GLF : Were we taken seriously?

So off I went to the GLF on Saturday morning, taking with me a hangover from hell. The drive was nice enough and Lady Hangover decided that she wasn’t in the mood for the long journey and so decided to hop off somewhere around Bentota for some sun & fun. Was I glad to let her go! Decided to stop for food outside, considering budgetary issues and all, as well as the possible jacking up of prices inside the fort.

Headed straight to barefoot to get my tickets and was told that the sold-out notice in the website was all a hoax. Strange. Thought they could at least say online purchasing was no longer possible. Nevermind. I got tickets. I was glad. I was eqipped and went off into the main GLF designated area where I realized that I was under-dressed in terms of style and over-dressed in terms of fabric. You see, I had the foolish notion that sweats were fine. Silly me. That’s ok though. Everyone there was in pretty good spirits despite the heat which made me realize that they may have been having a good time.

Moving onto the piece of most relevance to the -sphere, I went into the “other” venue, which was non-air conditioned, unlike the Hall de Galle. This was fine too. The discussion was stimulating enough for me to have forgotten the heat. I also realized that when Deepika Shetty said the other blog related discussion/session she had been at only had 10 people, the assumption may have been that this would not held much interest. Boy were they mistaken. The Maritime Museum was “virtually” packed.

Personal Note : Indi you were everything I expected you to be, quiet, confident and wiser beyond your years. But Ravana – you are far less scary than you sound in your blog. You came across as well… nice. And it was a nice surprise indeed. Particularly endearing when you pointed your mum out in the audience. Mr. Groundviews (if you weren’t there you dont get to know his name) I would like to personally apologize for not reading you more often out of not knowing the work you do to help the unheard have there stories out there. You have recruited an avid reader in me from now on.

It was funny how one of the main angles the discussion skewed towards bravely declaring our government and its president complete morons when the stage everyone was sitting on looked frighteningly like a political rally stage. You know those takarang shed like atrocities with red satin draped around it?!

The conversation was stimulating but just when I felt we were starting to get somewhere, the hour was over. Is an hour truly enough? To take up the role of the blogger in this coutry? What was said was good to take back with me though. We keep traditional media on their toes. We are sometimes the best alternate point of view when you have a corrupt government, corrupting the media. We voice the stories that would otherwise go unheard because of this. We have no barriers so we can be brutally honest about our opinions.

One thing though – it also came across like blogging was purely newsy. What about the other reasons we blog? Fair enough, considering the present situation, a lot of political and war related posts get a lot of traffic. But I blog for various reasons, about many things, not just the hot topics of the moment. From being a place to tell people stories about my psychotic self to my opinion on other things as well. This is why I said an hour can never be enough, Maybe next time we’ll have more time.

Emotional dishrag that I am, felt my eyes watering when they introduced Iresha from digitalbutterflies. But what I couldn’t get over were the repeated questions on why she blogged and what it did for her. She kept saying the same thing – it improves my english and that’s good for my future. Didn’t anyone get that or were they expecting her to say something that would help with propoganda? A personal victory for her, considering where she comes from was the miracle. Why didn’t anyone get that?

All-in-all, I have 2 key grouses. Besides that I was pretty satisfied. I wish the GLF costed far less, considering the high pre-January expenditure on the parts of many. I also wish I had more of what I came for. Not enough! Not enough! Not enough!