Tag: Reading

TLDR.

Reading

I learnt something new. And as usual, synchronicity played its part as well.

I had a very disturbed night last night and found it difficult to sleep. For me, this is a very unusual situation but I consoled myself that it was due to a highly charged evening when I was in the midst of grieving friends, accompanied a funeral procession to the crematorium, saw my friend of two decades cremated and returned to a rather sombre environment.

I would normally read if I can’t sleep but I was unable to read as I was unable to focus. I was unable to meditate, another tool I use to stabilise myself when disturbed and so it was a restless night till very early in the morning when I finally dozed off.

On booting up the computer to check for my mail I found this article in the Washington Post and it took another visit to the internet via the ever present google to discover that TLDR means Too Long Didn’t Read. I had never come across this acronym before and found it quite amusing that people use this on chats.

Be that as it may, the end of the article is quite amusing for regular readers and I think that it offers an escape route for people suffering from the TLDR syndrom.

Where does synchronicity come into all of this? I have just taken a sabbatical from facebook to catch up with my reading. I have been buying books and they have piled up and I am determined to plough through them and get back on line with facebook sometime in the next few weeks. TLDR would certainly help!

Have you used TLDR in your communications or do you suffer from the syndrome?

Generating More Time.

I find that the backlog of books that I have bought and have not yet had the time to read becoming unmanageable. As at date, I have seven tomes waiting to be read and the influences that motivated those purchases, friends and relatives mostly, are wondering why I am unable to discuss their contents.

The single largest chunk of time taken up in my fairly crowded daily schedule is my reading six newspapers and solving five crossword puzzles. If I can take some time off these, I should find more time to read.

Commencing tomorrow, I have asked my newspaper delivery boy to discontinue three papers. That will leave me with three tough crossword puzzles to solve and that should suffice to keep the old brain from ossifying.

So, commencing tomorrow I shall find more time to read. Inshallah!

My Favourite Hobby.

Welcome to the Friday Loose Bloggers Consortium where twelve of us write on the same topic. Today’s topic has been chosen by Rohit who I think is on a sabatical from blogging. The ten other bloggers who write regularly are, in alphabetical order, Delirious, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Magpie, Maria SF, ocdwriter, Padmum, Paul, Rohit, The Old Fossil and Will. Do drop in on their blogs and see what their take is on this week’s topic. Since some of them may post late, do give some allowance for that too!

I remember the times when I used to interview candidates for employment. It used to amuse me no end to hear them answer the question “What are your hobbies?” with “Work, Sir.”

A hobby is a regular activity or interest that is undertaken for pleasure, typically done during one’s leisure time.
 Since I am on permanent leisure time, I suppose that all my activities can come under the term hobbies. That should include time spent in the kitchen making tea, cooking, washing, drying and storing away vessels and dishes, shopping for groceries, the odd occasion when I have to wash and dry the clothes, and so on and so forth.

If these are hobbies, then what about my eclectic reading and solving crossword puzzles? Do they become my escape mechanisms? How about blogging and surfing the internet? And the much looked forward to fellowship of the park?

I am confused. Can someone remove my confusion?

Gift From The Sea.

While commenting on my post Myth Busted – Love Lasts, a regular commentator gave me something priceless.

I am grateful to Jean from Cheerful Monk for persuading me to read a fascinating book – Gift From The Sea, by Anne Morrow Lindberg. I wish that I had read the book prior to my post on Enforced Idleness went live. I would have approached the subject differently and perhaps would have incorporated some ideas/quotations from the book.

In simple easily readable and understandable language the author takes the reader through life of those days (1955) many observations of which are as valid today as they were then. While she writes as a woman in the fifties, her insights are as valid for men as for women.

I strongly recommend the book to those of my readers who have not read it. This is one book that I know, I will be returning to, over and over again.

Reading.

A friend who is an Economics Journalist, one of the busiest persons I know, recently recommended a book for me to read. It is an English translation from Sanskrit of one of India’s epics, The Mahabharata. I was intrigued because, the author, Bibek Debroy, is a well-known economist and the last person that I would imagine writing on or about the Mahabharata.

My friend’s recommendation and the author’s credentials decided the issue for me and I have purchased the book. Right from the very beginning, it is everything I expected from a book recommended by my friend written by this particular author.

This post is not about my purchasing the book or, about the author, but about the very scintillating response from my friend to a mail from me.

Having purchased the book, I sent an e-mail to my friend and asked him how he found the time to read such a book, as I know that he is an extremely busy man.

Just look at this reply:

“Well, I know a little bit of Sanskrit, thanks to my father who taught that language in the Punjab University in Pre-Partition days. I love to read. Time does not permit me to read all that I want.

If you manage to get me sacked from my organisation, I will celebrate like Charles Lamb did on being asked to quit his job. Lamb said: “I have now more years to live in which I can read some more books!!”

I am seriously tempted to get my friend sacked from his job, or at least try. I do not have that kind of clout but no harm trying is there?

What would you do, if he was your friend?