Blog Update... again.

Okay, so it's been over a year...  closer to a year and a half since I last wrote anything on this blog.  That doesn't mean it's dead -- rather, it's been in hibernation due to a number of other things going on in life that have been major blockers on getting things done.  That meant that in that time, I`ve had to take a break from this blog, but now I`m intending to get back in the saddle.  It`ll still be slow to start, but it will happen.

Before I do, though, I should at least point to a few things that have happened in the abode of The Grumpy Anti-Theist this past year and a half.

Blog update...

Hey, there.

It seems like it's been a while since I posted anything on the blog, and well, there are number of reasons for that.  The TL;DR version of it is basically that I've been more than a little preoccupied with matters in my actual life.  Nothing tragic...  just...  extraordinarily time-consuming, and they wreak havoc with my schedule and it has taken some time to get my feet under me.

Although there are other factors, I'm just going to focus in this update about the biggest.  The biggest time sink in the picture is actually the fact that I've returned to the realm of higher education.  I'm basically in a graduate dual degree program right now...  and I'm doing that while still holding a full-time job...  and that basically means that I have to spend a lot more time outside of work actually studying.  And class days on the weekends for me typically means getting up at 4:30-5 am.  This is mainly because of the time difference...  it is an Ivy league school after all, and that means I'm 3 time zones away.  The main motivation for doing this really comes from a supremely depressing realization that I summarized in a one-liner that one of my friends seemed to really enjoy as he put it up on Facebook immediately.  Basically, I said then that I'm living in a place where people like me are worth their weight in gold...  and get paid their weight in silver...  and the cost-of-living is so high that we actually need our weight in plutonium just to get by.  Sad, but true.

So, yeah...  You can probably guess that blogging has not been on the front burner for a while.  That doesn't mean I'm lacking for content or that I intend to stop, but simply lacking for time.  I've got a few things I'm going to post shortly, but now that I have a reasonable size consistent readership, it's worth pointing out that the delays have not been for nothing.  In a sense, I've kind of gotten used to the idea of a sleepless life a little bit ahead of schedule.  Anyway, that's the long and short of it.  There's more worth mentioning, but I'll save that for a later update.  Just stay tuned for some real pertinent content to come.

Liebster Blog Award

The word "liebster" is a German word for something one likes considerably...  essentially it means "favorite." Apparently, this is among someone's favorite blogs, because I received one.  The reader who happened to put me in that list goes by the handle of "KayEm"...  a literal sounding out of her initials "K.M."  As these particular blog awards are received and passed around among bloggers, she too, is of course, a blogger herself.  Her blog is titled "Never Mind Yaar", which is also the title of her debut novel.  As someone who has known life in India much longer than I have (I spent many more years of my life in Chicago than in India), she is very equipped to write at length about the cultural shifts and divides within India.  Also as a transplant into the land of the Kiwis, she writes quite a great deal about the NRI life.  Although written from a very personally specific point-of-view, it is fair to say that the ultimate message of her posts are applicable to almost anyone.  For instance, her post on the quality of schools may go at some length on the issue of co-ed vs not (I also went to an all-boys school in India), which isn't necessarily relevant to just anybody's experience, but you can't ignore the point she drives at about what the country really needs to do to improve its education...  issues that I've also brought up at my own schools...  problems that the U.S. has as well and get worse in the later years of school.

So with her recommendation, I can now wear this badge.

Among the rules of the Liebster Blog awards, though, is that in addition to mentioning the blogger who awarded it to you, you need to mention 5 other blogs you personally enjoy (who are in turn your own award recipients)...  It's a sort of chain letter award, I guess...  except no one claims that one of your loved ones will die if you fail to send this out.  Well, since there is no absurd superstition tied to it, I'll comply.  So here, in no particular order, are my 5 picks.