Greetings from the fabulous Las Vegas!!

I'm in Vegas for a week for the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers. The conference is great..and the city is OK too. Believe it or not, I'm not a big fan of Vegas! Since I've been here already last year, there is not a lot of excitement. But since I have a nice SLR camera, I'm having fun capturing the dizzying glitz of night-time Vegas. Photos will be available soon. :)

Ice Skating Video #2.

This video is from Week #4 of my ice skating lessons. I see a visible improvement, do you? : ) Now, I am happy to announce that I achieved my goal of "navigating" on ice. I can stand, stop, move, glide... overall, I can skate OK now. I plan to buy my own skates soon and plan to skate through the summer in one of them indoor skating rinks.

(video coming soon)

My First Steps on Ice

Here's a short, 8-sec clip of my first steps on ice. As I've been reporting, I've been taking lessons for ice-skating. Here's my progress so far:



So far, so good. I have gotten much better than what you see in this video, but I thought my first steps on ice are always fun to watch. Enjoy.

More blogging?

Of late, I feel the urge to blog more often. Write down random thoughts and emotions. But then again, I stop and think... who the heck would be interested in reading all the pouring details of my personal life. I figured when I feel the urge to blog ever-so-often, I'd first draft it and then leave it in "incubation" for a while. After a week or so, I look at it again, and see if it is ready for "graduation" on to the blogosphere. This approach has been working real well for me!

PS: This blog post didn't go through the "incubation" process. It is one of those straight-to-blog gems. Cheers!

Microblogging? What?! And more importantly, why?

I'm writing this blog article risking being thought of as "old school". Anyhow, here's what I think about the latest rage, Microblogging. Microblogging is essentially blogging, but just with a limited number of characters. You just update your "status", essentially telling your followers what are you up to right now, what are you doing, etc. You can also post a question, ask for opinions, etc. The advent of our smart phones made microblogging a huge crazy rage.

Now, my issue with microblogging is that we might risk the art of writing once and for all. As it is right now, handwriting is something that most of us do not do on a daily basis (When was the last time you wrote a letter.. I mean on a paper, with a pen?). Apart from my research papers, my blog is my only place where I write once in a while. I'm afraid this microblogging thingey will take us farther apart from our writing abilities. Now, I'm in no way recommending to write on paper. However, electronic writing is something that I grew fond of and it should not be replaced anytime soon :) While microblogging is wonderfully sweet and extremely userful, I think it should not replace blogging.

Vegas Calling....again!

This year's annual geography conference (AAG) will be in Vegas. That means I will be in Vegas for a week; I look forward to the conference, AND spending some time photographing the beautiful vegas at night time. Look out for photos and stories.

Reporting some progress on the Ice....

It has been two sessions of my ice skating classes so far and I'm glad to say that I made some process on the ice. The skating lessons are around 10:30 every Saturday morning (Yup, what better reason to get up a bit early on Saturdays!) The first lesson was pretty much walking around the ice and get a feel for it. My instructor called it "marching" on the ice. It felt a bit funny to walk around the ice ever so slowly, trying to balance myself. That's how it must have felt when I tried to walk and balance as a baby. Of course, not to mention a little embarrassment to see little kids on the other end of the rink skating, gliding, and doing all sort of figure skating stuff. But hey, I'm not ashamed or anything. In fact, I'm happy to get a chance to take lessons from certified trainers. I have a feeling I will be able to skate OK by the end of my 6-class session. I will post updates, photos, and perhaps a video or two here.