Bluelightful.com

I can has domain name!!!!!!

www.bluelightful.com will take you right to my new blog; no need to rack your brain for Cole Porter lyrics.

This was a gift from a friend who is more than awesome.

THANK YOU.

When I get the for-real job, I promise I will find a way to give back, or to "pay it forward," as it were.

New Travels, New Title, New Blog

I've packed up and shifted my blogging home over to Bluelightful, Bluelicious, Bluelovely.

Please update bookmarks/site feeds as appropriate.

I hope all of the readers who have traveled with me here at PrettyBlueSalwar will join me at my new home!

New Blog Going Up Tonite

... and not a moment too soon.

Watch this space for the URL, if you haven't figured it out already. ^__^

Blog Transfer Status

Blog transfer is... more and more complete. 100% coming soon.

The Great Blog Transfer...

... is coming.

What's In A Blog Name?

I've been thinking, lately, about the name of this blog.

When the blog began, it was a travelogue; the name "pretty blue salwar" came, in part, from an idea expressed in Madhur Jaffrey's Climbing the Mango Trees:

Kamal returned with suitcases full of fashionable gifts for all of us. I received a pair of pedal pushers and a black-and-white-striped T-shirt that practically became my uniform. She also presented me with a light tartan shawl and a sterling silver charm bracelet with the Eiffel Tower dangling from it. [...] I had yet to see the rest of the world, but, already armed with a pair of pedal pushers, the charm bracelet, and the Coke, I felt that phase of my life had to be just around the corner. (Jaffrey 237, 240)

I had yet to see the rest of the world, but, armed with a blue salwar I bought on eBay...

Now the name is no longer representative of the purpose of the blog. Not, perhaps, that the blog has a purpose. I still stand by my post-trip statement that I will continue blogging because "life is a continuous travelogue" (and, of course, because I enjoy blogging and enjoy meeting new people via blogging). But, even if my blog is about life-experienced-as-journey, it isn't, anymore, about a pretty blue salwar.

The other drawback of the blog's current name is that, every once in a while, it draws people who aren't aware of its original purpose and who see these random posts by a white woman in a salwar and then tell me what a horrible person I am for exotifying Indian clothing.

It seems at this point I have three options:

1. Keep the blog's name as it is; possibly put something on the "About Me" section explaining the title.

2. Change the name of the blog, but keep the "prettybluesalwar.blogspot.com" URL.

3. Start an entirely new blog with a new name: Blue Ink, Bluewords, BlueBlog, Blue's Clues, etc.

The problem with the last option is that I would seem to lose all of the relationships I had built since I started blogging. At the least, I would lose my Technorati ranking (which isn't that big to begin with, but...). On the other hand, people who are currently following this blog could easily switch their bookmark or RSS to its new URL/feed. I wouldn't change my handle, and would continue to post on all of your blogs as Blue.

It would be... like moving to a new house, and sending round a forwarding address.

What do you think? Should I move away from the salwar association and start a new blog under a less contentious name? Or is the salwar still pretty enough to wear, even though I'm no longer a world traveler?

Eat Pray Love Redux REDACTION

Team, I just learned from Holly Corbett's sister Sara that Holly didn't actually write the Page Six article titled "My Year-Long Trip Changed My Life - FOR THE WORSE."

According to Sara, Holly did an interview for Page Six about her trip and spoke positively about her experiences, just like she does on The Lost Girls, and Page Six rewrote the story (including fabricating the headline quote). From Sara:

Unfortunately page six six six decided they wanted something juicer than the truth and the great experiences, and put a really bad spin on her decision.

Also, Holly didn't get paid for the article, which seems really unfortunate, esp. because she's getting lambasted at places like Jezebel and, formerly, here. (I've pulled my original post, which was about how writing negative travel articles made all travelers look bad.)

Interestingly, the Jezebel commenters have also figured this out, and are jumping to her defense. (Well, most of them.)

Thanks, Sara. I hope that the Lost Girls blog posts something about this, because they're bound to get a lot of traffic from people curious to know who Holly Corbett is.

Happy New Year 2008: The Dreaded "Clips Show" Blog Post!

Since everyone else is overviewing 2007, and making "Top Ten" lists and things like that, I thought I would present an overview of the... um... "Top Ten Most Awesome Things That Happened On This Blog In The Past Year."

Let's see.

Blue goes to Hyderabad and directs a student-written Telugu adaptation of Shakespeare's Tempest. In this adaptation, Prospero acknowledges his mistake and cedes the island to Caliban. This rocks.

Blue goes to Amritsar and experiences "a sense of connection."

Blue goes to Bangalore and lives it up with some blogging friends.

Blue goes to Delhi and gets completely pwned.

Blue discovers SRK.

Blue learns how to coach her students... by copying SRK.

Blue falls in love (but not with SRK) and writes love poetry.

Blue makes a huge mistake involving t-shirts. Then... other things happen.

Blue becomes "the #1 resource for BBC Ballet Shoes on the internet!" (I'm still getting Ballet Shoes-related site traffic.)

Blue cooks. Repeatedly.

Did I miss anything?

Oh, and I'm turning this into a meme. Tagged are: Abi (even though I know you don't do memes), Ctrlalteredmind, Sirensongs, Manish, and SepiaMutiny. Yes, SepiaMutiny. I dare you.

Editor's Note: SepiaMutiny actually did the meme, although... unfortunately... I don't think Blue can claim the credit.

I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What Was Holding Me Back

First of all, a disclaimer.

I blog to get free stuff.

Absolutely.

So, when -- after reading my recent post on how I felt like I had every single possible career trajectory leering in front of me and I didn't know which one to pursue -- a friend gave me a copy of a book with the very title I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was, I was delighted.

And then depressed.

And then still delighted, but a little confused.

The premise behind I Could Do Anything is that people who aren't doing the "anything" that they want to do are stuck where they are because of psychological factors from their past.

For example: a person stuck in a low-level office job who wants to go back to grad school and pursue a career in journalism might be putting off grad school apps because his teacher/father/former girlfriend told him he was stupid, and so he's afraid he's too stupid for grad school and avoids applying.

The book falls victim to the general flaw of "improve your life and finances" books, which is that it states that everyone can achieve their dreams and that no one has to get stuck doing mindless grunt work... and then completely skips over the niggling issue of "but if everyone is following their dream, who's left to do the grunt work?"

Besides that, however, it's fairly provocative and led me to make a significant realization.

As blogged here, there, and everywhere, I grew up in a tiny Midwestern town and attended an underfunded "rural route" school. A school where the high school science teacher taught the food chain, and gave the example "sun, weeds, rat, cow." (When a classmate and I protested that rats don't eat weeds, never mind about the cow, we were told that the individual elements didn't matter; the state tests were only looking for us to understand the "idea" behind a food chain.)

I was bored silly. I sat at a desk all day and didn't have a lot of friends, particularly as I got older and started doing incredibly dorky things like memorizing passages from Shakespeare and writing them down in my notebook instead of copying whatever was on the overhead. (I also wore pink suspenders to class, which probably contributed.)

And there's a chapter in I Could Do Anything specifically for the young job-seeker right about to leave a university program; a chapter which asks "Why are you not applying to all of the fantastic jobs out there? What are you afraid they will be like?"

My mind went "I'm afraid they'll be like the office work I've done thus far. Sitting at a desk all day, doing the same repetitive thing over and over, the only possibility of advancement being moving on to other repetitive things."

Then the book asked "where were you in your life when you first experienced the thing you're afraid of?"

And my mind went "OMGWTF SCHOOL! It's exactly like grade school and high school, and people kept promising that there would be something better for me, and the people in high school said it would come in undergrad, and the people in undergrad said it would come in grad school, and no wonder I'm so afraid of real jobs because all they seem to be are more of this sitting-and-waiting business!"

Then the book tells me to forgive my childhood for not giving the child Blue what she needed. I'm not sure my childhood needs to be "forgiven," because I kind of like the adult Blue, and I know that she was shaped by her childhood.

Most importantly, the book gave me some ideas about where to look for entry-level jobs that weren't all this "sitting-and-waiting business," this office work that does in fact remind me of those long classroom hours of copying notes from the overhead.

But I hate writing about my dreams while they are still so new. So... watch this space, and when things begin to transpire, I'll tell you.

Editor's Note: In case you were curious, free stuff Blue has received via blogging has thus far included grocery money (from this post), an invitation to visit Bangalore (see this post, and then click on the "Bangalore" tag to read the rest), an offer to write travel columns for an Indian magazine (from this post, and yes, she took it up), and a burgeoning social network which has led to dinner invitations, theatre tickets, etc. For which she says, to everyone: THANK YOU.

Blue is the Color of Dreams

Yep. Stole the header image from the Tiffany's ad.

To Thambi

To Thambi, who is also "Name" (of course I track ISPs), and who has now adopted two different identities (with the same hidden Blogger profile) to leave me notes on the blog:

Thanks for the link. I remember reading that article two years ago, but it was nice to be reminded of it again.

I wanted to respond to your comment because I respect where you are coming from, and although I don't think I'm doing what you are accusing me of doing, it's clear that we are misreading each other, which I think is unfortunate.

So. (Enters storytelling mode.)

I have worn a bindi. Twice.

The first was the night Tempest opened, in Hyderabad. My students insisted I wear one.

"I'm not Hindu," I said. "And I'm not married. I don't think it's appropriate for me to borrow a symbol like that."

They disagreed, explaining that "you can't wear a sari without a bindi!"

So I let them put one on my forehead.

The other time I wore a bindi was in Bangalore, and as before it was suggested and offered by my host, before going to visit nearby families and their Kolu.

Although I have received a few colorful, glittery bindi packets as gifts when making clothing purchases, I don't wear them. I certainly wouldn't wear them on my navel. I've always recognized the bindi as a religious signifier, even as its meaning has altered.

But the salwar is different. It isn't a religious symbol, as far as I understand. It's a form of clothing that has, in fact, already passed through the hands of a few different cultural groups before it ended up on a hanger in my closet.

I know that people think I don't have a right to be interested in India, or in Indian culture; that I am "Bollywoodizing" India (to which I respond "no, I'm Bollywoodizing Bollywood, which -- you have to admit -- encourages that kind of behavior"), or that I am operating from a colonial mindset.

The first part I disagree with, the middle part I know isn't true (India isn't all Bollywood and yoga, and I didn't think it was before the trip, either), and the last part is something that I have consciously tried to address and avoid.

What I don't understand is why you tell me I am presenting myself as an "expert" or "ambassador" of Indian culture. This blog was started in a spirit of questioning, which has continued throughout my travelogue.

It was started -- if you go back to my very first posts -- because I didn't feel comfortable cluttering up the SepiaMutiny comment boards with my questions (and... um... whiteness), and so I started a blog of my own where I could try to puzzle through what I didn't understand.

(Now, interestingly, my blog has in fact been cited on SepiaMutiny, as well as Ultrabrown, and no fewer than six times on DesiPundit.)

I never meant to present India to anyone else, or to (re)define it by my standards. All I tried to do with this blog was to tell stories about my experiences, and to ask questions to help me understand what I was experiencing.

Now that I am no longer traveling, I'm not quite sure what to do with the blog. ^__^ Now is the time where writing "about India" seems presumptuous, and although there is a place for a post about Saawariya because it has to do with something that was recently posted on Ultrabrown, I feel like I ought to redefine my writing focus so that this blog becomes... about a job search? about my personal musings? about OMG-they're-adapting-Ballet-Shoes?!

Anyway. Thambi, I'm sorry that you are offended by what I am writing. I'm not going to stop blogging, though. I make mistakes sometimes, and make stupid assumptions sometimes, and correct them when they are pointed out to me. But I have never presented myself as an expert or ambassador. This blog is always, and has always been, about promoting understanding through question and discussion -- not only understanding of a semester in India, but also of theatre, education, economics, literature, etc.

And that's all I'm going to write about that.

Well, This is Addictive

The Blog Readability Test.

Insert your URL and it tells you what level of education is required to read/understand your blog.

Mine's high school. SepiaMutiny's is undergrad. Abi's is postgrad.

I should be proud of my "non-exclusivity" and ability to communicate to a wide audience; but comparing my blog with my friends' blogs just makes me think Pretty Blue Salwar should start using bigger words.

The Secret, LinkedIn, and Why Blue Should Apply For Jobs Instead of Me

Whenever I visit my parents' home, I intuitively sniff out all the new books that have arrived in my absence, and -- with few exceptions -- read them. It's how I became acquainted with Blink and The Tipping Point, and, on this visit, The Secret.

The "secret" of The Secret is that if you think about particular goals constantly, continuously (not continually -- that would imply breaks in the thought process), you can achieve them. The Secret takes it a step further and states that you will achieve them, and achieve them by thinking alone; the power of thought will "attract" your goals to you.

That's why people think The Secret is a bunch of hogwash. I agree. However, there's one thing The Secret gets right, and it's something I already knew: if you want to achieve a goal, it's a good idea to work towards it -- not just think about it -- constantly and continuously.

So. I want to get a job. Not just any job; I've had jobs, and plenty of them. I want a job that allows me to use my best skill set (that'd be the "writing" one, also possibly the "teaching" one, not the "stuffing envelopes and answering the phone" one, although I'm good at that too). And I've got a deadline of sorts; next May, after graduation.

I want the kind of job that a person might more accurately call a "career;" and I'm thinking about it constantly and continuously.

When I was applying to graduate school, I began nearly a year in advance. Every day I said "what's one thing I can do today to get myself closer to grad school?" Likewise, with the India trip, I took some time every day to figure out "what can I do today that will get me closer to going to India?"

And so, in the name of "what can I do today to get me closer to a good post-graduation career," I joined LinkedIn. (I've got a sneaking suspicion that networking is going to play a major part in this career process.)

And after I filled out my profile, my education (state schools) and resume (service and temp work) looked so unimpressive that I quickly ditched the entire thing.

After all, without the background to prove it, how could I promote myself as a "Writing Professional," as the site encouraged me to call myself? No one would believe me.

Then I thought "well, if they read the blog, they'd know where my real skills were." And that's when I began to wish Blue could apply for jobs instead of me.

The real world says my education and experience only qualify me for service jobs; but Blue has been hired to write articles for magazines (real, paying articles), not to mention getting tagged and linked-to across the blogosphere.

I live in the "middle of nowhere," but Blue rubs elbows and trades comments with many influential people; people who have founded successful companies, who write articles for major magazines, who work for prestigious institutions, academic-or-industry; people whose names jump out from the insides of books and remind me of how cool they are (Niranjana, that'd be you, in my copy of Sacred Games). Even someone who might be the Next Marketing Guru. ^__^

(Did I miss anyone? I hope not.)

Blue's even prettier than I am, because the world only sees Blue when the photograph turns out well.

In short, Blue's a much better job candidate than I am. Should I make a LinkedIn page for her?

When I began this blog I chose pseudonymity because I thought revealing my true identity might negatively affect my career options. Now I am wondering if and when I should out myself, or whether I should simply change my name to Blue.

Pretty Blue Salwar, Version 2.0!

No, that doesn't mean I've added any new... um... interfaces, or even got my own domain name (Gaurav, didn't you once say you'd help people do that? In return, I can definitely throw some linklove towards The Age of Conversation... though every time you mention "bum rush" I'm going to also have to throw some linklove towards FFVI...).

It does mean, incidentally, that I learned the difference between "continuous" and "continual." Apparently if life were a continual travelogue, it would actually be a travelogue of intermittent, but repetitive, frequency. Who would have thought?

In essence, the reframing I'm going to do over the next few days is my answer to the question "what next?"

I've got some great content planned for PBS 2.0, and you'll have to stay on the ride to find out what it is. ^__^

Sorry For The Not-Posting Thing.

I have so much to write about.

Amritsar, the Golden Temple, Diwali, the wonderful fantasticness that is Indian domestic air travel...

I even have pictures.

(Ooh! Pictures!)

But I am in Hyderabad, with just two days to go before I leave India, and I am caught up in a social whirl. Everyone wants a piece of Blue, and so I am very busy paying visits and meeting people.

And (sigh) there are only so many pieces of Blue to go around.

But soon, Team Readers. Soon.

The Obligatory Post About My Cat

I'm spending my final pre-India days at my parents' house, soaking up the free food and air conditioning.

I am, of course, leaving several boxes of things behind with them (books, winter clothes, etc.).

I'm also leaving behind my cat, Miri.

I adopted Miri from an animal shelter three years ago. When I took her to the vet for the first time, the vet said "I am so glad that you chose to adopt an adult cat; everyone always picks the kittens and the adults hardly ever find homes." I didn't have the heart to tell her that it was less of a moral decision than a practical one; I was working full-time and commuting and didn't have the time or patience to train up a kitten. ^__^

I am going to miss my kitty. Terribly. And worst of all is that I know she's going to freak out while I am away. Like many adult shelter cats, she has a great fear of abandonment, and although she's very familiar with my parents' house (and with my parents), it won't at all be her home. People who have stayed with her when I've taken weekends away say she sits by the door and meows like crazy.

Anyway. Here's the picture, since everyone loves kitty pictures.


And now I suppose I've done the obligatory blog post about my cat. ^__^

New Header Woes

I've been trying, this evening, to make a new header for this blog.

Don't get me wrong -- I love the KHNH header -- but I thought it might be nice to have a picture of me in the salwar. Because, y'know, the blog is titled Pretty Blue Salwar.

So I did a photoshoot and I messed around in a generic freeware version of Photoshop for a while.

But... I didn't get anything I liked.

The closest I got was an image of me in the salwar against a large hand-drawn map of India that I stole from Wikipedia (hey, open source, right?).

It was certainly "aesthetically pleasing," but it was so Indophile-fetishy that I couldn't stand to put it on the blog. It was touristy, was what it was. ^__^

I'd rather play the Bollywood fangirl any day. So -- for now -- the KHNH header stays.

New Header Fun!

You should recognize the illustration I've photoshopped myself into, although it's a little blurry. I'm wearing the second salwar I ordered from ebay (for $0.01 plus shipping). It was described as having a "flared khameez;" when I put it on, the skirt stuck out so much it looked like a little blue dress... thus the inspiration for the photo above.

If anything else, it's appropriate. ^__^

Oh, and I need some kind of tagline to stick under the title; the right half of the header looks a little bare. I'll begin to puzzle on it; but if you have a suggestion, let me know!

Blue Sends Linklove

I haven't been commenting much on other people's blogs lately, but I have been reading them. I do read nearly everything that passes through my Google Reader, so I just wanted you all to know that I have learned, in the past few days, about StumbleUpon; superstar JEE test-takers getting endorsement packages; other Bollyfans who love SRK as much as I do (and who have the pictures to prove it!); why a certain person hasn't been writing for a while; whether or not men are interested in "inner" or "outer" beauty; and, if they are interested, how they blow it by saying stupid things on dates.

I've also had the opportunity to google Reddy Rao. I didn't know who he was before, or that the name even existed, and I really wanted to get this joke. ^__^

Recent Comments???

I added a Recent Comments widget to the sidebar.

Hmmm.

On the one hand, it increases the possibility of comment-style conversation... on the other hand, it makes the blog look so very, very busy with text.

Too busy?

What do you think?

Please let me know.

(From the editor: It's been pulled. If you want to find out why... read the comments. ^__^)