V is for visitors

Every April for the A-Z challenge, I like to do a post sharing some stats about my blog's visitors. Frankly, it's the easiest post to do as all I need are some screenshots, but I still have fun doing it and analysing the different aspects. Now it has kind of become an annual tradition.

The sis-in-law tells me that whenever I include a link to her blog, her stats shoot up. I feel happy and amused at the same time. It amazes me that people are still reading blogs in the age of quick fixes. That too, my blog, which features mostly personal anecdotes and Xena stories. In the instant gratification era, the fact that people go through the tedium of reading someone's blog, is both surprising and touching.

I started blogging more than 12 years ago, and I always thought that one day personal blogs would die out and no one would read or write them anymore. However, my love for blogging kept me going and I was determined to keep blogging instead of switching to something like Twitter. I always tell myself that I am my own motivation, whether it's blogging or fitness or any of the things that I want to do in my life. But I can't deny the fact that when the blog stats show that people out there are reading it, it does give me a boost.

I feel really grateful to have you guys read my blog and I do apologise for the hazaar typos and grammatical errors my posts often have. (I type way faster than I think, and I'm guilty of not proofreading my posts once I type them out. When you edit and proofread stuff for a living, you don't feel like editing and proofreading your own blog posts. Strange, but true. Or maybe it holds true only for me. Not a valid excuse still. But lately, I've been trying a little harder to get a little better.)

Thank you, my dear visitors (or bewdas of the bar, as I like to call you), for all the love, support, comments and emails all these years!

Where do you live? (All-time stats)


Where do you live? (This month's stats)


How did you get here? (All-time stats)


How did you get here? (This month's stats)

 Which posts did you read the most? (All-time stats)


 Which posts did you read the most? (This month's stats)


What were you searching for when you landed on my blog? (All-time stats only, as this month's stats have nothing)

April is coming...

Sounds ominous, doesn't it?

It's almost time for the annual A-Z blogging challenge! That crazy month of April where some crazy people write a blog post every day of the month, except Sundays.

And yes, I'm jumping headfirst.

I think I'm past that stage where, come March, I'd wonder if I should do the challenge. Viv travels every April so I need to take over his duties of dropping Xena to school and brushing her teeth and putting her to bed at night, all of which eats into my work time (and work always seems crazier than ever before in April; Murphy is my chacha after all!), keeping me in a constant state of panic about what to post every day. But now I've reached the stage where I just calmly tell myself, "Of course you gotta do it. Of course there will be daily panic attacks. Of course there will be total chaos. But there will also be FUN. Think about that!"

Soooooo... here we go -- it's ON!

Are you joining the challenge? As a blogger or a reader?

Z is for zonked

Yeh kahaaaaaaaannnnnn aa gaye hum.... 

To the end of the A-Z marathon 2016!

I'm zonked out all right.

And as I wrap up for the month, a few thoughts crop up in my head.

• Yaaaahooooooo it's over! :D

• Oh no, it's over... :(

• Why is it that I can effortlessly (well, most of the time) write 26 posts in a month, and yet I struggle to write like 26 more in the remaining 11 months? That is a seriously sad statistic.

• My search history this month is full of 'words that start with...'

• This is my third year doing the A-Z marathon. Compared to the last two years, I definitely had fewer panic attacks this time. However, it was not like I breezed through all the letters. At times, I'd be cutting it too close. (In my world, cutting it too close means sitting at the comp at 10 am and not knowing what to write for the day.)

• My sis-in-law keeps pointing out how unfair it is that I have a great source of posts in Xena, and so such blogathons are so easy for me. I won't deny that. A lot of the posts are indeed outsourced to Xena. So I have advised my sis-in-law to promptly make arrangements for procuring a child. (This has to be the best reason to have a kid, yeah? The A-Z blog marathon.)

• At times, panic-inducing (and rather embarrassing) questions would pop up in my head in the middle of the night, such as "Errr... did I write W today? Wait, W does come after V right? Riiiiight????"

• There were times when I would be out of ideas and would go through all possible words starting with a particular letter. Take 'T for transformer', for example. However, I had nothing beyond the title. I have a picture of Xena with her transformer, but I possibly couldn't write a post that went, "This is my kid. She is playing with her transformer. It is not a doll dressed in pink. The sight of this makes me happy. Kthxbai." Or when I thought of 'P for pani puri', the post would have been something like this. "I love pani puri. As I've mentioned 83984739875 times on my blog. Kthxbai." 

• The list of posts that never got written is rather long. Some are just heart-breaking. Sample this. There was a pigeon's nest right outside Xena's bathroom window, but it was too out of the way for her to see it. So I used to climb on a stool, extend my hand out of the window, reach as far as I could with my phone and take daily photos of the nest to show Xena. I photographed the nest over months, from the time it was being built to the time two little eggs popped up to the time they hatched and two little pigeon chicks made their appearance. I observed them getting fed by their parents, growing, huddling when it rained, hopping out of the nest closer and closer to the ledge but not really having the courage to take the plunge. It was the sweetest little project Xena and I were doing together, and I thought once the chicks flew away, maybe I'd write a photo post - 'P for pigeon' or 'N for nest'. However, tragedy struck. Another pigeon couple wanted to take over the nest and viciously attacked the chicks, until they were bleeding from their heads. The parents tried to defend the chicks for a while, but soon, they gave up. It was horrible. I would spray water to make the attackers go away, but when I'd come back from Xena's school, I'd see fresh injuries. One day, the smaller chick simply disappeared. I try to tell myself that it flew away, but deep in my heart, I know it wasn't ready. It was probably pushed off. A few days later, the other chick disappeared too. I was so put off by the whole thing I decided not to do the photo post. How on earth do you end a post like that?

• I hope readers will forgive the (sometimes horrendous) typos and mistakes in several of the posts. I can't even blame autocorrect. It's me. Sometimes, my thoughts tumble out of my head onto my keyboard so rapidly that there simply isn't enough bandwidth for pausing and reading. And after you've written a Mahabharata of a post, its sheer length is so daunting that proofreading goes out of the window. 

• Of course, I had the usual doubts about some of the posts. Gosh, I'm gonna get mega-judged for this post. Gosh, does this photo post have too many photos? Gosh, is the quiz too easy? Gosh, what if everyone hates Fan and never ever trusts my reviews? Was I objective enough or did I let my love for SRK get the better of me? (I suspect it's the latter.) 

• But then there were also instances when after I typed something out, my head felt clearer. I was very impressed by the Konmari book all right, but only after writing the K post, the motivation to Konmari the heck out of my place really shot up. Similarly, after writing the O post where I talked about how I want to judge less and rant less about ranters, I feel myself making a conscious move towards achieving these goals. 

Thank you, bewdas and bewdis, for being there with me again this year. I have finished replying to all your emails, and over the next few days, will be replying to all the comments on the posts. And after that, I (and the bar) will go into deep hibernation.

Only for a while, I hope.

Kthxbai. 

Y is for you

Yes, you, my dear readers, my dear bewdas and bewdis!

A big 'Aao thakur!' to those of you who have been frequenting the bar for years (some for almost a decade even) as well as those who are relatively new.

You guys get a lot of info about me from my posts, but I don't know much about you, unless you reveal it through a comment or an email. But as I discovered last year through my 'T is for traffic' post, my blog stats are a good way for me to find out a little bit about you.

Where do you live?

All time (Who is reading from Ukraine??)



This month (Close race between the desis and the Amreekans)




How did you get here?

All time



This month

Which posts did you read the most?

All time (Veshtiman surfaces again...)

This month (omg my gyaan beat Konmari's!)

What were you searching for when you landed on my blog?

All time (the veshti wins the bronze!)



This month (Emraan Hashmi does look good in specs, hehe! In fact, ten years ago, I'd written a whole post about it. Yikes!)



So there -- all your little secrets are out! You can delete your search history all you want, but you and I will always know that you were googling stuff like 'veshti' and 'Emraan Hashmi' when you landed on my blog. Muahahahaha!

T is for traffic

"Your link is making my blog traffic boom!" My sis-in-law sent me a message.

Ooooo blog traffic! I hadn't thought of blog traffic in ages. I used to look at it some ten years ago when blogging was really 'in' and I used to blog every single day and each post had some 50-100 comments. Her comment made me curious about my own blog's current traffic, so I went in to peek.

Here are five amazing observations I made:

Observation 1: The veshti issue
Okay, out with it. Which of you bewdas landed on my blog searching for 'veshti'? Huh huh huh? To my utter surprise, it is one of the most common search terms people have used to land here. Second only to 'sayesha' and 'sayesha on the rocks'! Don't believe me? Please refer to the screenshot below, which shows the most popular keywords that have made people land at the bar from May 2010 to April 2015.

Observation 2: Phoren readers

I'm very aware that most of my blog readers are desis, especially of the kind that live abroad. I was not surprised to see US, India, Singapore and UK in the top five pageviews by country. In fact, I'm pretty sure most of the readers are my university friends because many of them do reside in these countries. What really took me by surprise was the large numbers originating from Germany! I can't think of who in Germany could be reading my blog and why.

Observation 3: The emoticonal bond

So it looks like the most popular posts are not those where I've poured my heart out, or talked about Xena or Viv. The most popular ones are the emoticonal quotient quizzes I'd done, which concerned bewdas informed me were plagiarised so many times over that one day I just woke up and stopped caring.

Observation 4: The search is not over

Long time ago, I used to regularly share the keywords that people used to land at the bar. There were some really funny ones, such as the guy who tried to find 'Sayesha bartender Bhai' on LinkedIn.

So I took a look at the current list, and it's still quite funny what people search for before they land here. Sample these (the first one really cracked me up!):

• govinda ke pitaji kaun hai
• mahesh bhat ka bhanja image pic.
• Veshti
• bhaigiri stetus
• last year of colz senti dialogue
• friends in lko who bored from his lif
• gana guess karo
• pillsbury atta vs ashirwad atta
• www.goda akbar lau store xxx video
• rahul dravid autograph wallpaper
• Gana wala song
• Bhaigiri status
• Guess Hindi songs from emoticons
• where can i get pani puri in singapore
• dadi ke marne ki jhuthi khabar aap urmi ko itna bada
• chal chalo chalo cute baby freeze open expression images
• mom and dad poems in hindi
• its entertainment dialogue ringtone
• Senti boys
• skydiving scene in zindagi na milegi
• Goa bhi eh
• bhai giri stastus in hindi
• kya mast jai life serial fainting scene
• why should i care what other people think
• hbd sayesha
• men give flowers rose white bucket
• tujhye kya lagata is takiya par bethta h
• whts aap shayri of gulam ali sahb
• rohini in zindagi na milegi dobara
• jab we met dialog in wriiten
• apun ka status
• sayesha.blogspot.com
• http://sayesha.blogspot.ch/
• http://sayesha.blogspot.in/

Observation 5: Who is a millionaire? (Hint: Me)
And at some point, something special happened. Quite sneakily. In the last 5 years, the bar reached a million pageviews. And I had no clue. I noticed it only now. Thank you, bewdas! A big thanks to you for reading my Ramayan-Mahabharat posts in the TLDR age of 140 characters (for the record, I'm not on Twitter; I'm not capable of stopping at 140 characters), and a bigger thanks to those who actually make the effort to comment.

And a very very special shoutout to my veshti-wearing German bewdas. Danke!

Q is for quotes

The A-Z blog challenge has been a lot fun so far. I managed to pester quite a few friends into doing it this year. One of them even started a WhatsApp group with some of us. We are about two-thirds into the challenge, and I was just looking back at all our buzzing discussions about it. The urgency, the panic attacks, the post-posting discussions, the 'Halp! What should I write with this letter??' the 'I didn't know this about you!' the 'Yikes, it's 11:45 pm and I haven't posted', the number of times I went 'omg', etc. etc. I keep scrolling and reading and laughing and getting senti, and I thought I'd share some direct quotes about the blogathon that my friends and I have exchanged. Just so you guys get a peek at the madness that goes on behind the scenes of what might seem like smooth sailing.

***

Friend A - So I'm in for the blogathon! Just convinced Friend B to do it too.
Me - Hey, I thought I convinced her!
Friend A - Ok maybe it's you.
Me - Lol hahahaha. I wrote her a loooong email asking her to blog okayyyyy!
Friend A - Ok you win. Because I only WhatsApped her.
*pause*
Friend A - Wait, you never wrote me a loooong email??? I'm mad now!

***

Friend C - Still wondering if I should do the A to Z blogathon...
Me - DO IT! JUST DO IT!

***

Friend B - So glad you guys bugged me to do this.
Friend A - I can't decide which is more fun - writing the posts or reading others' posts!
Friend B - I want to slow down to re-read each post after April is done.
Me - We should do this twice a year!
Friend B - Hi MONICA!

***

Me - I'm having E jitters. I got nothing so far.
Friend A - Wait what? You're the organised one. I thought you'd have drafts lined up for the next 10 posts. I imagine you just waking up and hitting publish each morning.
Friend B - Or at least have ideas all listed out on an excel sheet.
Me - Nooooo omg! I'm dying.
Friend B - Yay, you're like us. :p

***

Me - Hey do you remember what I told you I shortlisted for my E post? Can't remember at all omg!
Friend C - Email.
Me - Ohhhhh right! But what about it ah?
Friend C - Lol. That you didn't say.
Me - Omg I'm dead.

***

Friend C - I still have to think of my H post.
Me - H is strangely difficult, isn't it?
Friend C - You should just say - H for husband. And link to his tag. 'Here you go, all the ridiculous amount of space he's occupied on this blog.'

***

Friend C - Do you have your I post planned out?
Me - *crying emoticon* Need to google first.
Friend C - Google what?!
Me - Google for words that start with I.

***

Friend B - My food posts will need at least 3 more posts to finish!
Friend A - That is cheating! You should write one Mahabharat food post and move on. Like Sayesha's Ramayan posts.
Friend B - People will TLDR and move on.
Me - What is TLDR?
Friend B - Too Long, Didn't Read.
Me - My first post was so long I didn't even bother to proofread it myself.

***

Friend B (on a sunday morning) - You girls still haven't posted? Haha. I can chill until then. :p
Me - Abbe sunday is off day. Don't scare me.
Friend B - Hahaha is it? Phew! Yay!!

***

Friend A (after we all got senti about missing one another) - We miss you too! But I'm glad we're doing this, on so many levels.
Friend B - This almost feels like we're sitting around a table and chatting.

***

Friend A and me (to friend D who did not take the challenge but wrote a guest post) - Why you do guest post for Friend B? Why you no do guest post for us??
Friend D - *gulp*

***

Friend C - Dude, I'm behind on everyone. Barely keeping up with myself. We're not even half-way through! *crying emoticon*
Me - I knowwww!
Friend C - Why are there SO MANY LETTERSSSSS??

***

Friend B (at 10:50 am) - O?
Friend A - Sayesha is all done. Sayesha, you make the rest of us look bad!
Me - Nooooo, I only do it in the morning because I have to get Xena ready and out, and gym and shower and blog and then start work by 10 maxxxx!
Friend A - Ok ok. Back to Friend B's question. O for?
Me - Orange? Ostracized? Ostrich? Ogre? Oh no? Offer? Oscars? Ooh la la? OJ? Om?
Friend A - Om Shanti Om.

***

Friend C (who is single) - If we do the challenge again next year, I'm banning Xena posts! She provides you with too much inspiration!
Me - Lollll. Well, I made her. Ahahahaha. You go make one too. Deepika Padukone says you can.

***

Catch-up #8

Hello, bewdas!

It has been an absolutely mad week, and now that the weekend is almost here, promising to be quite mad as well, I thought I'd quickly sneak in a catch-up post.

Li'l Xena turned 4 years old this week! It sounds odd, but the best way to describe her is that she's a complete person now, full of ideas, jokes (really bad ones, just like her daddy), stories, opinions and never-ending questions. I will, at some point, write that post I've been writing after each of her birthdays, to share the parenting gyaan that has helped us manage her (and stay sane) as she went from three-nage to fearless four.

My mom-in-law flew in this week, and you know what that means! Afternoon chai-ya-ya-yai-yaaaaa! (Try to sing it in the tune from Gupt's title song; at least that's how it plays in my head.) As some of you would know, I'm not a chai addict, but I love making it for other people and I love chai when I have company. So every afternoon, mil-dil sit down together for a cuppa and talk about life.

Work has been super this year, and I'm quite happy with my first-quarter projects. I published two kiddy books with my dream publisher and I'm in the midst of a third one with them. The deadlines tend to be quite insane, and when I feel stressed, I look to ducks for inspiration. Calm on the surface, furiously paddling underneath. It helps.

As you know, we tend to do the craziest things when we really shouldn't be. For example, I should be working on that next chapter instead of blogging now, but here I am. Like how I was crazy enough to sign up for the A-Z blogging challenge in April last year. At a day's notice. A post a day. With Viv away on his annual pilgrimage business trip to Vegas. With me managing the house and Xena and my work by myself. Cuckoo! But I did it -- I wrote 26 posts in a month, and I must be stark raving mad because I've decided to do it again this year. I've also convinced Clueless to do it, and if you click on her blog, you will see that her last post was the last post of the challenge. She has agreed, and now I'm working on my next target Shub. These are the two people who used to live in the far west end of Singapore and I pestered and pestered them until they moved to the east! (At least I like to think it was me.)

So let's see how it goes. If you have ideas on topics that I can blog about during the challenge, please share them with me. I will be very grateful because my mind is blank at the moment.

See you in April! (Every day!)
Cheers,
Sayesha the bartender bhai

V is for visitor

We had a visitor yesterday. Argentyne. Someone who has been visiting the bar for years now, but visited in person today. It was wonderful to meet her (and not just because she said I'm taller in real life than the impression my blog header gives. Muahahahaha.) On a serious note, it didn't feel like we'd never met before. That always amazes me in a way. From the time I started blogging, I've had the opportunity to meet many many bewdas/bewdis in person, and not once did it feel like a first meeting. We just started talking as if we were picking up from an earlier conversation.

Very few of these actually live in Singapore. Most of them are visitors, just passing by. Singapore is a great hub for travellers, and at some point or the other, many of the bar's bewdas/bewdis find themselves on our tiny island. And if our pockets of time match, we meet. I have vivid memories of all the visitors of my blog whom I have met so far, and one of the closest to my heart is my dear darling Shub. She'd been reading my blog since 2005, and was a regular commentator for ages before we met over aloo ka parathas. We hit it off straightaway. A soul sister, I'd say. It amazed me to no end to have found her through the online world. Through her, we came to know Pizzadude and Sumanth. Pizzadude and I instantly bonded over our undying love for Bollywood, and a rocking bromance bloomed between Viv and Sumanth. Shub served as the glue that held us all together.

They say you are the average of the five people you hang out with. And the five of us sure had some above-average fun. I just went back to read the post I'd written about the five of the us and the mad things we did together, and now I'm in full senti mode. The nicknames (S2/D2/P2, husbandu, oifu, Joey, Thudson, veshti-man), the airport garlanding (Shub was the founder of SMART - Shub's Mind-blowing Airport Reception Technique, which we first used on Pizzadude and eventually on her too), the elaborate birthday surprises like this and this, the orchestrated kidnapping of Viv, the typewriter slap, the power-packed India trip to attend Shub and Sumanth's wedding. Everything. I always feel that my late 20s had really rocked because of these guys.

And then one day she dropped the bomb. They were moving back to India. I was in denial for the longest time, and on some levels I think I still refuse to believe it. But before leaving, she had done the most wonderful thing of introducing us to two of her friends (the ones we had the post-baby baby bash for) who were, I kid you not, exactly like them. 1 for 1 exchange offer. Jokes aside, her departure was a lot less painful and my 'Mera is duniya mein ab koi nahin hai' feeling was mitigated to a great extent due to these guys and Pizzadude who had thankfully not decided to pack up too.

One day, during a bus ride (obviously, as all such thoughts occur only during bus rides), it struck me that my current primary circle of friends has its origins in my blog. Most of our friends in Singapore had been from our university days, but most of them moved out of Singapore, breaking my heart (Hello Dubaiites, are you reading this??). We do hang out with the rest of our NTU gang from time to time, but our closest friends are these guys whom I met through Shub. If she'd not visited my blog, we'd not have met and I would have a completely different group of friends now. It might have sucked, it might have been great. I don't know and it doesn't matter. What I have now is awesome. The 30s are rocking because of these guys.

Thank you, Shub, for wandering over to my blog that fateful day. I love you and I miss you and I hope we can meet again soon.

Run of the mille

My dad reminded me that my blog's thousandth post is coming up, and that I should write something significant for it. So I decided to skip writing about other matters of national importance, such as a survey on What Bewdas Really Think of Deepika Padukone's Accent in the Chennai Express Trailer, and write something about the bar itself.

The bar. Ah, the bar. Where to start and how to start. So let me not even start and simply point you to this post, which explains why I call this place a bar, and you guys and girls bewdas.

Sometimes I can't believe that the bar has been around for 8 and a half years. Even more incredible is the fact that some of the bewdas have been with me all of these years! I mean, blogging was 'in' when I started, but it is 'out' now, isn't it? We just don't have the patience to read long posts anymore, do we? We find even long emails addressed to us tedious. That's why many of my blogger buddies from ye olde times have moved on to Twitter. Blogging is old school now. So why am I still a blogger and not a tweeter? One, I feel Twitter is a platform more suitable for celebrities; two, I have too much to type (how will I ever ramble in just 140 characters?); and three; I can barely keep up with updating the bar and Facebook, I can't imagine having one more thing to update. So, for the record, I am not on Twitter and never will be. The plan is to blog as long as I possibly can, and that's that.

Some day in the future, when I'm old and retired and don't have much to do, I will start reading my blog from the beginning to relive bits and pieces of my life. Since I started my blog, I have moved from being a clueless fresh graduate to switching my career and starting at the very bottom, getting my master's degree, building my career in publishing, getting married, getting pregnant and becoming a mother. Yes, yes, I hear you bewdas who are shaking their heads and going "Yaar yeh aajkal sirf apni beti ke baare mein hi likhti hai..." I really don't know what to say to that. It's like that cheesy line "Pyaar kiya nahin jata, ho jata hai." Xena ke baare mein blogging kiya nahin jata, ho jata hai. I can't help it. I seriously can't. But in a way, I like that the bar always reflects what is going on in my life, and right now, as you know, she's top of the goings-on in my life.

Sometimes, I read some old posts and wonder if it was really me who wrote it. In many posts, I sound so silly, so childish, so juvenile, so egoistic, so deluded, so utterly foolish. But in a way, it is interesting how the blog has chronicled the changes in my thoughts, my character, personality and writing style over the years. I started this blog not because I had a lot of thoughts (actually I don't think I had any, looking at my first post!), but because everyone else around me seemed to have one and I felt left out. Seriously. My colleagues couldn’t stop talking about this ‘blog’ thingie. Apparently, they all had one. So I decided to get one myself and find out what it was all about. Never did I ever imagine that I would keep the blog going for so many years. But to be honest, I'm taking too much credit here. The blog is alive because of the bewdas who made this their adda. True, we blog for ourselves, not others. But it's also true that sometimes it's those others who keep us going. I can't count the number of times I was pinged by a bewda and reminded to get back to blogging. Truth of the matter is - I love blogging. I LOVE it. But sometimes, it takes a backseat, and I honestly miss it. So thank you, bewdas, for your support, your patience, your comments, your emails and your love.

Assuming that at the very least, I spend about an hour (yes, even on this post!!) on each post, that's 1000 hours I have clocked in at the bar! Some may consider it a total waste of time, but thankfully I don't. It has been worth it and more.

Thank you for choosing the bar for your addabaazi purposes, bewdas.

I made the bar happen, but you make the bar happening.

Copy that

First of all, my thanks to all the bewdas for resurfacing on the last post. I did not mean the post to be a bewda roll call, but it is really nice that so many of you are still frequenting the bar with the missing bartender. :)

Speaking of nice bewdas (by the way, the term includes bewdis too), I wanna thank Kanan for pointing out two more cases of blatant plagiarism of posts off my blog. She sent me three links:

I wrote this post in 2005 about lyrics that I had misheard.

My post was blatantly copy-pasted in 2011 by this blogger AND this blogger.

Shocked and annoyed, I left comments on both posts to point out the plagiarism. Within the next few minutes, the first one Chikkizworld, who calls himself/herself a "vehemently passionate writer" had vehemently and passionately deleted not only the copied post, but all of his/her posts. Erm, okay.

I checked again after a few hours and the other blog, belonging to this person called Poonam Dangi, still had the copied post. I then went to check out what the rest of her blog was all about, and when I scrolled down, I could not believe my eyes. Purana bewdas of the bar might remember this post I wrote about Viv's pictionary skills. It is one of my all-time favourite posts because it truly brings out Viv's personality. And to see it copied and pasted like that, with the exact title, in the exact font and colour, the exact pictures of his drawings, with no mention of who Viv or baby Aish (who was referenced in the post) were to her, was a real shocker.

And you know what disgusted me even more? The plagiarised post was only her second post on her blog, and guess what was the first? I have copy-pasted it here in its entirety because it is so unbelievable that a person who wrote this as her first post would simply steal someone's stuff as her second post.

Source: http://lifeetc-poonam.blogspot.sg/2011/10/what-do-i-expect-from-this-blog.html

Okay soo this is my first post ever and u cannot imagine how nervous I am. I know blogging is not a big taboo but it's something I'm doing for the first time and the fact that this is on Internet which means easily visible to all. But will anyone actually read this?? During the process of building my stage that is this blog I came across questions like what if no one ever reads it?? or people make fun of me/start hating me for the things featured over here.actually I don't know why I decided to write a blog of my own, neither do I have any reasons or objectives to be raised nor do I want to be confined in a single genre. But these can be referred to as an inspiration to start this: 

To write and comment bout things i like..even a book would have done so...but dude.. 

Blogs have such nice templates whereas books...have those white pages scribbled with some black dots. 

Here, my opinions won't be contradicted ..preferably not... 

I have already driven my friends mad by narrating them my stories so I thought of irritating people on larger scale internet being biggest network serves my purpose well. 

To confess my guilts cos I can't do that in person. 

To make some new friends. 

To fulfill that silly secret desire of being a writer.

Here's some more appalling stuff.

I just told Viv all about this and he shared my indignation. (Obviously. Some random woman is trying to claim him as hers!) And he agreed with me that though there is no way to stop such acts of plagiarism, at the very least I should name and shame when I find out about such instances.

So thank you bewdas, for looking out for me. All cases so far of plagiarism of my posts have been brought to my notice by some nice bewda who cared enough to drop me a note about it. Thank you very much. It truly means a lot to me.

And to those whose hands do not shake when using the CtrlC+CtrlV function, just find some time to look in the mirror, yeah?  

HNY!

Hey bewdas,

I wanted to drop a quick note to wish all of you a very happy new year! My new year resolution is extremely general -- to strive to be a little better than I was last year. In every sense. What's yours? Let me know in the comments' section, and I promise to hunt you down at the end of the year to see how you did. ;)

Thanks for hanging out at the bar!
Lots of love,
Sayesha
PS: Sorry for the super short post. But... quoting the Terminator, "I'll be back." :P

Emoti(c)onal abuse

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

But not when the imitator puts his frickin' watermark on your work.

We got back from our US holiday on Tuesday, and I found several emails and messages from the bar's bewdas about content from my emoji pictionary posts (particularly this one) being spread on FB pages without any credit given.

Those who have followed and played the emoji posts would know that idea of using emoji icons to play pictionary came from my friend Pizzadude and I have since posted several such posts on my blog.

The first page I was informed about was the ROFLIndia Facebook page with the following post:

As you can see, ten songs have been featured using emoji icons and the post has 1,555 likes, 1,450 comments and 3,261 shares as of now. Hell, it even has a watermark. Great.

Here are the relevant posts from our blogs where the ten songs have been taken from.
Songs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 10 are from this post on my blog.
Songs 6 and 7 are from this post on my blog.
Songs 8 and 9 are from this post on Pizzadude's blog.

Over the last few days, it has been shared again and again on different FB pages. Here are just some which were sent to me by the bar's bewdas:

https://www.facebook.com/SocialKonnekt (link to post)
https://www.facebook.com/page4bollywood?fref=ts (link to post)
https://www.facebook.com/SrikanthGopisetty (link to post)

Each of these pages have hundreds of shares, likes and comments.

UPDATE (11 Nov 2012): Kanan has sent me yet another post on the ROFLIndia FB page!

Every single song featured in this has been lifted off this post on my blog.

I wrote to ROFLIndia.com to complain (since they seem to have an actual website in addition to an FB page), and to ask them to either give us credit, or remove the plagiarised post from their Facebook page. Of course, I have not received any response.

I have checked up Facebook's copyright infringement policy on this, and I don't think they will be able to verify page by page and remove the content. Some of you suggested that I should at least write a post on it and so I did.

Many thanks to all of the bewdas who took the time to write to me about it. Not only does it show that you care, it also affirms the fact that this is truly an infringement and not just my imagination. While I am not implying that no one else could have thought of the same idea of playing pictionary with emoji icons, I am sure you would agree that the fact that each of the songs in the Facebook post and the icons used to represent them are the same as those on our blogs is indeed remarkable. And so is the fact that there is not a single song on the Facebook post that has not appeared on our blogs. That's too much of a coincidence. What, they couldn't come up with even a single one themselves?

Of course, it's not like I was going to make a book out of my posts. The posts were written in fun, and were indeed meant to be shared and enjoyed by Bollywood fans. What bugs me is the fact that it was so shamelessly copied without any credit given to us.

Even if they didn't want to bother asking us for permission, how hard is it to put a little credit line at the bottom?

I probably can't blame the subsequent 'copiers' and 'sharers' as they probably didn't know it was stolen content, but to the first person who copied it off my blog (and is probably and hopefully reading this), I send you a thousand e-curses.

In search of the truth - V

It's been four months to the last 'In search of the truth' post, and here it is, the latest list of search keywords that bewdas have used to land at the bar. I am amazed at the regularity at which people are searching for 'veshti' and 'dragonfruit' and 'haircut prices at VLCC'. The one that amused me the most in today's list is the last one, for many reasons: the sms lingo, the arrow after 'SHEILA', the word 'killah' and last but not the least, the inclusion of the two hearts in the search keywords. :D

• Commuter's helmet
• dragon fruit
• ja mata di
• Kabir ke dohe song Dhan De Dhan Na Ghate
• meaning +salgirah
• kajra copper concentrate
• kijwani surname
• sayesha on the erocks
• cost of haircut at vlcc
• veshtiman
• hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
• sayesha singapore
• hopscotch blog
• Cin Forshay lunsford agent
• Tere dar par sanam translation
• combodia girl friend look 40 up 50 don
• non-veg dohe
• salgirah meaning
• singer of juba pe laga laga
• pani puri sayesha
• kajol lovely lines in ddlj move in written anjana andekha koi ane lag
• galyan sakli sonyachi meaning
• one ok rock
• bhaigiri dialogues
• tere bin laden sayesha
• sudeep actor earrings
• sayesha on the rocks munnadi
• www.santa banta aisah takia hot movies 12 ya hot m...
• Wot is the cost of a girls haircut at Habib's?
• do aur do ka jod hamesha char kahan hota hai meaning
• who put the goat in there
• dragon fruit in india
• a stick figure wearing a cape
• pani patasha
• sayesha rocks
• vlcc hair cut price
• ideas for dumb charades
• drive picton to kaikoura
• definition of bewda
• Cricket bat dimensions
• Rongoboti
• The little things that make life worth living
• Shyam tolani
• Hrithik Roshan look-alikes
• jakie sharoff famyli foto
• tage mahal
• no one killed jessica bad words
• beer tag lines
• things will work out in the end
• spice ad subramanium almunium
• www.gold bumming
• spider man
• www. jai mata di
• agar life real toh jab we met
• andaz apna apna firauti ki kasam
• SHEILA ---->sheila ki jawani...M TOO SEXY 4 YA....MAIN TERE HATH NA AANI....♥ ♥...killah song..

Annual report - 2010

Aaaand... wrapping up the year is the usual Bar's Annual Report (which I just realised incidentally also abbreviates into BAR. Hey bhagwaaaaan.).

2010 was the year...

... that started with a bang -- the Sonu Nigam live concert

... when two of my bestest friends R and A visited Singapore, bringing out the insane jokes all over again

... when a crowd proved how powerful it can be, albeit in a very wrong way

... when Viv had a chance to play against Jayasuriya, and get Upul Tharanga's wicket

... when Viv couldn't be around for my birthday because of work, and made it up by driving me around California, on the road trip that we had been planning for the longest time

... when Aish turned four and too wise for her Mausi

... when Dad's post-retirement organic kitchen garden really took off. I know I have mentioned this like 36485902464 times but I cannot get over the 9.5-kg pumpkin he grew without using any chemicals

... when I had the chance to meet mehfil ke puraane bewdas and bewdi Sudipta, Varsha and Jay

... when Viv and I completed a dozen years of living in Singapore

... when both sets of parents visited us in a span of a few months, first the in-laws, and then after successful implementation of the green strategy, the parents too

... when Dad's blog finally kicked off

... when S2 moved back to India. My feelings about it can be summed up from the following conversation I had with Pizzadude. "So? Are they happy to be back in India?" I asked. "Yeah. I think so." He said. "Damnit." I said.

... when Viv ran his third full marathon. I, erm, contributed. I think.

... and finally, the big celebration -- 6 years of the Bar. Can't believe it has survived 6 years. May the madness never stop!

Cheers, bewdas, and have a super 2011! :D

In search of the truth - IV

I haven't posted anything on the search keywords bewdas have used to land at the bar in some time. Luckily, there are no really disturbing ones in this round, but 'Sheela Kijwani' turned up -- that was fast! And someone tried to find the Bhai on linkedin. Underworld ke links linkedin par nahin hote, beta. Muahahaha!

Anyway, here is the list:

• veshti
• senorita banana
• wedding sehri things
• akshay kumar barana de lyrics
• sayesha on the orcdks
• dil toh pagal hai dialogues
• Mirja Ghalib ki gajalein
• hot sexi movie on facebook
• juba pe laga lyrics
• jab we met... ek dam kadak beauty ..dialogue
• badminton player ali yaar baig's narcotics baned
• dehleez ke diye
• galyan sakli sonyachi lyrics
• cost of haircut at vlcc
• on the rocks
• jigar ka tukda means
• "sheela kijwani" sayesha
• mineral water pani puri indore
• veer zaara locations wagah border
• words to write in a farewell card
• sonakshi taller than salman
• mujh se ladne ki himmat to juta loge par kaminapan kahan se laoge?
• Sayesha bartender Bhai, linkedin

Leave of absence

Ok ok ok I know I know. Trust me -- I KNOW. I have been missing from the bar for too long and the barrels are all empty and the bewdas are all sober and all that. Truth is -- I have no real excuse. I have always hated the 'I have no time' excuse because I have always believed that if you really want to do something, you'll always have time for it. So there. Guilty as charged. No excuses. Head hung in shame and all that.

So, in general, here's a catch-up on what's been happening. Absence makes the heart fonder and the mind wander, so pardon the randomness.

• S2 moved back to India. For good. I am still in denial.

• I cannot, I repeat, CANNOT wait for the new Harry Potter movie. True, I am a bigger fan of the books than the movies, but there is no thrill like watching the movie version of books you truly love, unless of course you have violent objections to the casting. I have no violent objections to the casting (yes, not even to the 'movie-Hermione is too hot compared to book-Hermione').

• It's appraisals' season at work, and it's not particularly my favourite one. Judgement day is never easy, and I hope I can be fair to my staff and that my boss can be fair to me.

• Diwali was a quiet affair. Viv and I didn't do much. A simple rangoli, a simple pooja, four diyas at the doorstep, a few episodes of F.R.I.E.N.D.S and a simple dinner with a good friend.

• Yesterday, I watched an episode of Bigg Boss on Youtube and almost fell off my chair. O.M.G. That Dolly Bindra makes Rakhi Sawant look like a classy Victorian lady, doesn't she?

• Viv and I have started taking long walks (2-3 km after dinner IS long, okay?) after dinner. It's not only good exercise, it's such a great way to catch up with each other after a long hard day at work.

• Viv's third (or is it the fourth?) marathon is coming up soon. Excited!

• I watched Jhootha Hi Sahi and found it really funny. John should truly write a book called 'How to be really really hot and still be likeable'.
  
  
• I also had the chance to finally watch Zanjeer - the movie that made Amitabh Bachchan a superstar after a string of 13 flops. Total disappointment. Erm, what was the big deal really?
  

• I just realised this evening that making sambar is the most bartan-consuming culinary activity ever. One to soak the tamarind, one to soak the dal, one to soak the small onions, a pressure cooker, a wok and what not -- all just to make one dish! It's really as much effort as cooking the dish, which is why I really don't mind the current cooking-washing division of labour between Viv and me. Husbands who don't cook OR do the dishes, shame on you!
  
  
• I haven't spoken to my 4.5-year-old niece baby Aish in a month. Seriously. When I call, she's at school and when she calls, I'm at work. I feel like she's already a hard-to-get-hold-of American teenager and soon she won't know me at all. Time to plan the next big family reunion!
  

And that's all for now, folks. I'll be back. Soon, I hope. Can't let Dad win the blogging battle, can I? ;)

In search of the truth - III

Yikes, I just realised I had missed posting the keywords post for August. I only remembered when someone said that they really like these posts. I shamelessly took that as a compliment in full view of the fact that my contribution to such posts is only the generic first paragraph. Anyway, here it is, a list of keywords very disturbed folks recently searched for and landed, for some very disturbing reason, at the bar.

• Girls playing with there boys frand in uk
• namaskar india, mee goreng
• jee le jee le aayo ayao jee le le-tarzan film songs
• paisa sood samet
• mrityu sabse bada shikshak quotes
• chuck ke rakh movi.com
• shankarteja family photos
• main tane prem karu bachchan
• rongoboti ah rongoboti
• bharta smells like
• ya.ali
• reding shayeri
• Sexy sayeri
• aasama ko dharti pe lane dj mix
• hot she males sexy
• motival tablets kabootar
• govinda and Juhi aa gale lag ja dialogue
• Aasman ko dharti pe lanewala chahiye
• sayesha indian idol
• Aap Jaisa Koi Meri Zindagi Mein Aaye mean
• dialogue after slap from dil chahta hai
• things that make life worth living
• bar taglines
• rocks
• what is the border line weight to ride a horse
• shaan tum jo hasti ho to yeh sara
• short skirt science
• bahut pakaya in english

In search of the truth - II

As I mentioned in this post, yup, it's indeed going to be a regular feature. Here's the July list of keywords people were searching for when they landed at the bar. I have, of course, compiled the 'best' ones, and by 'best' I obviously mean the most random/funny/weird/disturbing ones.

• tumhari shawl
• funny dumb charade ideas
• aamir chicken
• meaning of shamme faroza
• scratch that
• tol mol ke bol dialogue
• how much is the taipan dinner at PC karachi
• helicopter accident of bihar jharkhand leaders
• agar tu mera acha chahti hai to mujhe jaane de dialogue of wich film
• remix sayad meri saadi ka khayal
• bhaigiri lines
• dhoni fiancee sakshi singh picture
• the saris on indian tv serials
• Chad gaya upar re atariya meaning
• how many uncles does lily have sayesha
• Muhaaaa t-shirt
• Na ma na signal dekha na tu na signal dekha accident ho gaya o permanent ho gaya Rabba Rabba
• Manjeshwar lovely girls
• madhuri duplicate farheen
• sayesha rocks
• sayesha dhakkan
• clerk gunda jaani dushman
• baingan bharta kids
• hota hai hota hai ab hum jaake sota hai
• aunties.blogspot.com-content warning
• tumhara naam simran hai dialog
• blogs I might enjoy site:sayesha.blogspot.com
• rohit mian
• zindagi hai behne dosite:youtube.com
• samosa recipes indian video in hindi for sanjiv kumar
• frand ship
• horlicks based mocktails
• hasti rahe tu hasti rahe translation
• manaofy
• you could've gone places "i am going places" swades
• khoka peti
• sexy kahaniii
• tamil dirty stores.com
• cuttack ka maal
• dude meaning in tamil
• who put the goat in there
• dialogue of bhaigiri
• baigan bhartha after peeling brinjal
• soni de nakhre lyrics kaindi
• sayesha frand
• fardeen khan on crutches
• ab game main hi khelunga aur patte
• timbacktoo
• cool things to write on a goodbye card
• kabir ke dohe non veg
• Tu premi aha main premi aha tu raazi aha tu raazi aha
• salaam namaste ghost of the foot's not listening to the talks

In search of the truth - I

I was suddenly reminded of the existence of my statcounter account when someone asked me how many hits the bar got in a day. So I paid a customary visit to see what's going on, and I rediscovered how very like an amusement park the 'keywords' section is. So here are some of the keywords that people were googling and landed on my blog. I think I should make this a regular feature!

• Bhaigiri style jokes
• Meaning of shamme faroza
• achha ji main haare chalo maan jao na
• Sayesha bhai B.Engg
• ramu bhediya
• meaning of behan di taki
• dialogues in jab we met in hotel decent
• laupat gamini
• kiske mama ki gun hai
• galyan sakli sonyachi meaning
• sapne dekho bus unke poore hone ki umeed mat rakho
• urmila madonkar aunty
• men are like elastic bands and women like waves
• haircut price in vlcc
• kabir ke dohe in hindi with meaning in english
• dragon fruit hindi name
• simple chilli baby corn recipe
• who is the girl in hero honda ads during hockey world cup
• lyrics only of juba pe laga, laga re namak ishq ka song
• www chuck ke rakh
• when your soulmate dumps you
• kunti with surya dev
• badshah masala yeah
• dragon fruit in India
• phone numbers fo Chennai aunties
• socha na tha Goa resort
• koi ek thappad maar dialogue of lage raho munna bhai
• girls sexy yahoo messenger id who talk english
• utt panichkul gay
• tere dar par sanam translation
• what is the english name of the tree called aapto in konkani
• Cin Forshay Lunsford
• burpy lahiri
• jiggar means
• vis bhujang chandan
• saas bahu serials and cinderella

All right bewdas, own up now -- how did you get here?? I have the rolled-up weekend edition of the newspaper (feared in many circles as the weapon of ass destruction) ready for you. :/

Guilty as charged

One of my bar's bewdas (wasn't sure if he/she wanted his/her identity to be disclosed) emailed me this graph.

London Bridge is falling down... Falling down... Falling down...

Waaaaaaaaaa! :'(

*Takes rolled-up newspaper and repeatedly whacks self on head*