Stay Strong, This Too Shall Pass.

Dear Friends,

Hello from my apartment in Toronto. Today I decided to pen down few inspirational words for those who are struggling emotionally during this COVID 19 lockdown and pandemic. As we all can guess, most of us are inside our houses and apartments. We are not going out. Some of us haven't gone outside in weeks. And this is putting a lot of emotional pressure on us. Lot of us are scared of getting infected with this virus, others cannot just see being so helpless. Even I am also not happy because of this stay home situation.
  But dear friends, this too shall pass. I know things look very grim and we are seeing soaring figures of new patients getting infected everyday. But we have to believe that things will change and our lives will go to normal. And one day we will start going out and start living normal life. But it  is just now we have to be careful and stay inside, stay careful. Please take care of yourselves, don't let your heart fall into despair. Use this time to create something that will remain as good memory for rest of your life. Write your thoughts, do some origami (heard that is good for stress), do some exrercise, learn new language, read some book. Plan your next vacation. Do something that will keep your mind active. But don't sit idle. Please think that things could have been worse. Believe it or not but I spent almost all of my life back in India like this. Sitting inside, not going out much because boys would bully or beat me. No one to talk to, no one to talk about my hobbies with. Even if stay inside then my brash father would beat me to make me a "MAN". Living in constant fear. But I used that time to read books and learn about world outside four walls of my house. And today I am here in Canada living my life safely and without any fear. If I can survive in situation worse than this for 20 + years, then you can at least give some try. 
   I never wanted to bring about my past but lately I have been feeling this push of responsibility from inside to pen down this to encourage others to stay inside. There are millions of people in other end of the world living in far worse situation for years. Compared to that, this few months of stay home situation is nothing. We can at least stay inside and be grateful that one day things will change.  So my dear friends. Please be safe. Take care of your health and your heart. Be positive. And we will go out in sunshine again.

See Yah.

Happy Social Distancing!

Adopting A Pet In My Simple Single Gay Life

Hello Dear Friends,

You won’t believe what I am gonna tell you today. I am moving to next stage of my gay life, I have decided to adopt a pet. 

I have officially become 33 years old and this year I am gonna go through the biggest change in my life and that is why I have decided to adopt a pet as a symbol of new beginning. Growing up, I never imagined that by the age of 33 I will be single, but today’s time is different than the time of my teenage. Singlehood is kind of more common now, and single people end up adopting pets that suits their single apartment living. Pets are good friends, stress relievers, and a great company. Call me a lonely or emotional fool but finally, I have a good job and empty evenings. I don’t wanna spend them sleeping on the couch.

 So what pet I am gonna adopt?

A shelter one for sure. Actually, I am a dog person. But I leave for work at 7:30 AM and come back at 5:30 PM. Who is gonna take that dog for walks? Even if I hire dog walkers, is leaving dog lonely for so long hours is acceptable for a dog? Besides, the dog that I really wanna adopt is not suitable for my current lifestyle. I always wanted to pet an English Bulldog, but it needs a lot of attention and time which I cannot devote right now. So considering my lifestyle and schedules I have decided to settle on Cat! Because you don’t have to walk a cat. Cat is like a mature adult guy who acts like a boss and don’t seeks a lot of attention like dogs do. Cat is a perfect pet for long hours working people. 

I never had a Cat before, growing up I was kinda scared of them. But after making many rounds to shelter and seeing many of my friends’ cats I think I am comfortable around them now. If it wasn’t for that one cute cat that I saw online, I would have never come to this decision. I called shelter today to know if it is still available for adoption?  They said yes, he is presently at a foster home and I will have to call tomorrow to know more about him. I am kinda happy and bit excited. I like that cat. It is cute. No, actually it is super cute.

One thing I wanna make clear here that I am not taking any hasty decision here. I think I have reached to the point where I can take a good care of one more life and that is why I believe that adopting a pet would not be a wrong decision.  There is so much research and study about cats needs to be done here. I am doing that. I will keep you guys posted on my progress with adoption.

Wish me luck!

QUEER EYE & The Journey Of Acceptance!

Hello my dear friends.

I Love you All. 

I am not kidding, I just finished watching the first season of Netflix’s Queer Eye. It is a great show, every gay man must watch it. This is a remake of a show from last decade by same name and concept. 5 gay men with different skill set of life, fashion, beauty, cooking, and design help straight people in improving their lives. Every episode is a new person, every episode is a new story. But what is the most interesting thing about this show is the message and journey they showed in it.

 In this version, these five gay friends, called by “Fab 5” traveled to Georgia, USA. People from the southern USA are quite known for their homophobic views. These Fab 5s help those participants by giving them full makeovers and wins their hearts. It is a beautiful journey of a midpoint where people from two different background and sexualities (gays and straight) come and meet and become friends. Fab 5 are really excellent, eccentric, strong, talented, gay men. They won the hearts of people from Georgia USA shown in the show as participants. As at the beginning of show they said, “The original show was fighting for tolerance. Our fight it for acceptance”. This show is really about achieving that acceptance in society by winning hearts of people who do not belong to LGBT community. As I said earlier in my blog post "Serious Talk - I Wish Jason Shah Was Gay” , we need to show some strong characters as a representatives of LGBT community that will win hearts of straight people; this is the show that gives platform to gay people where they can offer so much to the community. This is indeed an act of building bridges.

I know some people are saying that this show is a typical stereotyping of gay people, but that is just one side of the coin. When you see those happy tears of straight people on the show, those achievements in their lives, when you see they moving ahead in life with the help of 5 gay men; the whole debate of stereotyping or not does not matter.

After seeing so many shows and movies about gay people, This is the show where I felt “YES” I felt happy and I believed that, YES, change is happening in the society. Straights and LGBT are coming together and working hand in hand. 

This is the perfect ground, perfect picture from future. This is the future of Gay community that I believe in.

I love you all my dear friends.

Now go and watch the show on Netflix.

Midweek Graphs & Charts (1)

Hello there my lovely readers.  I am doing something new on my blog. Now on I will be posting graphs and charts of gay life stuffs. In the mid of the week I am posting some awesome stuff about things that I felt in the format of formal charts. I hope you will like it. Enjoy it!
Ciao!

My Gaming Affair - Part 2 - How Gaming Changed My Personality, Social and Real Life!

My dear friends. Thank you for reading and loving my last post about gaming. Today I am writing again about my gaming experience. Last time I wrote about how me and gaming’s love story started. When I look back I see that as a romantic love story from 1950s where guy and girl take a lot of time to make love with each other. I was like Natalie Wood from Splendour in The Grass. After getting into gaming the story was like 50 Shades Of Grey. Every day was a new experience for my virgin mind and XBOX was playing like experienced Mr Grey. There is a famous line in Fifty Shades Of Grey, “I never knew what I wanted until I look into your eyes”. I was just like that with little alterations. I was saying to XBOX One that, I never knew what I liked until I played Call Of Duty!

   Gaming came into my lonely boring single gay life late, but better late than never. The first game I played on my console was Forza 5. I didn’t knew it was so hard to play, I was hitting Chrysler at so many places. I though I won’t be able to make it. Then I played Assassins Creed 4. it was really nice experience for me. Watching that beautiful Caribbean green scenary on high definition 40’ screen was a treat for eyes. Also, game was easy to control I liked it. And then after 1 week I brought Ori and The Blind Forest. And here a child in me came out. My all time favourite game till that day was Mario  Bros. It was a fun game, playing an arcade game, making Mario walk on wall, it would move mostly in 2 directions. Or was also like that but with modern edge graphics and beautiful music. I loved playing it. I felt like child again. And then came COD.

  Unti now I was looking at COD like a rich, handsome, playboy, hunk like high school’s senior. Who is best in everything he does, who has many girlfriends, who date only hottest girls. Who is straight and you know he is not even going to reply your ‘hello’ but you so wanna be with him.  But by now I had done some progress in Forza 5, in Assassins Creed I was doing good and Ori was going excellent. With these three friends I had gained little confidence and brought Call of Duty GHOSTS. I had never played such high quality shoot out game before. What if I couldn’t play this game? By huge nervousness I started the first episode of this game. And from then my real gaming life started.

  By this point it is not a hidden thing that I finished that 1st level successfully. But the main scoop is how I felt about it. Imagine if you are a gay guy, you have this huge crush on high school’s football captain who looks like Chris Hemsworth, he who dates girls that look like Taylor Swift, who looks so straight that you know you are never gonna have any chance with him. But one day in locker room you and he is alone, you both share cold passing eye contact from distance, next time when your turn around you find him right behind you, so close, he is staring at you, he is shirtless, and he suddenly hugs you and kiss you passionately. He look into your eyes and say, ‘dude I love you so much’ and both you start making love.

How you will feel if this happen to you? I felt that when I successfully finished COD’s first game episode. All these times I have been seeing COD handled and celebrated by aggressive guys, I had never thought that I can ever play that game and most importantly, enjoy that game. I did it. I loved it. I had risen to a new level. Something impossible to me I had done and I was moved out of my comfy zone! Yes I was feeling victorious. 

 My serious romance with gaming had started. Every day after work I would come home quick and play the video game. Every time I would face difficult level, I would come over it and it would increase my determination, joy and self-confidence! I would shout "Yes I can do it” after every gaming session. It improved my confidence, multi tasking and time management. Not only in games but out of games too. Earlier it would take a 15 mins for me to do a certain job now I would finish it in 5 mins. I was more alert, more detail oriented and had developed keen eye for minor details.  Getting into gaming slowly turned me into a confident person. Talking about alertness in real life, one day in public transit bus one old lady slipped her foot and fell backwards but I swiftly turned and catched her before she fell down on floor. She said me thank you. Every body in bus gave me applauding gaze. I saved a life may be? Thanks to gaming. Now I have more friends, I am dating men with richer qualities, men who are more mature by mind, kinda thorough gentlemen. I often go out more with friends. It is much better than before.

 Gaming has brought many positive changes in my life. I feel like a new person. 

New Season - New Turn In Life.

 This is a month of September and here in Canada we have a Fall season starting. I always loved fall because of its colors. In this season suddenly green leaves turn into Red and Orange. Just a perfect surprise from nature. While enjoying a day to day action packed fun life of summer one day you suddenly stumble upon a tree in neighborhood and find that it hs turned into Red. The Fall is coming. Surprise!!!

 This Fall has not only brought change in nature around me but also has brought many changes in my life. One of those changes are related to color Red. For me color Red is color of Love.  After almost 2 years long hot dry summer finally I am seeing some red leaves in my personal life. :) .  And what makes more surprising to me is this guy is no drama, perfect gentleman. A Man, not a guy.  I am taking things slow with him.  How I met him and all is very funny story.

 Just like advertisements of FMCG products change every 4 weeks, my celebrity male crushes change every 4 weeks. Few years back I got this hot crazy stupid crush on Ryan Reynolds. Then I wished I want boyfriend who look like Ryan Reynolds. Few months back I fell in love with actor and indy film maker Ed burns. I liked his personality, in fact I still like his personality. He appears to be a perfect husband material. So after watching his movies again and again I wished to have boyfriend who has personality and voice like Ed burns.  Just before I saw this guy online, one day while surfing on Facebook I saw this religious post saying your wishes are coming true, comment 'Amen' to accept them. Generally I don't entertain such post but that time something made me to comment on it. I did that and next week I saw this guy on dating site. I said hi to him, he replied and my story started.


 With this post I wanna share this funny story of coincidences. Once I wished to have boyfriend like Ryan Reynolds and once I wished to have boyfriend like Ed Burns. And you won't believe but this guy just look like Ryan Reynolds and has personality and nature of Ed Burns' character Gerry from movie Fitzgerald Family Christmas. If this was less then his voice is also similar to Ed Burns' :)

He is a very nice guy, I am gonna give him time, gonna go slow with him. With him I feel something that I never felt with any guy before. He makes me feel like playing game of Golf with him.  Even though he doesn't play Golf, I am gonna give chance to this possible relationship.

Fingers crossed!

My Gaming Affair - Part 1 - How hopeless romantic single guy found his Jake Ryan in the form of video game.

Yes guys, I am writing back again. Been busy with stupid crazy job and my new affair. This time not with a guy but with something else. This new love of my life is video games.



  Wait hold on! Let me explain. I have not turned into that guy who sit all day on couch and play video games. Not yet.  This post is not about me discussing my scores in video games, this post is about how a single romantic gay guy like me found a new excitement in the video games. Till last year I was so naive about video games that I had a wrong impression about them I had an impression that video games are violent, they make you lazy, spoil eyes, spoil health and make you angry person. Not so long ago in my early 20s when I finally accepted myself as gay, I diligently kept myself away from video games. Because back then in India all I would see is angry, aggressive straight guys playing video games where they would play shoot out games, scream out loudly and break the controllers. For newly self accepted gay like me that was a pretty scary thing and I started video games as something straight guy's thing. In those days I did not had gay friends who would play video games. So because of this my first impression of video games became wrong and I started seeing video games as straight guy's thing. If this was less stupid then I came across one more stupidest stupid thought about video games. I got a stupid fear. I thought that playing those shoot out games on consoles will make me straight.


 Don't laugh at me! They have so many gay conversion institutes in USA, my little fear is absolutely less stupid than them. I was not the stupidest guy on earth the day I stumbled upon that thought. Now when I look back I get that it was not fear of becoming straight but the fear of losing awesome gay life and losing love for Patrick Wilson had made me scared.

  So any way, fast forward to year 2015. I was six months post relationship break up, six months old on POF, OK Cupid and still single. In the summer of 2015 on one sweet evening I was in the best buy store. While passing through TV section I saw a guy playing racing game. And there I saw future love of my life. He was broad, powerful and so handsome. His name was XBOX one. I had found my Jake Ryan in the shape of old computer's CPU shaped metal box. I was so amazed to see his graphics and games that I kept looking at him. But suddenly something happened to me, something pulled my shirt and moved me to next isle. And I heard Inner voice.

"Dude, No! You cannot fall for that video game, you are not a teenager, you don't wanna spend your money on that expensive thing. Instead of spending time on playing video games, go to clubs, gym, jogging, spend that time on dating apps to find next good boyfriend." I went home. But that night I was not feeling sleepy something was keeping me awake, image of that console and those video game graphics were constantly coming before my eyes. And then an old memory of gay party came back to me. I was naive 20-21 yrs old. Freshly out of college and newly into gay party scene. I was thousand times cuter back then. That saturday in a party there was a cute muscular guy. He was looking at me, I was looking at a guy behind his ear. He smiled at me, I did not see that. We did not speak, nothing happened that night. 2 years later, I met this awesome guy online. We chatted, I liked his talks, he liked my texts. We started liking each other and then we decided to meet over coffee in cafe. We shared face pictures and yes you are right, this was the same muscular guy who was seeing me that night . I was OK to meet him in cafe but he wasn't. He was offended by that night's behaviour of mine. He found me"rude". He said he smiled at me but I did not. Yes I was fool that night by not noticing this guy's interest in me but definitely I was wise two years later by not telling him that actually I wasn't looking at him but the guy behind him. He took that night's incident like popsicle on sunny afternoon. We did not meet,  nothing happen after that. I had learnt my lesson. I named this lesson as "Cricketer's wicket". That muscular guy had said he was so much into playing cricket (even today also I doubt him on that.)

   Back to 2015's night, I was fearing that this gaming thing should not end like cricketer's wicket.  I had never felt that fear for a guy recently but for that video game console I was feeling it. I really wanted to buy that game and play like that guy playing it in best buy store.
But then again great single gay mind of mine started pushing me for "go out", where I can meet "real people",  do something "real". But wasn't I doing that for years now? After doing all that wasn't I still single? I did not sidelined the idea of being in relationship with handsome guy. No Never! I was always dreaming about boyfriends like I was doing it before but this time my mind was asking for something for myself. Something beyond dating and meeting people but spending some quality time with me. Rather than going on dating websites and pretending like dude from sedan car commercial I wanted to be like 16 years old high school going silly me, I wanted to act free without thinking if that guy is looking at my cute smile, not affraid of ugly tagged pictures on facebook, not so keen about saving hot selfies for POF, not faking American accent, all I was looking for to connect back with that awesome real me.  And I had found that space in video games.

 Finally after all analysis that night I asked myself a question. Since last 10 years I approached many good guys for dating with good intentions. I was never an ugly guy but they had infinite reasons to turn down my proposals and even declined possibility of becoming friends with me. They had some reasons in their minds. May be all of them were looking at guy behind my ear, but now when I have found something interesting which I believe I can become good friend with am I gonna pretend to looking behind the ear of that video game?


 I am a PROUD GAY MAN! I am proud of myself, I take pride in whatever I do, whoever I do that with and that is why now I was gonna buy that new hot video game console and few game DVDs to start gaming with! I was in, I was sold. I had come over stupid fears and reasons and had done something that I liked. Next few days I spent on youtube, forums and stores, doing research and deciding between PS4 and XBX One. It was a tough choice but I chose XBOX One, I found my hands more comfortable on XOne's controller than PS4's. On one sunny Sunday afternoon of May 2015 I had become 21st century's console game playing proud gay man. That old fear of turning non-gay was gone and I was feeling proud in calling myself  GAY GAMER.

Last time I felt this much accomplished when I lost my virginity. I never looked back after that.

People's Behavior Patterns and Predictions on Dating Sites : Part ll

.......And Then He Sopped Messaging

Hello friends, I am back. As I said in last part of this series of post ( predictive behavioral patterns), today I am writing about the topic of guyz' behavior that will make you interested in searching upon.

It must have happened with you that you came across a nice guy on social networking sites. You liked him, he liked you and then you started chatting. Everything was matching, you were perfect match. You were chatting with each other everyday, he showed you his emotional side, you shared your secrets to him. Everything was fairy tale kind of perfect and then one day he suddenly stopped messaging you.

 Suddenly he started acting like a stranger, as if he never met you before. He ignored your all messages, suddenly became very busy in work place and developed enough problems, enough cousin's weekend visits to keep you away from him. He just disappeared. This is not a very normal thing. I mean this is happening a lot in gay sphere. You will often meet guys who will tell their share of same experience. It is really heart breaking thing. I mean when at one side you are dreaming to get good life partner and on other side if you keep meeting such kind of people you are gonna lose your nerve, your patience and your willingness to find relationship. 

Why it happens that when that guy is really enjoying your company, he is happy then he suddenly turns away and stops messaging. There must be a strong psychological reason behind it. I am not psychologist to know about it. So I wont comment on saying why it happens. But I am analyst, I work with data, so I would comment from that point of view.

Now days many dating apps have that indicator in person's profile showing how frequently that guy replies to messages or how much your and his personality/nature match. So just like this, why cannot apps show that after how many days of chat this person is most likely to go silent? 

I am not saying that apps should scan their messages and by scanning that data they should predict this result but by observing one person's visit & search pattern they should be able to predict this figure.

 For example Mr. B is that man who disappears after starting good chat. One 1st January Mr. B came to gay dating site for searching cool guys on gay dating app. Then he found my profile there. He kept coming on that app to exchange messages with me. On  Jan 10 we shared our numbers on that dating app. And then we started chatting on phone side by side. By Jan 20 we were so much into texting each other on phone and by Jan 20 our visits to gay dating apps were dropped. After chatting and talking with me over phone till 28th Feb he suddenly stopped messaging me. His last message was sent on 1st March. He kept himself away from dating apps for few days and one day, 15th March he came back on dating site and started visiting profiles frequently. 

 So in this imaginary case Mr B was on dating app for 20 days and then he went away from dating apps for 38 days and at same time some other guy showed same behavior (that was me) and then again after 38 days Mr. B came back online. In this guy's case 28-38 days was the period of his interest in me.  If this guy is showing same visiting pattern over the period of time then 28 days is a time till he will be interested in a guy for chatting over text.

I don't want to go on non-analytical debate here, I mean don't wanna spend time on discussing questions like "no, what if the guy he was chatting with was wrong". I don't want to talk about other possible reasons because I am specifically talking about a behavioral pattern where person suddenly stops texting with no reason. So let's stick to it.

I think it would be a great tool for people on dating sites if they understand this factor of person they are looking online. It will help them to understand what should be the speed of their communication.

I mean, if I knew that that guy was gonna turn statue after 4 weeks I would had never skipped my best friend's birthday for the special date he arranged for me. In fact, I wouldn't had replied to his "Hello there" in first place.

Few Double Standard Young Gay men. (who wanna say only one thing that He is not a GAY)

When you are in mid twenties, happy with your gay sexual orientation, straight acting & love your life then it does not mean that you will get accepted by all men from gay community.

In gay community also many men are holding some different views of life. For them being happy with gay orientation in your mid twenties must not be reflected in your behaviour with others. It is not only about straight acting behavior, it's about many to do & not to do things.

In the name of maturity many gay young Indian men are diverting their & other's mind by throwing strange expectations. They want a man to be very very straight acting, rigid, ruthless, rude in his attitude. He should not be talking about good things or his lost things. He should not be sentimental. all he should speak is money, career & plans by keeping quite.

On your every good comment they will declare you as a weak sentimental fool. They criticise you on your each & every move. All it is a strange hypocritical double standard within Gay group.

Have you guys come across such people? What is this? Is it a frustration coated in the name of acceptance of "reality"? If it is, then why they can't accept other person as he/she is?