if the mosquito had bit me, then it would have crashed somewhere as it would have been too drunk to fly.


I hope there would be no more of this extended power cuts as I had to throw out my cooked food, the mutton, chicken and the prawns that I had kept in the freezer for at least 15 hours without power. Why take risk of solmenella poisoning from the decomposing meat and cooked food.


To top up the bad night, I am having a slight hangover and a depressed feeling with regards to last nights bad news.

A Simple Blog Template

After so much of tinkering around with the idea of having my second blog with blogger, I had spent the whole afternoon deciding on how to present the blog. Should I go for a 3 column template or should I load it with all the latest widgets but then an idea struck me! Why not keep it as simple as possible, I have a counter for the number of visitors, and one widget for responsible commenting, which I strongly believe in. You know I had received a comment from one of the readers asking to press the link in the comment, and I did that, and my anti-virus alarm went off and I quickly deleted that response. Now why on earth would somebody be so nasty, what did I do to him.

I have one adsense advert by google on my blog and I will keep it that way, not that by placing it all over the blog I am going to be a millionaire. So far in my other blog, my account stands at "0" earnings. So there goes my ambition in blogging for money.

So simple it is, my blog template. Do you agree with my opinion?

Being awake from sleep

The passage below is extracted from the book by osho titled “awareness” the key to living in balance, insights for a new way of living. I should be thankful to Rajneesh for his beautiful thoughts which I would like to share with the world and especially with my friends on the net.

This poem by Heraclitus says it all about being awake and he says:

Private Worlds

Men are as forgetful and heedless
in their waking
moments
of what is going on around them
as they are during their sleep.
Fools, although they hear,
are like the deaf;
to them the adage
applies
that whenever they are present
they are absent.
One should
not act or speak
as if he were asleep.
The waking have one world in
common;
sleepers have each a private world of his own.
Whatever we see
when awake is death,
when asleep, dreams.

Heraclitus touches the deepest problem of man, that he is fast asleep even while awake. You sleep when you sleep, but you also sleep while you are awake.

Even right now you are dreaming within. A thousand and one thoughts continue and you are not conscious of what is happening, you are not aware of what you are doing, you are not aware of who you are. You move as people move in sleep.

Awareness means that whatsoever is happening in the moment is happening with complete consciousness; you are present there. If you are present when anger is happening, anger cannot happen. It can happen only when you are fast asleep. When you are present, immediate transformation starts in your being, because when you are present, aware, many things are simply not possible. All that is called sin is not possible, if you are aware. So, in fact, there is only one sin, and that is unawareness.

You need not change anything, and even if you try to change, you cannot. You have been trying to change many things in you. Have you succeeded? How many times have you decided not to be angry again?

What happened to your decision? When the moment comes, you are again in the same trap: you become angry, and after the anger has gone, again you repent. It has become a vicious circle: you commit anger and then you repent, then you are ready again to commit it.

Remember, even while you are repenting, you are not there; that repentance is also part of sin. That’s why nothing happens. You go on trying and trying, and you make many decisions and you take many vows, but nothing happens – you remain the same. You are exactly the same as when you were born, not even a slight change has happened in you. Not that you have not tried, not that you have not tried enough; you have tried and tried and tried. And you fail because it is not a question of effort. More effort won’t help. It is a question of being alert, not of effort.
If you alert, many things simply drop; you need not drop them. In awareness, certain things are not possible.

You cannot fall in love if you are aware; then falling in love is a sin. You can love, but it will not be like a fall, it will be like a rise. Why do we use the term falling in love? It is a falling; you are falling, you are not rising. When you are aware, falling is not possible – not even in love. It is not possible; it is simply not possible. With awareness, it is impossible; you rise in love. And rising in love is a totally different phenomenon from falling in love. Falling in love is a dream state. That’s why people who are in love, you can see it from their eyes; as if they are more asleep than others, intoxicated, dreaming. You can see from their eyes because their eyes have sleepiness. People who rise in love are totally different. You can see they are no longer in a dream, they are facing the reality and they are growing through it.

Falling in love you remain a child; rising in love you mature. And by and by love becomes not a relationship; it becomes a state of your being. Then it is not that you love this and you don’t love that, no – you simply love. Whosoever comes near you, you share with them. Whatsoever is happening, you give your love to it. You touch a rock and you as if you are touching your beloved’s body. You look at a tree and you look as if you are looking at your beloved’s face. It becomes a state of being. Not that you are in love – now you are love. This is rising, this is not falling.

Love is beautiful when rise through it, and love becomes dirty and ugly when you fall through it. And sooner or later you will find that it proves poisonous, it becomes bondage. You have been caught in it, your freedom has been crushed. Your wings have been cut; now you are free no more. Falling in love you become a possession: you possess and you allow somebody to possess you. You become a thing, and you try to convert the other person you have fallen in love with into a thing.

Look at a husband and a wife: they both have become like things, they are persons no more. Both are trying to possess each other. Only things can be possessed, persons never. How can you possess a person? How can you dominate a person? How can you convert a person into possession? Impossible! But the husband is trying to possess the wife; the wife is trying the same. Then there is a clash, and then they both become basically enemies. Then they are destructive to each other.

Possession … everybody goes on trying to possess the beloved, the lover. This is no longer love. In fact, when you possess a person, you hate, you destroy, you kill; you are a murderer. Love should give freedom; love is freedom. Love will make the beloved more and more free, love will give wings, and love will open the vast sky. It cannot become a prison, an enclosure. But that love you don’t know, because that happens only when you are aware; that quality of love comes only when there is awareness. You know a love that is sin, because it comes out of sleep.

Try understanding exactly what this sleep is, because if you can feel what it is, you have already started to become alert – already you are on the way out of it. What is this sleep? How does it happen? What is the mechanism? What is its modus operandi?

The mind is always either in the past or in the future. It cannot be in the present, it is absolutely impossible for the mind to be in the present. When you are in the present, the mind is there no more – because mind minds thinking. How can you think in the present? You can think about the past, it has already become a part of the memory; the mind can work it out. You can think about the future; it is not yet there, the mind can dream about it. Mind can do two things. Either it can move into the past – there is space enough to move, the vast space of the past; you can go on and on and on – or the mind can move into the future; again vast space, no end to it, you can imagine and dream. But how can mind function in the present? It has no space for the mind to make any movement.

The present is the dividing line, that’s all. It has no space. It divides the past and the future – just a dividing line. You can be in the present but you cannot think; for thinking, space is needed. Thoughts need space, they are just like things, very subtle, and every material things need space.

You cannot be thinking in the present. The moment you start thinking, it is already the past. You see the sun is rising; you see it and you say, “What a beautiful sunrise!” – it is already the past. When the sun is rising, there is not even space enough to say “How beautiful!” because when you utter these two words - “How beautiful!” – the experience has already become past; the mind already knows it in the memory. But exactly when the sun is rising, exactly when the sun is on the rise, how can you think? What can you think? You can be with the rising sun, but you cannot think. For you there is enough space – but not for thoughts.

A beautiful flower in the garden and you say, “A beautiful rose” – now you are not with this rose, this moment; it is already a memory. When the flower is there and you are there, both present to each other, how can you think? What can you think? How is thinking possible? There is no space for it. The space is so narrow – in fact there is no space at all – that you and the flower cannot even exist as two because there is not enough space for two, only one can exist.

That’s why in a deep presence you are the flower and the flower has become you. When there is no thinking, who is the flower and who is the one who is observing? The observer becomes the observed. Suddenly boundaries are lost. Suddenly you have penetrated, penetrated into the flower and flower has penetrated into you. Suddenly you are not two – one exists.

When you are in the present without thinking, you are for the first time spiritual. A new dimension opens – that dimension is awareness. Because you have not known that dimension, Heraclitus will say you are asleep, you are not awake. Awareness means to be in the moment so totally that there is no movement towards the past, no movement towards the future – all movement stops. A new movement starts a movement in depth.

The whole world moves, existence moves, into eternity. Mind moves in time. Existence is moving into the depth and the height, and mind moves backwards and forward. Mind moves horizontally – that is sleep. If you can move vertically, that is awareness.

Be in the moment. Bring your total being into the moment. Don’t allow the past to interfere and don’t allow the future to come in. The past is no more, it is dead. The past is no more, why are you worried about it? Why do you go on chewing it again and again? Are you mad? It is no more; it is just in your mind, it is just a memory. The future is not yet – what are you doing thinking about it? What can you plan about it? Whatsoever you do about it is not going to happen, and then you will be frustrated, because the whole has its own plan. Why do you try to have your own plans against it?

The existence has its own plans, it is wiser than you – the whole has to be wiser than the part. Why are you pretending to be that whole? The whole has its own destiny, its own fulfillment; why do you bother about it? And whatsoever you do will be a sin because you will be missing the moment – this moment.

Yesterday you were thinking about today because then it was tomorrow; now it is today and you are thinking about tomorrow, and when tomorrow comes, it will become today – because anything that exists, exists here and now, it cannot exist otherwise. And if you have a fixed mode of functioning such that your mind always looks at tomorrow, then when will you live? Tomorrow never comes. Then you will go on missing – and this is sin.
The moment the future enters, time enters. You have sinned against existence, you have missed. And this has become a fixed pattern: robot like, you go on missing.

So remember one thing: whenever you realize that you have gone to the past or into the future, don’t create a problem out of it. Simply come to the present, not creating any problem. It’s okay! Simply bring back your awareness.

Whenever you feel you have missed, come back, that’s all. Don’t feel guilty. Because when awareness becomes perfect, this world – this world that you have created out of your mind – simply disappears; another world becomes revealed to you. Maya disappears, the illusion disappears – the illusion is there because of your sleep, your unconsciousness.
It is just like a dream. In the night you move in a dream, and when the dream is there, it is so true. Have you ever thought in a dream, “This is not possible”? The impossible happens in a dream, but you cannot doubt it. In a dream you have such faith; in a dream nobody is skeptical, not even a Bertrand Russell. No, in a dream everybody is like a child, trusting whatsoever happens. You see your wife coming in a dream – suddenly she becomes a horse. Not for a single moment do you say, “How can this be possible?”

Dream is trust, it is faith. You can not doubt in a dream. Once you start doubting in a dream the rules are broken. Once you doubt, the dream starts disappearing. If even once you can remember that this is a dream, suddenly this will become a shock and the dream will shatter and you will be fully awake.

This world that you see around you is not the real world. Not that it doesn’t exist – it exists – but you are seeing it through a screen of sleep.

You are taking the whole existence as a screen, and then you project your own mind on it. You see things that are not there, and you don’t see things that are there. And the mind has explanations for everything. If you raise a doubt, the mind explains. It creates theories, philosophies, and systems, just to feel comfortable that nothing is wrong. All philosophies exist to make life convenient, so that everything looks okay, nothing is wrong – but everything is wrong while you sleep.

Once you have known awareness, nothing is worth it – you have known the greatest bliss of life