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Monday, October 29, 2007

Info Post

I recently installed a snazzy device in my sidebar, which tells me the locations of people who drop by at my blog and the pages they read. Then, they plot the visits on a map of the world with a dinky star – thus giving me an idea of the geographical spread of page hits. (Now, I know some of the engineers would be sniggering since there is nothing very technologically advanced about this but I am rather wonderstruck with technology!)

Predictably, India, North Western Europe, the British Isles and the university towns of the USA make up an overwhelming majority of my readership.
But there are a huge number of locations from which only one reader had come – presumably while researching chromosomal disorders or Amitav Ghosh – and hastily retreated.
But their locations are impressively esoteric. A random sample includes:
Arusha, United Republic of Tanzania
Lima, Peru
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Honolulu, Hawaii
Rimouski, Quebec, Canada
Mega, Papua, Indonesia
Daegu, Taegu-Jhikalasi, Korea (South)
Vilnius, Lithuania
Helsinki, Southern Finland
Istanbul, Turkey

Even stranger than these one-off visitors – easily explained by wrong search terms – is the location of multiple visitors.

My most populous readership base in Bombay with 190+ readers till now, followed by Delhi (110+), Calcutta (90+) and Chennai (60+). If I sit down and list the readers, I think I can come up with about 10 people from each city whom I know to be reading this.
What about the rest? Are they all trying to find out about Dharmendra’s acceptance speech at the Filmfare awards?
There are 30+ readers in London – of which I know about 5. 15 in Dubai, of which I think I know 1. There are 10 in Muscat, of which I know 2. And 13 in Singapore, of which I know 1.

Then come the smaller towns all over the place.
Some 13 people from ‘Nokia, Western Finland’ have come here.
15 from Durham and 7 from Charlotte (both in North Carolina), 8 from Salt Lake City (Utah, not Calcutta) and 7 from Lansing (Michigan). Another 15 are from Austin, Texas.
17 from San Jose (California) would probably be Nilendu checking in from behind multiple firewalls.
And these numbers keep on increasing!

In India, there are 16 readers from Krishna district in AP and 7 from Lamba in Rajasthan. Are the distributors from my FMCG days trying to see if I still remember them? Of course I do, Srinivasa Rao-garu!
In fact, right now, somebody from Nagar in Rajasthan is reading the Shilpa Shetty post...

Obviously, so many people from these smaller towns would not be coming due to search engine misdirection. So, am I to believe that they are coming here on purpose?
What is the real reason? Or, is it a sleight of hand performed by my ‘snazzy device’?

If the readers from the aforementioned towns do exist, would they please be kind enough to raise their hand and give attendance? I mean, how the hell did the 7 of you from Erie (Colorado) land up?
Actually, if any of you have come back to this blog, would you identify yourself?

Damn, I so hated to do this in college. And now, I am asking others to record attendance!

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