What a Fun Way to Connect!

The icing on the A to Z challenge 2016 is that Susan Brody nominated me for the Liebster Award. Thank you Susan for my first blogging award ever (that pretty much sums up my entire award list in any case). I am particularly thrilled because the nomination came from one of my favorite blogs for the challenge and am now a permanent stalker. You simply must visit her blog for interesting, informative, entertaining posts on 16th-century analogues of 21st-century memes.

As per the rules of the award, below are my answers to the questions Susan had asked me:

1. Is your blog your best friend?  Why or why not?

Oh yes definitely my best friend for we both have the same goal – to have some fun without moving an inch!

2. Blogging feels to me like a job ___ percent of the time, and like a joy ____ percent of the time.

Blogging feels to me like a job 20% percent of the time, and like a joy 80% percent of the time.

3. What rules of Blogger Etiquette are most important to you?

Replying to reader comments.

4. Do you have any great tips for attracting readers to your blog?

Do the A to Z challenge! Worked for me 😉

5. What do you wish you could change about the education you had?

I do wish I had made greater efforts to learn Sanskrit and Bengali (and English)

6. When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

A medical doctor

7. Of all the places you’ve lived, which one is your favorite?  Why?

Of all the places I have lived, the blogosphere has to be the best. I feel free of expectations (even my own – well most of the times). It is the one place, I feel I can just be.

8. If you had a time machine, which era would be your first stop?

 It has to be the Mesozoic Era! With our son. As a child (even now I think) he was quite obsessed with dinosaurs (some of it rubbed on I guess). He gobbled up everything he could about dinosaurs and drove us crazy with his dinosaur related demands, exhibitions, odes, monologues, debates, questions. That reminds me – when he was about four he asked, “Ma, can you tell me the name of two dinosaurs whose names you don’t know?”

9. What’s the best thing that happened to you within the past week?

 Tonnes actually – this award for one and after about a year of sitting on the fence I finally took the leap to the entrepreneur bandwagon – wish me luck!

10. What’s the fastest way to get on your bad side?

Pretty simple – Lie to me (provided I manage to catch it of course – am pretty gullible that way)

11. What’s the one thing that never fails to inspire you?

A bare tree standing tall, proud, unfazed, confident that her time will come….

Eleven random (and quite useless) facts about me

1. I began writing fiction in 2012 – inspired (okay obsessed) by a television-serial.

2. When the serial abruptly went off air, I continued the story forward posting almost   500 chapters in about 18 months while holding a regular 9-5 job.

3. Took me quite a while to get used to the new me. In fact, while writing, I often feel I am possessed by Dahlia (so now you know whom to blame)

4. Dahlia is not my real name. I chose it because once my mother had said if she had had another daughter she would keep her name Dahlia to rhyme with mine and my sister’s names.

5. I am a professionally qualified medical scientist and hold a doctorate degree

6. On a whim, I traveled (alone) more than half way across India to attend a cyber friend’s daughter’s wedding and stayed the night another cyber friend’s home –neither of whom I had met before. The ‘real’ Me is still in shock.

7. I am terrible at poetry not that I am terrific at prose 😛

8. I am particular about my post schedules and lose sleep if I am unable to live up to my (self-imposed) commitments

9. I have always regretted not having any creative or artistic talents – I can’t sing, draw or make stuff.

10. I don’t much care for cooking, cleaning up afterwards even less

11. Before now I didn’t realize quite how boring I was…

Now that the tough part is over, it’s time to spread some joy and cheer 😀

Blogs that are my honor to nominate for the Liebster Award are listed below:

1. Collecting smiles
2. ROAMIN’ GNOMIALS
3. Me in the Middle
4. Between you and me
5. Moon, Light and Shadow
6. The Quiet Writer
7. Your Roots are Showing Dearie
8. Tale of Two Tomatoes
9. Life in Technicolor
10. The Doglady’s den

If my nominees accept, and I hope they do, here are the rules that must be followed:

RULES OF THE LIEBSTER AWARD

If you have been nominated for The Liebster Award and you choose to accept it, write a blog post about the Liebster Award in which you:

• Thank the person who nominated you, and post a link to their blog in your post.
• Display the award on your blog — by including it in your post and/or displaying it using a “widget” or a “gadget”.
• Answer 11 questions about yourself, which will be provided to you by the person who nominated you.
• Provide 11 random facts about yourself.
• Nominate 5 – 11 blogs that you feel deserve the award, who have a less than 1000 followers.
• Create a new list of 11 questions for the nominees to answer.

List these rules in your post (copy and paste from here). Once you have written and published it, you then have to:

• Inform the people/blogs that you nominated that they have been nominated for the Liebster Award and provide a link for them to your post so that they can learn about it (they might not have ever heard of it!)
  

Eleven questions for my nominees to answer

1. How did you begin blogging?
2. Where do you see yourself in 5 years (as a blogger)?
3. When you are not blogging or thinking about it, what do you do?
4. Does anyone in your family follow, read and/or comment on your posts?
5. Could you tell us something about your part of the world?
6. Any favorite quote/s that you would like to share?
7. Could you recommend a book or a movie (feel free to add as many as you like) for my bucket list?
8. What’s the craziest thing you have done?
9. How do you de-stress?
10. Anything about yourself that you would like to change?
11. What do you feel most blessed about?

It has been a super fun month (despite so many things) and would again like to thank all you wonderful bloggers and super supportive friends and readers who dropped in to boost my morale in this challenge.

A huge thank you to @ahonadg and her hubby for letting me share their wedding pictures – please do join me in wishing them both a wonderful journey ahead.

Look forward to continuing the interaction and thanks for dropping by 🙂

PS: Readers of Moonshine, as promised, here’s Chapter 57