Apparently I crossed 700 posts on the blog. (This one is post #712) Which averages to about 70 posts a year, which does not make me happy at all. Especially since last year, I thought about getting to 200 posts in 365 days. I have no idea how that will pan out, unless I write multiple posts on the same day.

I sometimes go and look at my early posts, and see someone who has changed so much. Everything from how I think to how I write. How much I reveal online to the topics I write about. There was a point where I was chronicling my days in serious detail, naming names, others when I openly lusted over things that seem ….inconsequential now. But obviously they are inconsequential because I have experienced them, and the journey no longer matters once you’ve reached the destination. Which makes me sort of an ass-hat, but I can live with that.

Obviously, most of these 711 posts are completely irrelevant to anyone but myself. Unless you want a peek at the Indian pop-culture scene before broadband, Flipkart and Wikipedia took over, but why would you want that? Why click through 711 posts when I can curate you through the Ones That Matter? Well, fine, the ones that I can still parade in front of the world without totally dying of embarrassment. A humble best-of, from the worst-updated blog ever.

On music piracy. Definitely one of the most earnest posts I have written, with an eye to form and structure. I don’t usually do that.

A Love Polygon With Diagonals. Yes, it really happened. Some of the people involved are even on Facebook! I am not dead yet! Whee!

Watching Veerana in a movie theater. I was trying too hard to be funny. The style makes me cringe, especially the way I mangle Hindi and English here and there. But it was a fun night, and Vasu was the most excellent companion one could have, to watch a film like Veerana. Also, I like the term “WAH!” a lot. I did a lot of movie “reviews” back then, when it was still fashionable to shit your opinions without getting paid to do so. Here’s Dil Se. Here’s Kisna. Here’s me about DVDs when VCDs were still in vogue. But of course you punk kids wouldn’t know what VCDs are. About watching Ju-On 1 and 2 back-to-back. I used to rub my hands in anguish whenever a bad movie adaptation came out, like V For Vendetta.

About visiting Assam after a year. This was LJ-peak, when everything you did was a potential blog entry, and I can actually picture myself thinking about something funny to write, something that would get a lot of comments. BWAHAHA! If Twitter existed back then, this would be a series of tweets, obviously.

The preliminary questions to the first Nihilanth quiz I conducted. I put a mind-boggling amount of work into it (the quiz, not the blog post), and it was very gratifying to see that people liked it a lot, and it also kick-started my quizzing career, which was fun when it lasted. I have three protected posts about the Nihilanth experience, maybe I should open them up.

I talked a lot about AR Rahman, didn’t I? And comics. I tried to introduce people to the wonders of Lone Wolf and Cub. And Swamp Thing.

I tried too hard to be funny, sometimes. I like this just for the build-up, but it’s not as good as I thought it was, back then. This makes me grin, but barely. And I wrote about the weirdest things, like my experience while buying a book.

And there are some posts that are funny on a different level. Like me in 2003, talking about the virtues of eBooks. Or being all riled up about bad movie adaptations. (Obviously, I had not read William Goldman then) Getting very pumped after reading Batman:Hush the first time. (It makes me hurl now) And then there is the very cryptic post about the day I lost my virginity. Nope, no link for you, thanks.

The weirdness. I have no idea what I was on when writing this. Or that. Someone told me that the latter was used as the text in an elocution competition. Prizes were involved. I was happy.

In 2009, I moved to this domain. I began by writing two vanity-posts-to-end-all-vanity-posts. A hundred things about myself, in two parts. Four years later, I realize I have to write an updated version of this, because things have changed. Oh yes, they have.

The Livejournal does not exist anymore. But 10 years of (a part of) my life does, in this uncategorized, untagged and disoriented fashion.