Celebrating A Year of Blogging . . . And Some Exciting News

As the title above points out, this month marks my first year of blogging. When I decided to start this blog last June, it was mainly because I wanted to have an outlet for my writing, a place where I could express my thoughts, ideas, and experiences on a variety of topics and issues. Over the course of the last year, my blog has also allowed me to meet and interact with some great people not only online within the blogging community, but also offline with readers of my blog who live in and around my city. Writing for this blog has even provided me with opportunities to write in a professional capacity, a development that is the key reason for the upcoming change I’m using this one year milestone to announce.

In the next week or so, my blog “So, what were we talking about again?” will be moving to its new home at my personal site – tanveernaseer.com. I’m currently working on getting the place cleaned up and ready for the big move (the main excuse for why I haven’t been writing as much new material as of late). I can tell you it’s going to be a fresh and distinctive new look that will better reflect the writing style and content that’s come to define my blog. Naturally, I’ll be posting news of the new site’s launch here, but feel free to bookmark the site tanveernaseer.com in the meantime.

This first year of blogging has certainly been an enjoyable experience and I want to thank all my readers who’ve stopped by my blog over the course of this first year to see what I have to say, especially those who took the time to share their thoughts about the piece in question.

So, here’s looking to another year of blogging on what we were talking about.

Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Furl | Newsvine

Dear Susan Boyle – It’s Not You, It’s Us

Much has been said about Susan Boyle’s performance on the variety show “Britain’s Got Talent” and of our initial summary judgment of her based solely on her appearance before she even began to perform.  But there’s a new chapter to this story that hasn’t be addressed as of yet.  In the last few days, word has come out that Boyle has recently undergone a makeover – nothing really dramatic unless one considers a woman getting her hair done and buying a new outfit significant.  What is noteworthy, though, is the public’s perception of Boyle’s decision to pamper herself.

Within hours of pictures being released on the web showing Boyle’s new look, people were either expressing dismay or cynicism regarding her ‘transformation’.  It was clear that many people were disappointed that she decided to make such a change in her appearance.  And yet, Boyle’s makeover sheds some light not only on how this whole situation has impacted her, but what it says about us. Click to continue reading the rest of this entry

Of Fathers and Daughters

Over this past long weekend, there were two events that had me thinking about the impact being a father has had on my life. The first was the news of a good friend of mine welcoming the birth of his baby daughter while the second was my family celebrating our oldest daughter’s birthday. Although they’re disparate events, they serve to highlight what I’ve experienced so far being a dad and what I expect will come around the corner in the years ahead.

Near the end of last week, my good friend Matt and his wife gave birth to a baby girl. Talking to him mere hours after the birth of his daughter and hearing him struggle for words, I couldn’t help but smile and remember how the birth of my daughters had had the same impact on me, of how seeing my newborn daughter for the very first time brought to light the reality that our family had now grown by one. You see for men, the idea of there now being this new little person sharing our life doesn’t really sink in until  Click to continue reading the rest of this entry

Food For Thought – Why Aren’t We Thinking More About What We Eat?

While watching TV a few nights ago, a pensive ball of wax got rolling regarding a subject that I’ll admit is not often on the forefront of my mind. One of key contributers to kick-starting this thought process was the semi-regular bombardment of commercials for these weight-reduction programs geared primarily toward the female set of the population. Now this isn’t about the ads themselves; instead, this has to do with our collective perception or relationship to a key factor for living – food. More specifically, it has to do with our lack of respect or appreciation for this most vital survival need.

Obviously, one of the great benefits of living in the “developed world” is the easy access to a plethora of foodstuffs. Indeed, the last couple of years has seen vast improvements on this front, both with an increased diversity through the inclusion of more ‘ethnic’-styled food offerings as well as increased governmental regulations on the quality of the food content and the requirement for more accurate product descriptions. And yet, despite all these benefits, we still seem to harbour this uncertain relationship with food, at many times more a love/hate relationship than one where we respect and value its necessity and contribution to our overall existence. Let’s get into the, uh, meat of this topic, shall we?

First off, let’s be honest about the fact that all of us at one point or another has done that dance of worrying about how much fat, calories, salt, cholesterol, yadda yadda yadda we’re sticking in our mouths. I know I’ve had moments where Click to continue reading the rest of this entry

Our Children’s Education – It’s About Time

This past Monday night, I experienced a strange sensation – I left one of my education board meetings feeling optimistic that things were finally turning around. To put this in its proper context, I should point out that I currently serve on two education board committees – the Governing Board for our school where we discuss and plan out the school’s operations (school budget, criteria for the principal, school allocation time for various subjects, etc) and the other as the school representative on one of the regional school board committees. I serve on these committees not because I’m hoping to one day enter the political arena, but because I’d rather be a player on the field trying to make a difference instead of just standing on the sidelines complaining about poor game plays. Sure, it can be frustrating at times to see how much inertia has to be overcome for progress to be made, but as I witnessed at Monday night’s meeting for the school board committee, it can happen and when it does, it’s quite elating.

I’m sure my fellow parents feel the same resignation over how our society seems to be continually disregarding the current state of our education system – from the limited resources provided to teachers to attend workshops/conferences to improve and build on their knowledge of teaching to the very building infrastructures wherein which our children are expected to learn. Although my kids are fortunate to attend a school that was recently rebuilt (they had an issue with mold several years ago that resulted in the school basically being torn down and rebuilt from scratch), several other schools in our system are in very poor shape and I can only imagine how that affects the school’s staff morale and subsequently the teaching environment for the children.

During our meeting last Monday, one of the school board Directors informed us about a new plan that our provincial government has implemented, which can be basically construed as a mea culpa in regards Click to continue reading the rest of this entry

Yet Another Breastfeeding Controversy – Here We Go Again

Well, it’s the start of the new year and I can’t think of a better way to dive back in here than to tackle that heated, controversial topic . . . breastfeeding. It seems every couple of months, we hear of a news item about a nursing mom who was asked to leave a store, shopping mall or restaurant because she had the nerve (insert sarcastic tone here) to breastfeed her child in public. Oh, the horror! Of course, this being the 21st century, we now don’t have to settle for such infantile behaviour occurring in the real world; now we see it being brought onto the internet, thanks to social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook deeming pictures of nursing mothers as “pornographic” and “obscene”. Excuse me a minute while I pick my jaw up from the floor.

Well, thankfully, breastfeeding moms are not taking this lying down. Kelli Roman is one of several women who have had pictures they posted of themselves breastfeeding their child removed from their Facebook page and being given the cursory explanation that the site doesn’t allow images that are “obscene, pornographic or sexually explicit” in nature. Roman’s response to this censorship was to start a new Facebook group called “Hey, Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!“, a group that today has a membership of over 97 000 Facebook users.

Now, I’ve read how some of these pictures were removed by Facebook and MySpace on account of other members citing them as violating the site’s Terms of Service in regards to the posting of inappropriate images. So after some digging around the Net, I was able to find an example of one of these pictures that ended up being banned by Facebook just this past week on December 28, 2008 because it was deemed “pornographic” and/or “offensive”. Click to continue reading the rest of this entry

Disunity, Part 2 – Mission Accomplished

I’ve mentioned here on my blog how the last couple of months has seen my free-time being more and more consumed with completing work on the “Disunity, Part 2” episode and consequently, having the time to write and post new entries here has suffered. Fortunately, that situation has now been rectified with the release of “Disunity, Part 2” on Christmas Day and with the episode now out for public consumption, I think you can understand why I prioritized work on the episode at the expense of keeping this blog up to date.

Granted, it was never my intention to put writing for my blog on hold in favour of completing post-production work on this episode. But unfortunately, production on this episode simply took far longer than it should have Click to continue reading the rest of this entry

Majel Barrett Roddenberry – A Truly Classy Lady Has Moved On

In my inbox this evening, I got an email stating that Majel Barrett Roddenberry, best known for her roles on Star Trek as “Nurse Chapel”, “Lwaxana Troi” and even the voice of the Enterprise computer, if not also as the wife of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, had passed away.  Naturally, my first reaction was of sadness upon hearing the news. But it also reminded me of my memories of meeting her and of something that came out of that encounter. It’s a wonderful memory and upon hearing news like this, I can’t think of a better time to share it. Click to continue reading the rest of this entry

Down . . . but not out

As you may have noticed, I haven’t been keeping my blog here up to date with any new content for about a month now. The simple truth behind this is that outside of the usual trappings of work and life, my time and creativity has been consumed with completing work on “Disunity, Part 2″, an audio drama piece I co-wrote and directed which I’m now preoccupied with creating various musical scores for. This has had the unfortunate result of taking up my time and energy to the point where I have little left to use for putting to pen my thoughts as of late.

However, I wanted to post a note here to show that I haven’t forgotten about this blog of mine. And given how I expect to complete work on “Disunity, Part 2″ sometime this month, I am looking forward to getting back into posting on a regular basis here about the various topics and ideas that we were talking about . . . once again.

The Magic of Halloween

Last night, my children joined in that annual tradition where ordinary boys and girls transform themselves into witches, pirates, princesses, Spidermans and various ghouls in the pursuit of collecting confectionery from nearby neighbourhood houses. Of course, I’m talking about Halloween, which is without question my favourite secular holiday that our society celebrates for the simple fact that for one day of the year, kids everywhere get to revel in the simple pleasures that come with childhood.

Without question, the world our children live in today is far different from the one my generation grew up in with new dangers like cyber-bullying and even identity theft in addition to those threats that we had to deal with as children. There’s also a greater pressure on children these days to  Click to continue reading the rest of this entry