Journey Through Game Of Blogs….The Game

As a blogger I happily volunteered to participate in Game of blogs to #CelebrateBlogging organized by BlogAdda

The game was to create a fictional story around five characters created byBlogAdda. It was to be a team effort of ten members where each blogger would post one part of the story to be continued by the next blogger of the team. The race was to create a best fictional story that would materialize into published work.

I didn’t know a single blogger at the beginning of the game but I found myself in a team of six active bloggers. Seven was the minimum entries to qualify, but we were short of four members. We requested for set of ten members and three more members were added to our group after few days who missed the initial introductions.

Everybody was excited and a big confusion followed. A conference call was made between members where the story was discussed in details. I was unaware of the conversations the group had, because I had got disconnected after few words. The real conversation took place between three members where by the story was discussed, team leader of contact chosen, editors selected, blogger judged from the traffic the bloggers recieved on their blogs.

I was happy to interact with my team members and found all of them intelligent and creative. They had great ideas and fabulous stories to share. The only problem was that it was difficult to coordinate with them on common platform because of their own personal busy lives and finding a common timing to communicate was difficult. A WatsApp group was formed for discussion but most of the members were communicating amongst themselves on a private chat.

What was amazing about my group was that in round one, the story was creatively written with no proper planning, no proper storyboard, no clear idea. It was started with one member writing a story from her own personal viewpoint. The story moved forward picking up ends of the previous post to create a new scene. Every segment of the story was made on the spot, where the previous blogger had left the track. I didn’t know where the story was leading or how it would end. But I played along. It started off well, it was a game, after all, when suddenly the story took a steep turn with protagonist having a disease called Munchausen syndrome by proxy. That took members by surprise and sent us on Google search to do the study of the disease, and that was when the confusion began. Some members refused to go with the flow and wanted the protagonist to be efficient and intelligent. There were temper outrages and lots of disappointments, with some member knowing not how to carry the story forward and rejected the story outright..

But luckily, we also had some very talented writers who happily took up the challenge to carry the story forward. The story shaped into beautiful plot and I was quite impressed with the story.  At the end of round one, three of the members, who could not cope up with the challenges and the time that it demanded, dropped out of the game and we were left with six members.

One new member was added in round two (following the story midway, might have been difficult for her, but she turned out to be an excellent story teller) I was very happy with the way the story was unfolding. During this game, I met wonderful people. We chatted, we joked and we had long private chats. Everybody was willing to edit each other’s work, help each other, and the interaction was healthy too and we worked late nights to create a beautiful story. I wish we had time to edit and connect the story well, we could have easily qualified for the final round.

At the end of round two, we reached the position 12, we missed it by just 2 points.

It was great experience. Nevertheless, I feel sad that there was not much ‘updates’ on twitter about this event. I had created a list on twitter of the participating members of other teams on #CelebrateBlogging, to keep abreast of their activities and their challenges, but there were not much feedback. I wanted to know how the other participants were performing, I wanted the organizers to interact with me, but there was lack of communication.

Moreover, I didn’t know it would eat away so much chunk of my time. Participating in such event demands too much concentration and attention. My other blogs were getting neglected too. It was not just writing one post per week, editing and planning the story was tiresome too.

My team wanted to continue through round three too, but I thought it would be waste of time. Winners were already inside inner circle. I had no inclination to go for round three because I had other priorities.

Let the best win. I opted out.

I have learnt that in the game of blogs, coordination and cooperation is very important but it is difficult to demand loyalty from strangers. It hurts when team members walk away midway when their egos are hurt.

I am glad I met some wonderful batch of bloggers and some of them will remain in my friend list for long time in future.

Origami Birds

On our return from Ventiene Loas, we spend a day at Udon Thani, from where we were to board plane back to Bangkok. At the ticket counter, there was a bouquet of fresh flowers which were mainly orchids, and in between the flowers there was a small bird in origami. So tiny that it was surprising that my cousin observed it, she plucked out the tiny paper bird and pushed in my hands. The girls behind the counter were amused. They pointed to more such tiny birds in other bouquets and each time my cousin plucked it and placed it in my hands.

We went through immigration and waited for more than an hour in the waiting lounge.

When the announcement was made for boarding the flight, we stood in line. The girl, whom we had met earlier at the ticket counter was now waiting at the exit to check our boarding pass. When she saw my cousin, she smiled and presented her enclosed envelop.

There were 20 more birds made in origami by her, all made from flyers

Happy journey she said, smiling once again.

Slow coach

Traveling by a public bus in the city of Mumbai is always amusing but injurious to the health, especially if you are suffering from BP. It takes lot of tolerance and patience to combat Mumbai traffic and frequent signals.


But, I always prefer bus to taxi for two reasons, one, that taxi is sheer waste of money if you are traveling alone for a longer distance and two, you get to see all kinds of people in the bus and some of them are really interesting.

Today I decided to take a bus from Bandra to Breach Candy, which should not take me more than twenty minutes to reach my destination if there is no traffic congestion on the road. The bus was empty and I got a window seat. After buying a ticket of Rs10 only (I was saving Rs120- taxi fare) I sat by the window reading a magazine.

In twenty minutes, the bus had reached Dadar, which is half way distance to breach Candy. A Senior Person (SP) in the bus was getting impatient and kept looking at his watch. Finally, he got up and started abusing the driver.

SP said, “You drivers are very inefficient, even when there is no traffic, you drive so slow, can’t you drive faster?”

Driver says “This is the speed I normally drive,”

SP-“You need a good driving practice, there is no traffic today and the roads are empty, why are you driving so slow, stop the bus, get up from that seat and let me teach you how to drive.”

And the argument went on and on with SP abusing him all the time, but the driver kept his cool and continued to drive at his own speed. Finally SP realized that he was wasting his time, he alighted the bus when he could take this slow speed no more.

I realized then that the bus was going too slow indeed. Well, what do we expect, for Rs10? Speed at Rs10? Not possible! I looked at my watch. Forty five minutes and only two-third of the distance covered.

Now I was getting impatient too. At the speed that he was driving, it would take me more than one hour to reach my destination.

Feeling helpless, I alight from the bus and take taxi for the rest of the distance.

Tranquility restored with little bit of extra cash for taxi fare.