Most people have a book buried inside them. I do not, at least not yet. There are some random thoughts, some of which, I believe people will enjoy knowing about.
Funnily, there are a whole bunch of people who claim that I write well, when I get around to doing it. They urge me to start doing that; coincidentally, most of these suggestions come usually at the fag end of drunken evenings. Perhaps it is time, therefore, to go a little beyond my Facebook status messages, to words which go beyond 160 characters or thereabouts...
The biggest question in my mind, having gone past the above decision, then is: What do I write about? After many manhours of thinking about it (funnily, either on a treadmill or after three quarters of a gin and tonic), the easy answer was: things I enjoy.
And that brings me to the topic of my inaugural post - here are the things I enjoy most, fairly random and in no pecking order:
And, so I will attempt to write about and around the fairly comprehensive, and frightening, list above. And as I do so, I am aware that my words and thoughts will not be private. In this day and age, as a certain Mr. Zuckerberg has effectively taught us, nothing will be. There are things I will say which I will enjoy reading about a year later; there are things which I will deeply regret perhaps even an hour from dong so.
I know, however, that whatever it is, I will not be able to erase anything I write. It will be already out there, unchangeable and immutable, inscribed in the vast encyclopaedia of cyberspace. If Khayyam had lived a few centuries longer, his words below would have rung with a truth which he perhaps never knew when he wrote them:
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.....
Funnily, there are a whole bunch of people who claim that I write well, when I get around to doing it. They urge me to start doing that; coincidentally, most of these suggestions come usually at the fag end of drunken evenings. Perhaps it is time, therefore, to go a little beyond my Facebook status messages, to words which go beyond 160 characters or thereabouts...
The biggest question in my mind, having gone past the above decision, then is: What do I write about? After many manhours of thinking about it (funnily, either on a treadmill or after three quarters of a gin and tonic), the easy answer was: things I enjoy.
And that brings me to the topic of my inaugural post - here are the things I enjoy most, fairly random and in no pecking order:
- Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat (in honour of whom I name my futile effort). Also PG Wodehouse, the greatest explorer of English who ever lived. And myriad other lesser authors, whose books I have devoured or sampled in the 30+ years of my reading life.
- Words - in poetry or prose or lyrics, their origin, and their meaning. And how they can be weaved and strung to express humankind's best and worst feelings
- Gin and Tonic - preferably Bombay Saphirre and certainly Schweppes
- Books, predictably. About travel, historical fiction, biographies, food, everything. Music and movies - just a little bit.
- The Internet. The companies which make and rule it. The people who inhabit it. Ecommerce, social commerce, online exchanges and aggregators. And the entreprenuers who chink away at it, discovering whole new business models.
- Food, certainly. Reading about great foods, and unsavoury chefs. And, obviously, eating it.
- Completely trivial and arcane facts - primarily about businesses and organisations, but also many other things.
And, so I will attempt to write about and around the fairly comprehensive, and frightening, list above. And as I do so, I am aware that my words and thoughts will not be private. In this day and age, as a certain Mr. Zuckerberg has effectively taught us, nothing will be. There are things I will say which I will enjoy reading about a year later; there are things which I will deeply regret perhaps even an hour from dong so.
I know, however, that whatever it is, I will not be able to erase anything I write. It will be already out there, unchangeable and immutable, inscribed in the vast encyclopaedia of cyberspace. If Khayyam had lived a few centuries longer, his words below would have rung with a truth which he perhaps never knew when he wrote them:
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.....
Looking forward to reading more of your thoughts. My pick will be facts however trivial they seem they tell a whole diff story.
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